OD

You give me an injection of care, a dose just big enough to last a day. But like any other drug, the one you are giving me can be unsafe. You give too much sometimes, deliberately or not; you overdose me. “You sleep babe. I arrived safe,” my phone is beeping through the wall of mosquito netting. I can’t sleep. My mind is high on you, and this overdose gives me cravings. I’m dreading the withdrawal that is looming from around the corner. I’d rather not have any, than have so much and lose it all. And then an old saying comes to mind. “Don’t think about it being over. Be happy while it lasts.”

Image credit: Eliara

How do you start a story that never ends

If only I could tell you the truth, I’d tell you how much I miss you. I’d tell you how much it hurts to suppress that thought. I’d tell you how my chest is about to explode all too often from the tension within. I’d tell you how I eat on the go and work late hours, till I pass out of fatigue, not allotting my mind a single free minute to think of us. I’d tell you how understanding of our work and the future we are trying to build, not for ourselves but for others, prevents me from ever letting myself anything but a quick gentle thought of you. It passes like a light breeze on a hot afternoon, that thought, tickling my forehead one minute, gone and forgotten under the unbearable sun a minute later.

I miss you, my friend. I don’t regret making the mistakes I have made. I don’t regret taking the path I have taken. You warned me it would be hard, and sometimes it drains me of ability to feel. But even in my weak moments, you insist on showing me the way. And so I keep walking. Never toward you, always side by side. Always toward the same goal that is so much bigger than us.

Image credit: m0thyyku