Skip to main content

Forbidden Love

 I dreamed about him tonight. Then woke up with a start.

I wrote about the dream to process it. It was the first time I saw him in a dream. I thought the writing would help me move on. All it’s done is make me yearn for him again. Even more. I want to see him smile at me once more. To hear his voice. His halting, hesitant voice as he measured his words carefully, like pearls.

How do I describe it for you, dear reader? I fell hard. Or at least as hard as I could given the circumstances. I went from bemused to curious to surprised to head over heels. Fairly quickly I suppose when all is said and done. I haven’t been able to give anyone the time of day since then. He took my breath away.

Or perhaps it was the setting. The headiness of travel. At least that is what I told myself for the months I resisted feeling what I feared I was feeling.

It felt so taboo. A forbidden kind of love. He was, in so many ways, a different kind of being. Our circumstances shaped us in way that nary the two shall meet.

I suppose in my heart, I am still the 25 year old girl looking for a storybook romance. Someone to fall in love with. Nay. That is also something I told myself was happening but I met plenty of ‘eligible’ men on that trip and have met plenty since then. If it was just a case of the lonelies, I wouldn’t be dreaming of a man I met only two times a year ago. A man uninterested in me in that way I must mention. So he said. Or at least that he didn’t know what to think. He was taken aback by my tentative, bashful declaration. 

Just the words would’ve sent me running the other way. And practically they did. But my heart, oh, my heart. What do I do with my heart that still longs for him? Not just what he represented, love, security, joy…but him, specifically him. That, too, is a new feeling. I have mostly chased feelings before in my pursuit of happiness. But well, I suppose this is the case just like the minority where I did chase the person and made the biggest mistake of my life. Good thing this one wasn’t interested? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anas

  I run outside my breath, a gasp. My feet stop, in shock. The moon is full tonight. A breeze slides over my skin. The tide… still crashes on the shore. I try to breathe. I can’t. How has the time not stopped… tonight? I go to the sea. We sit. We wonder. We reminisce. We wonder how many school lunches they spent to fell… a man of his might. The sea takes me in her arms, whispers words of comfort just as meaningless tonight as they have been, for years. He was a man I never met, but with all the pride, and ferocity, of a sister I call him my brother. He was a man I mourn tonight, as the sea’s waves lap at my feet. Blanketed by the dark, there is no one around. I wish I could drown, that the sea will swallow me whole. I feel helpless. The weight of the world… is heavy tonight. I give charity in his name. I pray for him. I hold him in my heart. Every tear that falls from my eyes carries his name, like a cherished pearl. Morning takes me by surprise. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Old Pictures

  Photo by Josef Maxson on Unsplash They ask to see old photos. I show them. After all, that’s why I kept them: to give my children a sense of their history. Just four more days, then I won’t see them for eighteen. I won’t hold them close or smell the unique fragrances of their heads. They ask for one more, after I say, “The end.” I indulge. I snuggle a little closer. But every picture, as I describe what it is, where it was taken, and the story behind it, takes a toll on me. My breath catches. My heart races. My mouth grows drier by the minute. The nerves in my hands are firing full force. I keep going, until I truly can’t breathe anymore. I say, “Just one more. That’s it.” We stop. I smile and tell them to head upstairs, fighting hard to keep the tremor out of my voice. I hug myself as they run upstairs, trying to catch each other. Then, I hear a whisper: “That was fun, right? Looking at all those pictures?” My heart stops, unknowing. We traverse new territory every d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mouse King

 I miss Busboys and poets. I miss Community forklift. I miss watching local theater plays at the Silver Spring theater. Except I was no more lost now than I was then. That sentence sounds ominous. I am almost 31 weeks pregnant. Or perhaps 32 based on what the measurements were at my last exam. I finally had an exam after months. Yesterday was the glucose test. Weeks after it was supposed to be. Supposed to be's, should be's, could've been...yada yada yada. I miss DC. Home of my heart. I even miss Maryland. I miss me. The carefree me. I mean, I wouldn't describe life before marriage to be that, but there was a glow in the days before I tethered myself to a man, supposedly for life. Life. Married for life. That's what I thought I was. Guess I thought wrong.  I don't miss it. Or him. Alhumdulillah that's a blessing. I don't think I never will. I am afraid it'll hit me in one large wave once the nastiness of this divorce is over. Like a complete washout....
Post a Comment
Read more