Letters I Should Have Sent You Last Year

by Akanksha Sinha

4/29/20

i want to go back to that specific moment on the couches. the night after the one where we first kissed. after running around being a mom to your friends, just to see you shaking your head at me in surprise and happiness and awe, and finally ending the night in the dim lights on those couches where you and i were hooked together like chains in a necklace. your head in my lap, me playing with your hair, my head on your chest (where i first discovered your hummingbird heartbeat – it made sense, you’re so fast-paced), you holding my hand as I told you about someone who caused me pain, you loving me and giving me comfort even as I trembled, you expressing your disbelief at what i had to go through. you walking me back, making me have the courage to kiss you, you leaving after a ridiculous number of minutes spent just kissing softly outside my door because you knew if you stayed any longer you’d be there until dawn, or later, or forever. i want to trace shapes and stories and songs through your curls again. 

i told myself i felt little, that my feelings weren’t serious, that this was just a placeholder for my heart, but somewhere down the line i was denying myself the truth. that really, in my mind, you and i were seated next to each other at 6am in an empty bus, knees bumping sparks flying, just on our second date; except every day, all the time. you said ‘love you’ and although i called u love, mi amor, i’d never say it back to you. i don’t know if there’ll be a day when the fear of something so seemingly simple will be gone. but i do miss you. and in my mind, i want to be back on the couches, and i want to open up my heart to you completely, the way you did with me. i want to tell you everything that’s going wrong and everything that’s going right and all the little secrets i keep nestled beneath my tongue – everything. i want to share everything. back on those couches, your head on my lap, listening to your 

hummingbird heart.

9/24/20

I’m sitting by your side, listening to you, watching you play with your hair, remembering the patterns in which you move your hands, reliving the ways your hands have held me. You talk to me and just as the words flow through my mind, so does your voice wash over my ribcage. I wonder if you can hear the pounding of my heart. You feel changed; grounded somehow, centered, secure, safer. What was lightning striking the open sea is now vibrations so powerful that it singlehandedly creates currents in my world. I wonder if you can see my fingers trembling ever so slightly, if you notice the number of times I anxiously play with my hair. I chide myself for wondering so much, getting lost in my brain, when you, you, you’re right here in front of me, just an arm’s length away. I spend the next three hours right there. Suddenly, for once in my life, I am not living in my head but I am living in these moments with you, laughing with you, sharing with you, existing with you. The ground beneath my feet has never felt this real. You feel different. I think about the last time I read my poetry to you. I think about how it’ll feel to read to you the things I wrote about you since I last saw you. I leave and the touch of your skin, the tightness of your embrace, they linger on me like holy glow. At once I am elevated and yet anchored. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by just how you do that to me. Do you feel it too? I am a kite in deep blue night skies, fluttering, buffeted, nervous, curious, and yet perfectly at home.