Twenty-four hours. I have sailed on a raft of emptiness through a vacuum consisting of measured time that swung like a pendulum between endlessness and eternity. I’ve never been to the bottom of the ocean but in my mind I go often. The cool stillness, the deep dark black of the blue. The soundless silence. That ocean is inside me as much as I am inside of it. Here, there are no tears and no sound of crying. Here there is just saltwater and where the ghostly moans of despair go to die.

Intermittently, you came to me. In my hallucination, in my broken daze and stupor I asked you to take me to the Qutub Minar. It’s the one place I wanted to share with you and never did. What will it prove to plant memories in dead soil now? Only that nothing can grow here again. Like this earth, you too are hard and impermeable. I could break you with a plough but that is not the way I know love.

Why do I care what you think of me? It’s only best you think I’ve moved on. And if you believe I am in love again, it’s just what I need to pull myself together. You never would compete. You would have walked away. Like you walked away anyway. How does it matter? It does because you do. I only wish I did.