Sculptor

Dear Sculptor,

Thank you. For being my uncertified guardian. I never quite understood the concept of a cloud with a silver lining. A ray of hope. For me, when something goes wrong, it consumes me. It blurs my vision. I may have changed on the surface over the past few years. But I'm still the same person. When we're holding hands. When I slip them into yours. It's like they've found a place where they belong. And then I look at your hands. So sure and firm. So comfortable with what is and not worried about what will become. I think that pretty much defines us. Not so much as individuals. But more of our places in the friendship we share. You're keeping me together. Placing every little part where it's supposed to be and making sure nothing falls out of place. That I don't fall out of place. Like a sculptor possessive about his sculpture. The crooked, ugly, dejected sculpture that he found abandoned, but now makes it beautiful. And he even thinks that the beauty lay within the sculpture. The sculpture would beg to differ :).

It's you. The one with the magic. It's always been you. You've always managed to capture the beauty in everything that you see. That surrounds you. No matter how asymmetrical, unfit, and shabby it is. You have a beautiful heart. One that turns everything half as beautiful as itself, once it makes place for it inside itself. I'm probably one of those mildly "made beautiful" things by you. I never knew or thought I was anything worth a second look until you told me so many times that I finally looked at my reflection in the mirror for a second longer and almost believed you.

It's like I've transformed slowly since I've known you. I've learnt to be more of me than what somebody else wants me to be. I'd gladly be whatever you wanted me to be but I stopped trying the day I realized that all you really wanted was me. Just as I was. It was oddly unsettling at first. But I came into my own soon enough. And now I can just prop up my legs in an unlady-like way, or eat like a person who hasn't seen food in days. Or pull my hair back and wear clothes that do anything but flatter me and still know that you'll want me the same amount. That you'll still be the happiest to say that I was yours. And yet it doesn't make me want to stop trying for you. It makes me want to tell you every second of every minute of every hour of every day, that I love you. I love you for being so selfless when it came to me.

We never really grow out of being nine year olds. Throughout our lives, somewhere or the other, we're always haunted by the fear of being unwanted. Of being lonely. Of things not going your way. It's only the scales that change. The emotions remain. But I know I can go out and do something and face all of it now because you give me the strength to. You make your presence felt. It's like I can shut my eyes and be assured that everything is right because even if it's really not, you're there. When you tell me something's going to be right. It really is.

I'm so accustomed to knowing you'll be there that it's scary now. What if someday you're not? Funnily that's something I haven't been able to imagine. I can't conceive the very idea of not having you in my life.

You know that patch of shimmering water and the skyline that we see almost everyday? Can you imagine the water without the ever-changing-yet-constant horizon? It would be almost soulless. The sea itself wouldn't know where it should end. Where it's needed for it to stop. Where it would destroy itself. Or even the sky without the sea. A deep, hollow pit. Where you couldn't find anything. Not even yourself. That's how inseparable you are to my existence now. I just thought you should know. The most comforting and wondrous place I have ever known, is in your arms. And it hurts to turn over on my side, in the middle of the night, and not find you there.

I know, I know, this is probably the worst way you've ever seen anybody express themselves. But it's all that came to my mind. And for what it's worth, I really tried my best :).

I love you Saleh. My sweetheart, my sexhay bear, my baby. And I always will.

Your most grateful sculpture.