Lovers Who Synchronise
(& those who don't)
The essay:
Pondering as I do on relationships, the beauty and brokenness of them, I continuously marvel, nay wonder, at both their tenacity and tenuousness. And how, at the bottom of them all, they all exist on the basis of a single decision: to be together.
However old, however strong, whatever the optics, the couple is together only because they want to be. Years might slip by, a thousand experiences might be shared treasure, but a single call, a sentence, a simple “I want to leave you”, and a bond collapses.
And it doesn’t require a calamity, another love, incompatibility or differences, for that decision to be made, enunciated and executed. We, as humans, are victims to so many things - possessiveness, insecurities, jealousies, emptiness. And then history doesn’t matter.
And a separation just happens.
The question always is - what right do we have in or to each others lives? What is the value of a paper signed as ritual, or a promise made to love each other forever.
And that’s why I’m in awe of people who not only stick together for years, but do it with equanimity and a quiet happiness. I see couples who gel with each other with such felicity that when they are together, when they speak, when they share silences, they do it as one. It’s almost as if there’s no distance in their souls. That, without meaning, somehow, some place, they simply got split, though they were one body, one spirit, one soul.
Their presence is a generosity, and an answer to my own cynicism about the future of long-term coupledom.
If only we go beyond the surface gnarls, flaws, habits and blemishes, so much is possible. Such serenity is garnered, if only we realize the minimising effect of expectation, and see each other as flawed creatures of infinite possibilities.
The poem:
In the familiar landscapes of my mind
I kept excavating new dawns
but gravitating towards day-ends.
.
I didn’t sleep the night thinking
how our forevers hung
on a mere decision.
.
.
Decades count for nothing
when hurts find rupture
and words.
.
Who decides that a relationship
gives anyone a right
to question the other’s decision:
.
a certificate, or a promise,
- a look or a kiss -
are sealants vulnerable to seasons,
.
jealousies, imaginings, inflections,
a look, often a sigh,
the wayward remark: then a blood spill.
.
I look at lovers whose touch synchronises,
and wonder how they make familiarity
fresh as dawn, without the wound, beyond the hurt.
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ebb & flow of love -
On Breaking Up (Without Breaking)
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