Past is one thing I am rooted to—so terribly, hopelessly and ruinously that I’d jump at every single chance I get to repeat and romanticise it, to tell you how beautiful, lovely the memory of you waiting under that hell of a gateway at Chyamhasingh is. I say it was impatience, blatant and unabashed impatience, that got me up from the seat and on my feet in the bus even before it came to a halt—the same impatience my eyes (oh how easily they started roving around for the sight of you) latched onto. And I nearly knocked my head in the process. Twice. And I know, it was the way your lips stretched into a smile that made that moment a moment, gave it a momentum that almost knocked me off, and suddenly a knock on the head didn’t matter at all.

Then, as your closed eyelids helplessly tremble you’ll feel the warmth travelling up and across, finally coming to a halt at some place you would never be able to exactly pinpoint. You’ll forget that you’re not supposed to go any further or let anyone. Forget that one promise you made to your sister. Forget that where you are is a sidewalk just about as much away from your home as that tiny stretch you managed to force yourself away from him the first few days you talked. Later, when you are alone, you’ll probably be going off about how you shouldn’t have given it to him so easy, how you should have wrenched the situation from under his grasp, how you should have grinned at him a big, coy no. But you don’t do anything. You don’t do anything. You don’t.

Without really intending to, I’d find myself going on to that another time when we were meeting for the first time. You had scrabbled away the better part of the day and still (with me waiting under that tree) you were yet to know what you should do. I’d already thought of more than a hundred reasons that easily explained why you wouldn’t come. I’d even gone on to convince myself that the tree I was under was not your tree, and so I’d begun squinting against the setting sun to look through the few trees that were around and at the corners of the place that had slowly started feeling like no place.

Finally you showed up. I’d stood up and we’d started walking as if it was the most normal thing to do, as if it was the only normal thing to do. Now, I can’t help but think about walking whenever I think about talking to you.

And you don’t. But in a teeny while you will. You’ll forget that your eyelids are not someone else’s, you’ll want to open them and you’ll doubt if it’s really about to happen, but before you complete rolling the thought about in your mind, his breath will move faster as it beats a clear path across your cheek, which, because of its roundedness, would feel more like a sweeping arc than a straight trail to you.

When we were not close (and childish) enough to make promises and dare unravel the skein of future and look into it, when my eyes were still forming, and so were yours, when September was only just September to me and eight only a number, I hadn’t yet felt an unknown skin against my own. That, I now think, is why when you flicked your unintentional palm against mine, that one time, I felt tendrils of electricity shoot down my spine. Later when our hands struck a truce and neared at first like opposite terminals and then dovetailed into each other, there was a whole turbulence that swam across and thrashed about the entirety of my being, shaking the length of me, and it felt jittery—but good. Nothing would ever feel this good again, I’d thought back then. No, you tell me now. You tell me I was wrong. And then you giggle—your hallmark. Why can’t every time be a first time? Damn it. I’m damning it all the time now.

 He’ll draw even closer and it’ll only get warmer and damper. Your mind will black out, will go AWOL. Then, a strand will do it first: a strand among the glistening-down resting right above his mouth. It’ll brush against and prickle your cheek and send a racing shiver.

Letting go of your hand was always difficult, but more than that it was strange and unsettling because the realisation that my hand had been in yours for so long would take in no excuses.

Every time I’d want us to walk till sundown, maybe even into the night, you’d have to go. Soon you’d be gone and the absence of your hand in mine would feel forced, and no longer would the feel of my palm attached to my hand be enough to allay the feeling of an ablation, of a removal; it’d only stoke the longing, fan the flames in and around the body, and it was only much later—after playing the day and the walk and the talk over and over in the head and imagining the next time—that I realised that there was nothing left to want for.

The shiver, it will be accompanied by an unusual pounding of heart and a shortness of breath you hadn’t known of.

 I am glad that the last time I called your home, it was your dad I had to ask the permission from to talk to you. One day, he will give you away too.

You’ve spoilt me bad. So much so that I cannot help but want you to love me—so, so much each time you love me; so much so that I can only expect that you call me by that name I got, which made you flush a deep red the first time you said it.

On one of the next-times, you’ll say that we’re running out of things to talk about, and I (unable to place the worry) will tell you that it’s not as much about talking when I am with you as it is about staying. You’ll smile and turn to tell me that I have an answer for everything. I’ll only smile back. Timilé garda.

Then, you will touch. But only this time, it’ll be no hand in hand: his small and insolent mouth, knowing no better, will meld into the blush settled on your almond skin. And it won’t just be skin on skin—it’ll be only skin.

Duwal is a 12th grader