Love blooms when it sees itself returned

I keep looking for love in faces around me; keep looking for it in words not written for me and in paintings where the muse has been another; keep looking for it in footprints that don’t fit my feet and hands that do not adjust to my body’s comfort. I have spent years doing this, months and weeks and days of looking desperately for droplets of love in a world that has been left unfortunately barren, in a world that has evolved its currency but never let go of the barter it started with.

I dedicate the stars to one and the moon to another. I search the comfort of Maa’s lap and of Papa’s hugs, the privilege of breaking apart while a brother stands to hold me together as I rust. I crave the laughs of a group that doesn’t secretly hate each other. I dedicate the streams and the mountains and the wild little yellow flowers, and I dedicate poems and annotated books and ask them to stick on their favourite stars. I remember the lives of people who are a part of their lives. I give unicorns and tell the stories of Atlantis and I dedicate a pinky finger and then my whole palm. I softly hum songs for people so that when they pick up on them, they know they were my muse for that moment. I keep asking–with all the faith that my blood carries–to find a love that is half as deep, half as pure, half as innocent. 

I keep looking for someone who will kiss my scars and pull me back from my goodbyes. I keep looking to not question their intentions anymore, to be known and understood and written down in my language and not in their own. I keep looking for faces that would dedicate the sun and the universe to me, who will hold gentleness to my face like it’s the only decree they could read, who will see my naivety and want to kiss it on the inside of its wrists, who will listen to Rumi and Ghalib as I excitedly recite them. I keep looking for love in women and men and humans and people and babies, as if love is the privilege of humans, as if people are the only ones who have any claims to it. I look for a love that can bleed in the same shade of bright red that mine bleeds. I look for a love that stops, that cries, that drinks away any tear from my skin. I look for a love that turns only to return to me again.

But maybe I’ve spent all these years, months, and weeks looking for it in the wrong places. I know that I will shy away from ever thinking or feeling it again, and even if I do, I might not accept it a hundred percent, but maybe I have been looking for the love outside of me to mimic the one inside me when I should've let the love in me flow through my own veins. Maybe I see the stars twinkle so much because they're twinkling because it is I who really sees them. Maybe the moon shines a little truer when it sees me looking. Maybe the yellow flowers talk about me in whispers because rarely anyone else notices them. Maybe the unicorns have a running commentary on my life because I’m the only crazy adult who knows that they truly exist. Maybe I have the ability to look for love and find love in all these nooks and creeks and niches because love only blooms when it sees its love returned. 

In my pursuit of love of another outside, I think I forgot to notice, that it is I who has kissed my scars and apologised in tears, that I have cried for my pain, carried it in the palm of my bloody hands, that I have been gentle with me when the most difficult thing was to stop my hands from tearing into my skin again. I forget that I have spent the most sleepless nights with myself, lulling me to sleep, shushing away the demons, that I have made sure that I take medicines, that I have cleaned and worshipped this body religiously from the beginning till the end. I forget that I have given myself flowers and stuck them in my braided hair and taken pictures of my twirls as I dress myself up, that I have made sure I’m okay on my worst days, that there is someone to hold me when I break in, break out, break into a million shards of glass that cut right through my exhausted hands and skin. 

It is my love that I have ignored the most, that I have always had but always taken for granted, considered my claim, when love like this can only be one’s privilege. Tell me, do you have the privilege of being loved in the same way by yourself? Do you notice the world and does the world notice you back? My love travels my dusty blue veins, spills the red, and then bandages the scar over and over again without asking any questions. My love stays and holds me as I cry for hours mumbling, she stays as I harm myself and it breaks her too from within. I never understood why I crave a love so deep, so big, so all-encompassing, suffocating, gentle; maybe it is simply because I carry that love within–and love blooms when love sees itself returned.