"I love you."

I read on my phone screen.

That girl.

The one from my homeland.

The one with a nose ring, choppy bangs, and dusky skin.

I feel like the abandoned shed she once described.

The monsoon has passed, yet she remains beneath the shed.

Her box of implements by her side.
She’s restoring the shed.

Reviving its beauty with her adept hands.

She speaks to it, while her hands instinctively work to heal the shed.

She shares her own anguish.

Her own sorrow.

Her own sickness.

Her own depression.

The shed absorbs it all.

Absorbs all her words, and sorrows for itself, to leave her void of any pain that clouds her honey-hued face.

Her hands stop. Suddenly, she’s no longer mending the shed.

As if the weight of her own sorrows has become too much to bear, and she must use her hands to heal herself now.

But the instruments don’t stop.

Her implements continue repairing the shed, as if fueled by her own pain.

She apologizes.

For not being able to fix the shed anymore, because of her own suffering.

But it’s already mended?

There’s another storm.

This one is for her, because the monsoon for the shed has already ended.

This storm is her compounded pain.

Yet she remains beneath the shed.

A fixed, sturdy shed.

She apologizes again.

But she doesn’t realize.

If it could keep her sheltered forever, and provide refuge for her, it would.

She was the only one who noticed that abandoned shed, and chose to restore it herself.

No one else has the right to the shed now but her.

So she remains under the shed.

Her words and cries now stilled, and they both wait.

They wait together for their spring.

For brighter days.

For blossoms.

For the sun.

And for their happiness.

~Yusra