Colour Your Way Back To Me

A powerfully poetic bit of prose by the talented Saira Rashid Khan

The darkness crawled in as you closed the door to our bedroom. The only light shining in was the moon leaking through the curtains. We had just signed the contracts of forever blindly; you hardly knew my second name, I hardly knew yours. I creased my skin, folding inwards like that of a sunflower when there’s no longer sun, as though the closing of the door meant being swallowed by a black hole, unaware of what’s to come or if there even is fertile ground to sustain life.

You, interrupting my thought, trailed your hand on my hip before turning me to the sight of your bare chest, your other hand angling my face upwards to where my eye-line held yours. This didn’t feel like lust—fifteen billion light years far from it. Our lips leaped the silence, imprinting their ipseity between the cracks.

I could taste your heart sailing your tongue. Wounded as I am, the maze of your taste buds tells me you bite the insides of your cheeks when you’re stressed. Your arm, swathing my thighs over your pelvic bones, whispers that you’re a bare soul. The space in unwinding your lips from mine tells me we’re of the same being, as if we have been split apart, similar to when the Big Bang exploded its flesh, expanding in all directions. You went north; I, south—perhaps you, west; me, east.

We have trailed our way back into the dark once more, fusing our flesh to form a star. And if we ever fall, it’ll be the shooting star to bear somebody else’s wish.