perfecting

Hidden away in a slender plastic miracle of science are three hours of memory-triggers.

There is a khushboo everywhere: Plants exhaling thick, sweetly languid scents riding on carbondioxide to noone in particular in the airless still of the summer night. I know I have held my breath to make space for you, for the way you fit the puzzle so perfectly.

Childhood is pulling away the way a child's tight grasp on a hand is loosened finger by finger, and then let go.

Irony is in small things. It is in the pain of accessibility, signifying healing, and coming of age. It is in my reflection wearing rockstar sunglasses that Ali hates as my face dips into depressions and contours that never came when I waited for them and are here when I don't care. It is in the smell of Bvlgari in the guest room downstairs. It is in the way I still bend over backwards, eager to please, in the way I let you expose me as the weaker one. It is in surrender, in maturity and compromise, in a smile that understands everything, and yet moves on whole.