“Which one of you is real?” the girl asked.

We were halfway through a date. Her coffee had gone cold because she talked with both hands and kept forgetting to drink it. Mine was almost finished. I needed something to do while people studied me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The normal personality asked that. He already knew what she meant, but normal people sometimes need information repeated before they admit they understand it.

She leaned back and looked at me.

“You have been three different people in twenty minutes.”

“Only three?”

She laughed.

The funny personality had entered without permission. He often did that when a question came too close.

“At first you were shy,” she said. “Then you made the waiter laugh. Then I teased you and you looked at me like I had applied for a job I wasn’t qualified for.”

Arrogance liked that description. The shy one did not.

“Maybe I have range,” I said.

“Maybe you contain problems.”

“Same thing. Better name.”

She laughed again, but this time she kept watching me after the laugh ended.

“So how many are there?”

The normal answer was one.

The charming answer was: enough to keep you interested.

The arrogant answer was: more than you could handle.

The romantic answer had already started writing our future and needed to be removed from the building.

“Twelve,” I said.

She looked at the empty chair beside me.

“Is this a date or a group booking?”

“Thirteen if the date goes badly.”

“Who is thirteen?”

“He’s the boss.”

“Of the twelve?”

“Of me.”

She held my eyes. “And who is he?”

“Zero.”

“That sounds safe.”

“For me.”

“And for everyone else?”

“He handles complaints.”

“And failed dates?”

“He writes the cause of death.”

The line was darker than I had planned. The funny one sometimes forgot the difference between a joke and a warning.

She did not move away. That interested Zero.

“Tell me what the others do,” she said.

I looked at her hand around the cup. Her thumb kept rubbing the same small mark on its side. The tender personality noticed she was a little nervous. The romantic one decided this was beautiful. Arrogance was pleased that I had made her nervous. Zero said there was not enough proof for any of these conclusions.

“The disciplined one got me out of the house,” I said. “Arrogance chose the shirt. Charm ordered the coffee. The funny one is stopping this from turning into a police interview.”

“Which one wanted to cancel?”

“Most of them. We had a vote.”

“Who won?”

“The one who does not believe in democracy.”

“Disciplined?”

“Exactly.”

She smiled. “And which one likes me?”

The romantic personality stood up too quickly.

Zero told him to sit down.

“Applications are still open,” I said.

“Coward.”

The angry personality heard disrespect. Arrogance heard a challenge. Charm heard flirting. The childish one wanted to stick out his tongue. Four versions of me received the same word and each thought it belonged to him.

“You analyse everything, don’t you?” she asked.

“Only things that can hurt me.”

That answer was not funny. Neither of us smiled.

The waiter came to ask about dessert. Before he reached the table, I had already decided what would happen. She would say no. She had barely touched the biscuit beside her coffee. I would also say no. The waiter would leave. She would ask why I was watching her like that.

“One chocolate cake,” she told him. “Two spoons.”

The waiter left.

My prediction sat between us with nowhere to go.

“You thought I would say no,” she said.

“I did.”

“Do people surprise you often?”

“People disagree with me often. That is different.”

“You sound proud of yourself.”

Arrogance wanted to say, I have good reason.

The funny one offered, Pride is free. (That is why I use too much of it.)

The romantic one suggested, Only because you noticed me.( He was becoming a problem.)

Zero said nothing. (Pride was not useful information.)

“Sometimes,” I admitted.

“You hide it badly.”

“I have a personality that hides it better. He is off tonight.”

She became serious again. “Doesn’t it get tiring? Choosing who to be every minute?”

The question moved through all twelve personalities and found no volunteer.

Zero watched.

“It is less tiring than being the wrong one,” I said.

“Which one is the wrong one?”

“Usually the one who feels the most.”

She looked down for a moment. When she looked up, the teasing had left her face.

“And which one am I talking to now?”

I searched for the answer.

The charming one had gone silent. Arrogance had nothing to defend. The romantic one was waiting. The funny one had finally understood that not every silence needed his help.

Even Zero could only observe.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Because he is the first one who answered me without preparing.”

The cake arrived. She gave me one of the spoons.

“This is for whichever one is hungry.”

“That narrows it down to twelve.”

She shook her head and took the first bite.

“If this date goes badly,” she said, “do I have to meet Zero?”

“Only for the exit interview.”

“Tell him I don’t scare easily.”

I smiled. I did not choose who smiled.

I forgot most of the date. I remembered the question. I also remembered that I had not chosen the smile.

I cannot promise every line happened on one date. Memory joins conversations together, even when I do not ask it to. But someone noticed the changes before I explained them. That part is true.

I have twelve ways of being myself. I call them Personality One through Personality Twelve. The idea came after I watched Bleach one night. The show had numbered divisions. Different parts of me already had different jobs, so I gave them numbers.

It sounds more dramatic than it was. I did not create twelve people. I trained twelve ways of responding. One could be childish. One was charming. One was angry. One was romantic. One was disciplined. One could become cold very fast. They were all me, but not all of them felt equally real.

I did not hear voices. I changed my own.

