Friends for a while

There are three pages missing in the book she gave me. The shark tooth remnants of those pages are sharp and rigid - like wine stains that don't wash off the white shirt she gifted me. Both of these gifts, now they make me think of us. Days we spent in the chaos of togetherness, days when we let go of the ache of yesterday, days we couldn't tie together with the string lights, days we spent soothing each other's heartbeats.

Our aisle of memory was stained, like the shirt. Sturdy tea stains in our tea set, coffee marks on table cloths, wine stains on our fuzzy carpet, mismatched stitches on a broken heart, lead marks on greeting cards, footprints on cement. You name it, we had it all. 
But we never whitewashed our walls, never dry cleaned our dirty laundry. Every now and then, we would bring in new friends and take out brand new tea sets, and let them add colors to our walls not to cover our stains but to envelope them enough to keep us sane. Our bridges were woven with such certainty, we believed nothing would cut through it. And now each time a new friend chose to cross the river, a plank or two came off. But we were too deeply in love to notice. The bridge wobbled and swayed every once in a while, but it was nothing compared to the waves we let out. 
On every visit, we bring each other new shirts in bright colors and hand them over to one another with blinding smiles. We hold each other for moments too long. Our tongues collide and we come out gasping for air. We hear our heartbeats in our fingertips and stay close until it has settled. But when we say our goodbyes, it's as if none of it ever happened.

Now we live in a house that's too colorful and bright for our own liking, and wear stained shirts and call every day a Halloween party. One week every year, we see each other in our bare skin and not let a second pass by without touching each other. We taste with our hands, our fingers, our skin and retrace all shark tooth edges and stains as if they are one of us. 

#tb #stains #teasets #words#pokhara #bringmehome #friends