Wish I Had Never Met You – A Poem by Rachana

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Of all the habits I have to break, I never thought a person would become one. With you, whatever I resist digs deeper. The weather isn’t helping, and I keep adding more sugar to my chai, as if sweetness could settle the unrest inside.

When I’m not in your company, life seems to be stripped of wonder. That balance is missing, leaving me with vertigo. Wanting you is like having my hands tied behind my back.

You slipped into my life so quietly, the way people do when they’re about to matter too much. For someone I claim I “wish I never met,” you occupy an unreasonable amount of space in the quietest parts of me.

If only I’d never opened that heavy door, if only I’d bent down to pick up something shiny on the ground instead of looking up and watching you pass by.

Now there’s a place in me that answers to your name even when I tell it not to. Just like the way you had once repeated my name like it startled you too.

Some nights I almost convince myself the hurt would be less if you were ordinary or boring. I search your messages for cruelty, anything that would let me push you away.

I don’t hate you. I wish meeting you had been possible earlier, before I knew how to use the word “no”. It’s just that, knowing you unlocked something in me that can never fully open.

You showed me that even the best dressed among us carry the most melancholy. If I hadn’t met you, I wouldn’t have found out my superpower, that I can miss someone I was never allowed to hold close. That even in my solitude, I could be touching you so far away living a separate life.

Yes, my days would have been quieter, but thanks to you, I found that my heart still holds a light. This longing is a reminder that I’m still alive.

So no, I don’t wish I never met you. I just wish I could forget the weight of your long arms across my shoulders and the drop in my chest when I pass the spot where we once stood. I wish I could unlearn how it felt like to be in your presence, you awkward and shy and me the one filling all the silence with words.

I wish I could let you go like that shiny thing off the street, noticeable enough to pause but useless to keep.

The moon keeps watch tonight, and my eyes are full of your reflections. It’s telling me stories of how some loves are meant to be endured, not acted upon.

I can’t pretend it’s love, and I can’t pretend it’s nothing. I’ll have to leave you where I found you, outside my life, inside of me.

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Poetry

Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence. ~ Randall Jarrell