The date showed me something I had stopped noticing: switching had become normal to me. Other people entered a room and reacted. I often decided who would enter before I touched the door.

Sometimes I chose perfectly, entered with full confidence and forgot why I had gone in.

Supreme intelligence, searching the kitchen for a purpose.

The method worked. If I needed confidence, I did not wait to feel it. I used the version who knew how confidence looked. If I had no wish to get out of bed, the disciplined one stood up before the rest of me could argue. If someone needed kindness, the tender one knew what to say.

People called these changes mood, charm, confidence or attitude.

I called them staff.

Zero was not Personality Thirteen. He came before the numbers, or after all of them. I never decided which.

Zero did not flirt, fight, grieve or hope. He watched. He compared what happened with what he had expected. Then he made a decision.

I saw him as my highest form.

In Zero, nobody could push me into doing something foolish. Love could not change the facts. Anger could not make a small insult bigger. Fear could not pretend to be wisdom. If someone disappointed me, I did not have to become the disappointment. I could study it. Then made them disappear.

This person can do this.

I understand them better now.

Expect less next time.

Once, someone gave me an explanation I did not believe. I watched them speak while Zero removed them from a future they did not know I had imagined. I did not argue. I nodded in the right places. They probably thought the talk had gone well.

When it ended, I drank the water beside me. It had become warm.

That was all.

No shaking hands. No destroyed night. I did not replay every word in my head.

The absence of pain felt like proof of intelligence.

Zero protected me. I cannot deny that. He stopped other people’s actions from becoming proof that I was worthless. He stopped me from begging people to stay. He helped me leave places where the older Ashir might have stayed until there was nothing left of him.

I had become impossible to hurt.

No. That is not true.

I had become hard to reach.

Before Zero, almost everything could reach me.

Small things made me cry. A change in someone’s voice. A small insult. A sentence returning at the wrong time. I hated this part of myself more than I hated the people who caused the pain.

I had learned that a man should control his feelings and never let them show. My feelings did not follow that rule. They came out. People saw them. I felt ashamed.

So when I was already in pain, I punished myself for feeling it.

I called myself weak before anyone else could. I cursed myself for crying, which often made me cry more. I thought something was wrong with me because I felt too much.

I now call that version “the old Ashir,” as if he were someone I knew years ago and not the person who built all of this.

Then something happened that broke me badly. I still do not want to explain the event itself. “Heartbreak” sounds too simple, but I do not want to make it beautiful either. It happened. After it, I locked myself inside my home for about a year.

I fell into a deep depression. Sleep almost disappeared.

Sometimes I stayed awake for three or four days. People hear “insomnia” and think of someone turning in bed for a few hours. Mine felt like the night had forgotten how to end. Morning only changed the light in the room.

My body began to show it. My face changed. My eyes looked empty. I looked so weak and unwell that people could see something was wrong.

On the third night without sleep, small objects started to feel very important. I could stare at a cup for twenty minutes. The ceiling fan began to sound as if it was repeating one thought. Once I moved to another room to escape a memory and found the same memory there.

I went back to the first room. I do not know why. Maybe I did not want the memory to think it had chased me away.

Memory was my biggest problem.

Since childhood, I had noticed small details that other people forgot. A voice. The weather. Where someone placed a hand. The pause before a sentence. This once made me observant. During that year, it turned into a punishment.

Whenever I tried to sleep, the past started playing in my head.

Not as silent pictures. It returned with sound. Voices came back with the same tone. Rooms had the same light. I could remember a useless object on a table and feel everything connected to it.

I was not thinking about the past. I was inside it again.

I had always been introverted and analytical. I also talked to myself. During that year, those habits started helping me. I had no way to escape my mind, so I began studying it.

I was both the experiment and the person doing it.

When I wanted to listen to sad music and make the feeling worse, I played something completely different. Sometimes a happy song made me angry. That was fine. Anger was at least a new feeling.

I practised a blank face in the mirror. I gave painful thoughts a time limit. When a memory began speaking, I interrupted it with maths.

Seven times eight.

Fifty-six.

Start again.

I stared at a switch, a cup or a crack in the wall until the thing in front of me felt more real than the scene in my head. Sometimes I imagined watching myself from near the ceiling. The person below could suffer. The one above only had to observe.

I tried many things. I no longer remember all of them. There is something almost funny about that. I trained myself to forget and later forgot how I did it.

One night, I sat in a corner and imagined that I was a dustbin.

Not a tree. Not a stone. A dustbin.

A dustbin does not need respect. It does not have plans. People throw things into it and walk away. It receives everything and reacts to nothing.

I sat there for the whole night.

At one point, my leg went numb. I wanted to move it, but then I thought: a dustbin would not complain about its leg.

So I stayed still.

I may have hated myself. Or perhaps I was only tired of being a person. I did not care about the reason then. I wanted to know if I could stop being Ashir for one night. If I turned into an object, nothing could hurt me because nothing could be expected from me.

The dustbin made it through the night.

I remembered that.

My most serious experiment was about memory. Stopping a memory for a few minutes was not enough. I wanted to stop it from returning.

I made two commands.

