There is no quick fix for a person that has engraved a name so deeply in her heart.

People speak of moving on, healing, covering up the wounds, finding replacements, joy in quick fixes as if the heart was a cracked screen to be fixed within an hour,

As if love were a habit that we can outgrow and let go with discipline. 

So, I tried. 

I tried all routines, all schemes, all heavy workloads to distract myself from loving you,

From remembering you but I miserably failed.

I come back to the turning point and it’s always you. 

God knows how I tried to forget you,

But, strongly you return back in my consciousness. 

I tried to hold the hands of the strangers, 

I tried to feel their gentle strokes, tenderness of the touch but I felt nothing – they were empty. 

I tried to look deep into their eyes but felt nothing- they were emptied souls. 

Even there, I tried to search you in them, in their gaze, in their smiles, their gentle strokes. 

Nothing was there! 

Emptied hearts!

So I left their hands. 

Incomplete – untouched – unbinding. 

I told them about you. 

The entire town knows about you. 

You were the fatal connection I never could escape from my mind. 

Every tenderness became a comparison.

Every smile failed against yours.

Every conversation died midway

because my heart kept searching

for your ruin inside them.

My heart kept mirroring your face in them. 

And, that is the tragedy no one warns about—

Sometimes you love so deeply that every other person fades in front of their shadows. 

Sometimes you want somebody so earnestly that every other picture gets blurred.

I tried distractions.

Late night drives.

Poems.

Crowded rooms.

New beginnings dressed as salvation.

But, only you were my redemption. 

Yet every road curved back to you

like grief returning to its own altar.

People say,

“You will find someone better.”

But, love is not archeology or software,

A heart does not replace itself

through upgrades.

You were not my preference.

You became my permanence,

Through losses,

Through grievances. 

Now I carry you

like an old wound beneath silk—

invisible to everyone,

bleeding through everything.

And, perhaps that is my punishment:

My fate to live long enough to meet hundreds of faces, yet never again feel the terrifying familiarity of home, 

My sweet love.

I will always crave the hands that used to push me through the swings. 

I used to fly higher because I knew who held my back- my playmate, my lost companion. 

©® Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy 

Timeframe: 3 am, Tagar