How do I love?
By Priyanka Aravind

I want to love someone

the way one steps into water—

not to swim,

but to stop being land.

To forget the weight

of my own name,

the rooms of thought

I keep returning to,

the echo of myself answering me.

Love, could be a door left ajar—

a place where the edges loosen,

where I am held so completely

I need not hold myself up.

It is not the yang I want,

not really,

but the silence that might arrive

when I lean into another breathing body

and become, for a moment,

a different continent.

Priyanka Aravind P is a full time Research Scholar at the Department of English, St.Thomas’ College (Autonomous), Thrissur. She is interested in the areas of Culture Studies, Kerala modernity and oral traditions. She is also a newly published poet and translator.