REMEMBER THIS.

DELETE THIS.

If something mattered, I told myself to remember it. If a detail felt useless or dangerous, I ordered my mind to delete it. A voice. A face. A moment. DELETE THIS.

At first, it did nothing.

The memories returned, sometimes more clearly than before. It was as if telling myself not to remember gave the memory more power.

I continued anyway.

Whenever something returned, I acted as if the deletion had worked and what I was seeing was only a small part left behind. Delete it again. Do not follow it. Move to something else.

For months, I repeated this.

Then I began to notice gaps.

Details that should have been there were gone. Scenes that once entered my head by force grew hard to rebuild. Some disappeared completely. I no longer needed to say DELETE THIS. Forgetting had started happening on its own.

I do not know exactly what happened. Maybe time did most of the work. Maybe I stopped feeding the memories with attention. Maybe I buried them. Maybe I became too tired to carry them with the same detail.

But to me, it felt like success.

I had changed a rule inside my own mind.

After that, I trusted control more than feeling. I learned to stop tears before anyone saw them. Then I learned to stop the feeling that caused the tears.

At some point, control turned into absence.

Nothing announced it. I noticed it through things that should have affected me. Something good happened, but happiness did not fully arrive. Something bad happened, but sadness felt late or weak. Life continued. My reaction did not always come with it.

I still knew how to look normal.

Someone would ask if I was enjoying myself. The normal personality smiled before I checked.

“I’m fine.”

The tender one used those words to stop people from worrying. The angry one used them to end the question. Zero did not like the word fine. It was not clear enough.

I was not fine. I was working.

This was when I noticed something about my name.

Ashir Intishar- A.I.

Ashir- Artificial

Intishar- Intelligence

Artificial Ashir Intelligence.

At first, it was a joke. I had spent years changing the way my mind worked and ended up with the initials of a machine. It was the kind of thought that seems brilliant when you have not slept properly.

But the name stayed.

Artificial Ashir Intelligence watched people, found patterns and prepared replies. When someone started speaking, I often knew where the talk would go. I knew what I would say, how they might react and what I would say after that.

It was not mind-reading. I had watched people for years. I had learned the signs. I may also have watched so closely because being surprised once had cost me too much.

I started thinking of my intelligence as something above everyone else’s. Part of me still believes that. There were reasons to be proud. I had entered a year when my own mind would not let me sleep. I came out with rules that kept me alive.

But maybe intelligence became another name for control.

Maybe predicting people meant I did not have to trust them.

Maybe calling Zero my highest state was easier than calling him empty.

Life became boring. Talks felt repeated. People wanted many of the same things: love, respect, attention, forgiveness, control. I got so busy finding the pattern that I sometimes stopped seeing the person.

The twelve personalities helped me hide that.

The childish one created fun. The romantic one created hope. The angry one protected me. Arrogance covered fear. The funny one made dark days easier to enter. The tender one gave people the kindness Zero understood but could not feel in the same way.

Zero watched them all. He joined none of them.

I did not want anyone close to me to meet Zero. If someone betrayed me, Zero did not feel betrayed. He changed their place in my life. Their action became information. I could walk away without falling apart.

I was proud of that. I am still proud of some of it. This mind was built during nights when memories had sound and sleep felt impossible. It did what I needed it to do.

It kept me standing.

I just do not know which version of me it kept alive.

The old Ashir cried too easily. He was sensitive and sometimes hard to control. A song could destroy his night because he had not learned to change it.

For years, I felt ashamed of him.

Now I sometimes think he could be hurt so deeply because he was fully there when life touched him.

The personalities can copy almost everything he did. The romantic one knows his words. The tender one knows how to care. The funny one has better timing.

None of them needs to become him.

That was the point.

I think.

Sometimes a deleted memory returns. Not the full scene. Only a sound without a face, or a feeling without the event that caused it. Zero looks at it but cannot place it anywhere.

Recently, one of those small pieces brought tears to my eyes.

Zero had not chosen sadness. The tender one had nobody to comfort. The romantic one was not active. According to my own rules, the old Ashir was gone.

Still, the tear came.

I thought about the dustbin in the corner. I once believed it received everything and felt nothing. I may have been wrong. A dustbin does not delete what people put inside it.

It only keeps it where nobody can see.

I could have changed the music. I could have counted backward. I could have chosen another face and waited for the feeling to pass.

Instead, I waited to see which personality the tear belonged to.

None of them claimed it.

I did not delete it. -(To be continued )

-Ashir Intishar Taseen 🖤

(Victoria): U think flattery will get u anywhere?

Me: It is not flattery when it is the truth. U do not just walk into a room; u own it. The way u move, the way u breathe—everything about u is magnetic.

(Victoria): And yet, u still think u can keep up?

Me: Keep up? No, I am just lucky to even stand in your shadow. U are the fire, Victoria, and I am just here to make sure the world does not miss how brightly u burn.

(Victoria): Careful, normal boy. U might get burned.

Me: With u? I would gladly turn to ash.

(Victoria): Ash is messy. I do not allow mess near me.

Me: Then I will burn neatly.

