It’s 9 am on this misty Thursday morning and I feel like standing out in the balcony, licking tiny spoonsful of chilled white cream. Because sometimes the cold just calls for something colder like that little katori of fresh cream and sugar I would eat as a 5-year-old sitting by the kitchen window at the old wooden table with the powder blue top. I can still feel its creamy richness first land gently on the tip of my tongue and then fill the insides of my mouth in a thick swirl. Cool, sweet, smooth, just like life is these days. Just like the way you make me feel inside.

When you lie in bed napping as I hunch over the keyboard writing something just for us, because you ask me to, because you say that you thirst for my words, just because… Then you wake up all rested and hungry and ask me to fix you a plate even if it’s just leftovers. I watch you eat the thick yellow dal, pearly white rice, and spicy fried bhindi, and you do it with your eyes closed. I wish I could feed you leftovers forever.

When my phone lights up with a text from you and all it says is one word. Just the one. When you step out of that crowded stadium to call and check if I’m okay or have I been feeling low? I ask you what the noise is all about and we both burst into loud guffaws when you tell me the name of that lame song that’s blaring over the loudspeakers. Then you tell me who’s playing and what the score is and I demand to know when that package from you is arriving.

When you send me the link to that website because you’re sure that I will love it and I reply saying that I don’t think it’s for me but you shoot back with ‘My love, it’s so much more than that.’ When you know that something’s bothering me and you first text asking if I want to talk and I say no because there’s no point in talking about things that do not deserve our attention and you reply saying so what, we can talk without a reason too. That is when I hate the phone the most and not to mention the 50 odd kilometres and other mundane things like living situations and jobs separating us at the moment.

When I’m on my way to see you and the journey seems long and hard but in reality it takes only 45 minutes and I’m thinking about demanding a hug as soon as I see you and then decide against it because I should get it only if I deserve it and then I do because it’s what we do best – hug.

When I fit into the memory foam of your body as you scoop me into your arms and let go only when you’re ready and not before, and definitely not before first digging your face into my neck and lingering for a while before lifting your head up and planting that first kiss on my cheek.

When you put your arm around my waist and guide me to that big chair and ask me to sit beside you as I eat my boiled eggs and butter and you look at me with your eyes dancing wildly like that beautiful brown dog who greets us as when we walk out together on our way to breakfast, me in a lime green tee and my favourite jeans and you in that colour and scent that I love so much on you, after a night of holding each other tight and smiling as the sun begins to filter in through the bright-hued curtains in the room that knows us even better than we know ourselves.

When one look from across the room is all I need to know that it’s time for us to sneak out, away from the others into our own delicious little world of smoky honey-hued memories, and the intoxication comes just from the way your face feels against my thighs.

It’s 9:40 now and the mist has only gotten denser and the sun feels like a distant memory. But I enjoy this freaky weather just the way I revel in the thought of us and how we first met without precedence or after-thought like two autumn leaves lying next to each other on a bench with chipped blue paint, and how we keep coming back to each other over the years and over the lines that creep across our palms and lives. Some call it destiny but that living breathing space inside my gut tells me it’s so much more than that – it is choice. 

The choice to break free from thoughts that try to chain us to things like pre-ordained accidents of fate and machinations of the universe, and know that we are above and beyond that. That we are together because of the choice that we made. And that’s all it will ever be. From the day we first chose to commune with the seat of our souls to the time we decided to walk away and then meet again and again and again. That is choice. And it's what I would choose over anything else that takes away from me the power of making this choice. I chose to coat my insides with the texture of your being just the way I first chose that delicious bowl of chilled sweet cream.