Love.

Do people our age fall in love?

Or do we outgrow it like we outgrow clothes?

Do we look at comfort and safety and trust and attraction and kindness

And mistake it for love?

Or are these just close enough alternatives

Like vinegar instead of lemon juice and honey instead of sugar?

Does it matter as long as it seems to get the job done?

Things I will never forgive you for

There's a lot you may think I will never forgive you for

But in truth none of them matter

There's one thing and one thing only

That I will never get past

You made the rest of the room disappear

When you walked in and looked at me

For those few moments

It was just you and me

No one else existed

They disappeared into the walls

And since then, no one has looked at me like that

No one has made me feel like the only other person in the room

They barely notice when I am in the room

You showed me what it could be like

And I can never forgive you for it

Love

And as undeserving as you think you are

You do end up getting more than you

Ever thought you would

It just takes a while to realise

Not because they don't love you enough

Because they do

But because it's too good to be true

And you are so damn afraid that

If you accept it, if you embrace it,

If you get used to having so much love in your life

That you would lose it all

That they would leave

But you know they are here to stay because

They don't give up on you

They don't walk away

Just when you think you've lost them like countless others

They take your hand in theirs and

Walk with you

Days like this

And on some days

It is as hard to speak

As it is to place myself

Somewhere in the future

As near as three years

And as far as a decade

On some days

There is no future

And there are no words

There is only the struggle of

Taking it one breath at a time

Love

When I was thirteen, I dismissed the reflection of a gawky kid in the mirror

And told myself that as soon as I turned sixteen

I would be swept off my feet by some boy

When I was fifteen, I told this boy I had a massive crush on that I liked him

And he told me he didn't feel the same way but it didn't matter

Because I stopped liking him a few months later

I turned sixteen and was that an uneventful year

There was no boy who would sweep me off my feet

Not when I was sixteen, not when I was seventeen and not when I was eighteen

But nineteen held a lot of hope and I did get swept off my feet

Only to learn that adult relationships are complicated

And nothing like the fairytales

I nursed my broken heart for the next few years

Slowly realising, or perhaps, slowly accepting that

I would never have this Hollywoodesque romance

Today I had a glimpse of what my future holds

What I would be like when I'm forty or fifty

And it dawned on me that some of us never get their love story

So I will watch as my friends fall in and out of love

I will talk to people I never see again

And I will learn to live with the kind of loneliness some of us take with us to our graves

Panthera

Perhaps I do have a type

This one kind of person I gravitate towards

And then run away from

But if we are being honest

I'm clutching at straws here

You two aren't alike

If only

If only I could throw into the Mahaweli

The memory of you that still haunts me

Perhaps then I would know at least an ounce more happiness

And ounce less loneliness

Than I feel now

"Did you fall in love with me?"

Remember how you asked me this, so casually, over the phone

I told you you already knew the answer to the question

I can't remember how you responded but I've always felt guilty

You told me not to, but I went ahead and did it anyway

Now, I look back at what once was and realise that the blame is to be shared

I fell in love with you because I was an idiot

But I also fell for you because you made me

With your empty promises and sweet nothings

I pictured us falling madly in love with each other

But you, always the smart one, came prepared with armour and parachutes

I didn't see the need for protection so I fell face first

Down and down until I hit the ground

And those wounds, they still bleed

Love is a cliché

To love you

Is to wrap myself in

Barbed wire

And stand so still

I am barely breathing

To be loved by you

Is to be thrown into a pond

Only to realise

It is not a pond

But the raging ocean

To lose you

Is to have each strand of hair

On my body

Plucked off with tweezers

One by one

To leave you

Is to pull the trigger

Not knowing

Which chamber is

Loaded

Nothing changes

And so I turn 27

Nothing changes

Nothing magical happens

When the clock strikes 12

I'm the same fucking person

Living the same fucking life

It's the same fucking loneliness.