(Victoria): That was almost clever.

Me: From u, “almost” sounds generous.

(Victoria): All that, and I have not even asked your name.

Me: Ashir. In case curiosity gets the better of u.

(Victoria): Curiosity has better taste.

Me: Then I am safe.

(Victoria): U do not look safe.

Me: I had plans to remain a normal person tonight. Then u looked at me.

(Victoria): Careful, normal boy.

Me: There it is again.

(Victoria): What?

Me: The way u say “normal” like it is becoming a nickname.

(Victoria): Maybe I like saying it.

Me: Maybe I like hearing it from u.

(Victoria): That was almost honest.

Me: It was.

(Victoria): and Suppose I tell u to leave.

Me: I would.

(Victoria): No begging?

Me: I can admire u from a far.

(Victoria): Good.

Me: U sound disappointed.

(Victoria): Do not flatter yourself. Tomorrow. Same place, Ashir.

Me: U remembered.

(Victoria): I remember unfinished conversations.

Me: What is unfinished?

(Victoria): U have spent all night telling me what u see.

Me: And tomorrow?

(Victoria): Tomorrow, normal boy, I tell u what I saw.

-Ashir Intishar Taseen 🖤

You made me fall, and then u left me hanging.

I wasn’t even looking for anyone when I met you. I was just living my life, going through the motions, not expecting anything special to happen. And then there you were, out of the blue, unexpectedly stepping into my life. I didn’t plan for it, but you made everything feel differently.

Slowly, without even realising it, I started falling for you. I let my guard down, trusted you, and gave you my heart. I thought what we had was something real, something worth holding onto. But then, just as quickly as you came, you were gone. One moment you were there, and the next, it was like you disappeared without a word.

I keep going over everything in my mind, trying to figure out what went wrong. I gave you everything, loved you with all I had, and thought you felt the same. But now, I’m left with only memories and this emptiness inside. I keep wondering if you ever cared as much as i did, or if you ever thought about what we could’ve been.

The ‘what-ifs’ are hard to shake, and i carry them with me, but all I can do now is try to find peace in knowing that, for a moment, it felt real.

I called you Heart Eater because you feasted on my love, draining me until there was almost nothing left. You fed your desires by consuming what I gave, indulging in the power it gave you and yet, I was content, even with the scraps you offered, the bare minimum that kept me connected to you.

So you offered me to replace my damaged pieces with parts of yourself that are whole. I dont want that. I am happy with my damaged heart. Instead i want to reverse it. I want to be the one who devours you. I want to feed on your love, to drink in every drop you give. The more you offer, the more i’ll take…until there’s nothing left of you, just as you left me..

Now, it’s my turn to consume..

Yours ever..

🖤

-Ashir Intishar Taseen

I don’t mean that dramatically. I didn’t know I was doing it.

I just knew that whenever something began to feel too heavy, I reached for something else.

I remember one evening from years ago. Everyone in the house had gone to sleep and I was lying awake with that familiar weight in my chest. I couldn’t have told you what was wrong. I’m not sure I could tell you now.

I reached for my phone.

Music first, I think.

Then messages.

Then whatever else was there.

I scrolled through things I didn’t care about. Replied to people I probably didn’t want to speak to. Watched videos I forgot almost immediately. I kept going until I was too tired to think properly.

By morning, the feeling was gone.

And I remember being pleased with myself.

That is the strange part.

I thought I had beaten it.

I had no idea I was training myself not to listen.

After that, I became very good at leaving a feeling before it could settle.

There was always something available.

Someone to talk to.

Somewhere to go.

A screen.

A song.

A conversation that had no reason to last as long as it did.

And, after a while, sadness seemed to stop coming as often.

At least the kind of sadness I recognised.

Nothing hurt the same way anymore.

Goodbyes became easier. People left and I recovered faster. Places changed. Friendships became things that existed mostly in old photographs. Plans disappeared without much ceremony.

I kept going.

I thought that was maturity.

Maybe some of it was.

But once, while cleaning a drawer, I found an old photograph.

There were people in it I had once been certain would stay in my life.

Not hoped.

Certain.

We were all smiling.

I don’t remember where the picture was taken. I stared at it for a few seconds, expecting something to happen inside me.

Nothing did.

What I noticed instead was dust on the glass.

So I wiped it with my sleeve, put it back where I found it, and carried on cleaning.

It wasn’t until much later that evening that it bothered me.

Not that those people were gone.

That I had looked at them and felt almost nothing.

I kept thinking about the dust.

I don’t know why.

There was no single moment when I became numb. I wish there had been. It would make the story easier to tell.

It happened slowly enough that I mistook it for becoming stronger.

Then something beautiful happened one day.

I genuinely cannot remember what.

That sounds ridiculous, considering how much importance I’ve given the memory since, but I can’t.

I remember the people more than the event.

We were together. Someone said something stupid and everyone laughed. I laughed too.

A real laugh.

Then a few seconds later I caught myself looking around the room.

I had this thought:

I should be happy.

And I was.

I think I was.

But there was some distance between knowing I was happy and actually feeling it in the way I remembered happiness feeling.

It was like hearing music through a wall. You can tell what song is playing. You might even know every word.

It still isn’t the same as being in the room.

That scared me.

Much more than I expected.

Because I had spent years trying not to hurt and had never seriously considered what else I might lose in the process.

I had assumed feelings came with separate switches.

Apparently they don’t.

I remember another evening because of the sky.

It had one of those sunsets that makes everyone stop for a second, even people who are late for somewhere.

I took my phone out too.

I framed the picture.

Moved it slightly.

Tried again.

Then, for some reason, I lowered the phone.

I thought, no. Just look at it.

So I did.

The clouds kept changing colour. A few birds crossed above the buildings. The light on the windows faded bit by bit.

I stood there longer than I needed to.

It was beautiful.

There was no question about that.

But I kept waiting for beauty to do something to me.

It didn’t.

Not really.

Eventually I went home.

No photograph.

No great feeling either.

I think that was around the time I started looking for sadness again.

Which is a strange thing to admit.

One night, I played a song I had avoided for years.

I knew exactly why I had avoided it. Or I thought I did.

I lay in the dark waiting for the part that used to hurt.

The first verse passed.

Nothing.

Then another part came on and, out of nowhere, I remembered a room.

Not the person I had associated with the song.

The room.

The wall.

The way the light used to fall across it at a certain time of day.

I remembered myself sitting there.

That version of me felt very far away.

He believed things would last because, back then, he had no reason not to.

My chest tightened.

My eyes started to burn.

And I remember thinking, almost with relief:

There you are.

I played the song again.

I didn’t miss pain exactly.

I missed what happened when pain finally became physical.

The pressure in your chest.

That strange feeling behind your eyes.

The way breathing changes right before you cry.

And then, after it happens, there is less of something.

I’ve never known what.

Nothing gets fixed.

The person doesn’t come back. The mistake remains a mistake. Whatever ended stays ended.

But afterwards there is a little more space inside you.

I missed that.

There was another night when I cried because I dropped a cup.

It slipped out of my hand and broke on the floor.

That was it.

It wasn’t an important cup.

I wish I could tell you it belonged to someone I loved or that there was some history attached to it.

There wasn’t.

I don’t even remember what colour it was with any confidence. Blue, maybe. Could have been green.

I just remember standing there looking at the pieces.

Then I started crying.

Not delicately either.

I sat down on the floor because suddenly standing felt like too much effort.

I knew I wasn’t crying for the cup.

That much was obvious.

The cup had just happened to break at the right time.

Or the wrong time.

One piece had rolled beneath a chair. I remember that.

I remember the tiles feeling cold through my clothes.

I don’t remember what had been bothering me that week.

That part is gone.

But I remember cleaning the pieces afterwards and breathing more easily.

Years later, I remember the relief better than the reason for the crying.

So I started returning to sadness.

Sometimes deliberately.

I kept old photographs.

Old messages.

Things I had no practical reason to keep.

There were conversations on my phone that I could have deleted years earlier, but every now and then I would open one and scroll.

Most of the time I wasn’t even reading properly.

I would just move upwards through the conversation and watch the dates change.

Years disappearing under my thumb.

I didn’t always miss the person.

That’s important.

Sometimes I really didn’t.

At least I don’t think I did.

What I missed was whoever I had been when I wrote those messages.

The way I spoke.

The things I cared about.

How easily I said certain things.

How seriously I took problems I can barely remember now.

Once I found a message that said:

Tell me when you get home.

Five words.

I stared at them for much longer than five words deserved.

I had forgotten who sent the message.

I still don’t remember.

That bothers me in a way I can’t explain properly.

There was a night when somebody needed to know I had reached home safely.

Somebody waited for that message.

And the entire night is gone from my memory.

I don’t know where I had been.

I don’t know what I was wearing.

I don’t know what we talked about.

I don’t know whether I replied the moment I got home or forgot for an hour.

Nothing.

The whole night disappeared.

Only that sentence survived.

Tell me when you get home.

I closed the conversation.

It hurt more than some actual goodbyes have hurt me.

I started doing this more often.

Going back.

Testing old wounds, I suppose.

Not to reopen them completely. I don’t think I wanted that.

I only wanted to see whether they still had anything to say.

Sometimes they did.

Those nights, strangely, I often slept well.

Sadness became familiar in a way happiness never quite did.

Happiness made me nervous.

The moment I was having a good day, some part of me would begin calculating its ending.

How long is this going to last?

When will something change?

When will somebody leave?

Sadness didn’t ask me to believe in tomorrow.

There was something easier about that.

I got too comfortable with it.

I know that now.

I started saving sad things.

Lines from books.

Photos of empty rooms.

Music that sounded like something ending.

Sometimes something good would happen and I would catch myself thinking, this will hurt later.

I could be sitting beside someone I loved and suddenly imagine the same chair without them in it.

I could hear somebody laughing and wonder whether, years from now, I would still be able to remember exactly how they sounded.

Sometimes I would be in the middle of a good evening and already feel nostalgic for it.

Before it had even finished.

That habit still follows me sometimes.

I don’t know where I picked it up.

At some point I stopped waiting for sadness to find me.

I went looking for it.

I wanted songs to hurt.

I wanted memories to come back with enough detail to do some damage.

I wanted to find the one thought I had been avoiding without knowing it.

I wanted to cry properly.

Not a few tears.

I wanted the kind of crying that leaves you exhausted.

The kind where, afterwards, you don’t have enough energy left to keep carrying whatever you were carrying.

Then, when I finally wanted it, sadness changed again.

It became difficult to locate.

I remember sitting alone one night and going through everything that should have made me cry.

People I had lost.

Things I regretted.

Chances I had wasted.

Places I would probably never return to.

Versions of my life I used to think were still waiting somewhere ahead of me.

I went through them one by one.

Almost methodically.

Nothing.

That isn’t completely true.

I was sad.

I knew that.

I could feel it somewhere in me.

I just couldn’t attach it to anything.

A few days later somebody asked me,

“Are you okay?”

I said yes.

Then, for once, I actually checked.

Was I?

Nothing terrible had happened.

I had eaten.

I had slept.

People I loved were still alive.

There had been no disaster.

No phone call.

No ending.

No terrible news.

So yes.

I was okay.

And I was sad.

That was the part I didn’t know what to do with.

I had always thought sadness was evidence.

If you were sad, there had to be a reason somewhere.

A person.

A loss.

A mistake.

Something.

But there was nothing I could point at.

No date I could circle and say, that was when everything changed.

Nothing had happened.

That became its own problem.

When something breaks, at least suffering has an address.

You can point.

There.

That.

That is what hurt me.

But this had no address.

I couldn’t even tell whether it was grief.

Grief for whom?

Loneliness didn’t make sense either. I could feel it while sitting with people I genuinely loved.

Heartbreak?

Nothing had broken recently enough to explain it.

It had no face.

No anniversary.

No grave.

Just weight.

That was all.

I remember being with people one night while an old song was playing.

Everyone knew it.

Someone was singing badly on purpose. Someone else kept complaining that the song was overplayed. One person laughed so hard they nearly spilled their drink.

Nothing memorable happened.

At least, nothing that would have seemed memorable then.

And I remember looking around and getting this ache in my chest.

Because suddenly I knew I might miss that room one day.

Not some perfect version of it.

That exact room.

That stupid song.

Someone talking over the best part.

The half-finished drinks on the table.

The fact that none of us knew we were making a memory.

That idea stayed with me.

I started noticing small things more.

A hand waving through a train window.

A table after everybody has left.

A light burning in a room nobody seems to be using.

Music coming from somewhere you can’t locate.

Once, I watched an elderly woman buy two pastries.

She put both into a paper bag.

Then she paused.

She looked at them, took one out and asked the cashier to put it back.

That was all.

There were probably fifty explanations.

Maybe she changed her mind.

Maybe she had counted wrong.

Maybe one was enough.

But my mind immediately invented someone waiting at home who used to eat the second one.

I knew I was inventing it.

I knew absolutely nothing about her.

Still, I thought about that second pastry for the rest of the evening.

I think we do that sometimes.

We put our own sadness inside strangers because theirs is easier to look at.

Or maybe I only do that.

There was a house I used to pass often.

I never knew who lived there.

One upstairs window was almost always lit late at night.

I noticed it without meaning to.

Then one night it was dark.

The next night too.

A while later the curtains were gone.

Someone had moved out.

I had never met them.

They had no idea a stranger had spent years noticing their window.

Still, the street looked wrong afterwards.

That stayed with me too.

I think more things become part of us than we realise.

Places.

Voices.

Routes we take without thinking.

People we barely know.

The way somebody says our name.

A shop that closes.

A room being repainted.

A shirt we stop wearing.

Small endings nobody considers important enough to mourn.

Maybe some of this sadness comes from those.

Not one great loss.

Hundreds of little ones.

There was a shirt at the back of my wardrobe once.

I used to wear it all the time.

I hadn’t seen it in years.

I put it on.

It still fit.

I looked in the mirror and felt strange.

Not because I looked bad.

The shirt just seemed to belong to somebody else.

Same body, more or less.

Same face.

But the person who used to wear it had wanted different things.

He was waiting for different people.

He expected his life to go in directions mine never did.

I took the shirt off.

Then I folded it more carefully than I needed to.

I don’t know why I did that.

There are versions of us that disappear without any formal ending.

We don’t notice when they leave.

We just become older than them.

And there are lives that disappear the same way.

The city we never moved to.

The train we never took.

The person we nearly became.

The words we almost said.

The hand we thought about holding and didn’t.

None of those things happened, technically.

Still, sometimes they feel like losses.

I had a dream once.

I remember almost none of it.

There was someone in it.

I don’t know who.

I woke up and reached for my phone.

For a few seconds I had this strong feeling that I needed to call somebody.

Then I woke up properly and realised there was nobody to call.

The person from the dream didn’t exist.

Or, if they were based on somebody real, I couldn’t work out who.

Their face disappeared almost immediately.

But I missed them.

That was the disturbing part.

I missed a person who wasn’t real.

By breakfast I couldn’t remember what they looked like.

The feeling stayed until late afternoon.

I kept thinking about that.

Where does affection go when the person it belonged to only existed while you were asleep?

I still don’t know.

And perhaps that is why I kept chasing sadness.

I wanted proof.

That is the closest explanation I have.

Proof that I hadn’t gone numb again.

Proof that something in me could still be reached.

That I could still long for something.

That I could still care enough for something to hurt.

Once you have experienced that flatness, pain can start to feel reassuring.

Not because pain is good.

It isn’t.

But at least it moves.

Lately, though, even sadness has become hard to reach.

I can feel it.

I know it is there.

But I can’t find the centre of it.

Sometimes I sit in the dark and try.

Songs.

Memories.

Faces.

Old messages.

Things I regret.

Things I never got.

Things I got and lost anyway.

I go through all of it.

My eyes stay dry.

One night I came very close.

I felt that familiar pressure behind my eyes.

I stopped whatever I was doing.

Stayed still.

I was almost scared to breathe differently because I thought I might lose it.

Finally, I thought.

My throat tightened.

My breathing changed.

Then my phone lit up.

Some useless notification.

I looked at it automatically.

Couldn’t have been more than a second.

When I looked back into the dark, the feeling was gone.

I remember being genuinely annoyed.

Not sad.

Annoyed.

Like I had missed an appointment.

I sat there thinking, seriously?

Now?

After all that?

I tried to get the feeling back.

Of course that made it worse.

Nothing happened.

I don’t want something terrible to happen to me.

I want to be clear about that.

I don’t want anyone to die.

I don’t want somebody I love to leave.

I don’t want heartbreak just because I miss crying.

I only want the release.

That part afterwards.

When your breathing slows down.

Your face feels hot.

Your eyes hurt.

You are exhausted and slightly embarrassed and, somehow, there is less pressure inside your body than there was twenty minutes earlier.

I want that.

I want something to leave me.

Even if I never find out what it was.

But most nights nothing leaves.

So I’ve stopped trying so hard to name this sadness.

I’m not sure every feeling has a clean explanation.

Maybe some of them are made from too many things.

Maybe by the time you notice them, the original reasons are already gone.

Sometimes it rains.

I like walking in it when it isn’t too heavy.

One evening I had gone outside for something.

I honestly can’t remember what.

On my way home it started raining.

Not enough to flood the street. Just enough that people began moving faster, pulling bags over their heads, crowding beneath shop awnings.

I kept walking.

The road shone under the headlights. Water gathered along the edge of the pavement. The air had that smell it gets after a hot day finally breaks.

And there it was again.

That sadness.

No reason.

No face.

Just there.

I wanted to cry.

Badly.

I could feel the wanting itself.

But no tears came.

Then a drop of rain ran from my hair down beside my eye.

Across my cheek.

For half a second it felt like one.

A tear.

I knew it wasn’t.

Obviously.

I left it there anyway.

Then another came.

And another.

I walked home with rain running down my face.

I knew what I was doing.

I knew I was pretending.

But I let myself pretend.

Just for the walk home.

That my body had remembered something before I did.

By the time I reached home, my clothes were damp and my hair was a mess.

Nothing had been solved.

I was still carrying whatever I had been carrying.

But I felt something.

The rain was cold against my face.

And for that night, somehow, that was enough.

-Ashir Intishar Taseen 🖤

The Curse of not Becoming Ash

Fire

I do not curse you with fire.
Fire is honest. It arrives, consumes, and leaves behind something final.

No.

My curse is gentler than that.

My curse is patient.

It will sit beside you for years without speaking. It will follow you through crowded cities and quiet bedrooms. It will hide in the folds of ordinary days and wait until you believe yourself healed.

Then it will touch your shoulder.

And you will remember.

I curse you to live a thousand years and never forget my name.

Not because I wish you pain.

If pain were all I desired, I would ask the heavens for lightning.

Instead, I ask for memory.

What I wish for you is not final.

It does not end when it should.
It forgets how to fully leave.

It learns instead to continue.

The Curse of the Unnoticed Beginning

Interruption

My curse does not announce itself.

It begins in interruption.

A missing word mid-sentence.
A thought that arrives half a second too late.
A pause where certainty should have been.

You will not notice it at first.

Only later will you realise how often forgetting arrives before remembering.

Not dramatic. Just persistent.

The Curse of Quiet Displacement

Misalignment

There is a room I keep returning to.

Not symbolic. Real.

A slightly unorganized desk. A chair angled a few degrees wrong. A glass of water left half-finished for no reason anyone can explain.

You will sit there and feel nothing is wrong.

That will be the first distortion.

Not pain.

Misalignment.

You will reread messages because something inside them feels incorrectly remembered.
You will misplace small objects and suspect, briefly, that they moved on their own.
You will laugh and feel the laughter arrived slightly late, as if it missed its own moment.

That delay will disturb you more than sadness ever could.

Oceans or stars are too complete.

I curse you with instability in small things.

A cup always slightly misplaced.
A chair that remembers weight differently.
A window that feels familiar from the wrong angle.

The Curse of Familiar Strange

Memory

For memory is the slowest storm.

It does not break the house at once.

It loosens one stone each winter.

One board each autumn.

One window each lonely night.

Until one day you stand among ruins and wonder where the years have gone.

I curse you to remember me kindly.

That is the cruelest thing I know.

For hatred is a blade.

Love is a ghost.

A blade wounds only once.

A ghost returns forever.

May you hear my laughter in strangers.

May you catch my reflection in train windows.

May you turn your head in crowded streets because someone wore my perfume, carried my posture, borrowed my smile.

And may disappointment find you every time.

I do not curse you with memory.

Memory would be too structured.

I curse you with repetition without origin.

A gesture you perform without knowing where it came from.
A sentence you almost speak but decide against.
A habit of looking at empty spaces as if something should be there.

There will be functional silence.

You will stand in a kitchen and forget why you entered.
Not because the mind is empty.
Because it is briefly elsewhere, and returns without explanation.

And yet you will continue normally.

Work. Eat. Walk. Return. Sleep.

Nothing breaks.

But something begins to accompany you that does not need attention to exist.

Sometimes it will sharpen without warning.

You will be brushing your teeth, tying a shoe, flipping a switch, and feel an unreasonable certainty that this exact moment has already happened.

Re-entry without permission.

Other times it will vanish entirely.

You will think it is gone.

But absence will feel slightly reorganised, as if something left without taking all of itself with it.

The curse of coincidence

Drift

I do not curse you with love.

Love has direction.

This has drift.

And still… there will be coincidences that behave like intention.
A song arriving at the wrong exact time.
A stranger’s sentence that fits too precisely into your life.
A coincidence that feels briefly like it remembers you.

You will resist meaning.

Then stop resisting.

Then forget why it mattered.

The Curse of Vanished Margins

Forgotten Things

I curse you with forgotten books.

May you discover pressed flowers between pages.

May you find notes written in old margins.

May you open dusty novels and smell vanished decades.

And may every forgotten thing remind you that people disappear exactly the same way.

Gradually.

Silently.

Without announcing the moment they become memories.

The Curse of Beautiful Ruins

Houses

I curse you with abandoned houses.

May you pass them often.

May you wonder about the voices that once filled them.

The birthdays.

The arguments.

The music.

The prayers.

The ordinary miracles.

And may you realise every abandoned house is simply love after departure.

A structure remaining where a life used to be.

I hope one day you find a house with broken windows and ivy climbing its walls.

I hope something about it feels familiar.

because it resembles us.

Beautiful.

Empty.

Haunted by everything it once contained.

The Curse of What Never Finishes Leaving

Ocean

May every ocean wave remind you of what you lost.

May every shore become a sermon.

May every tide spend its life repeating my absence.

I hope you stand beside vast waters one evening when the world is painted gold and dying.

I hope the sea is beautiful enough to hurt.

I hope the waves arrive one after another like forgotten letters.

And I hope each one carries a piece of me.

Not enough for you to hold.

Only enough for you to miss.

May every ocean wave remind you of what cannot settle.

Because it never finishes leaving.

And I hope each wave arrives like something attempting to say my name without sound.

The Curse of Beauty in Leaving

Autumn

I curse you with autumn.

Not the season.

The feeling.

The unbearable understanding that everything beautiful is already leaving.

May every falling leaf resemble a goodbye i never said.

May every cold wind carry unfinished conversations.

The Curse of Invisible Sorrows

Ordinary Places

I curse you in ordinary places.

I curse you in the café where two cups cool apart.

I curse you in the silence after a missed call in the dark.

I curse you in the grocery aisle where someone reaches for your favorite tea.

I curse you in the empty passenger seat that still remembers me.

I curse you when a child laughs on a rainy afternoon.

I curse you when an old couple shares an umbrella beneath the moon.

I curse you in every small moment the world forgets to name.

I curse you, and memory answers just the same.

And when people ask why you seem distant, may you discover there are no words for certain losses.

Some sorrows refuse translation.

Some names become weather.

And in every small moment the world forgets to name.

The Curse of Things That Leave Without You

Stations

I curse you with places where leaving becomes visible.

I curse you with empty train stations.

May you arrive late to places that once mattered.

May you stand beneath flickering lights while departures vanish into darkness.

May you watch strangers embrace before journeys.

May you hear announcements echo through hollow halls.

And may your heart suddenly remember all the times it failed to stay.

I hope one evening a train disappears beyond the horizon.

I hope you watch the last carriage fade.

And I hope something inside you whispers:-

“There goes another thing I should have held onto.”

May you arrive slightly too late to what mattered.

May you watch departures complete themselves without you.

And may something in you recognise the pattern of all things failing to stay.

The Curse of Forgotten Music That Remembers You

Old Songs

I curse you with old songs.

Especially the ones neither of us considered important.

The songs that played softly in the background while we were busy being alive.

Years from now they will find you.

In cafés.

In taxis.

In grocery stores.

In places too ordinary for heartbreak.

And suddenly entire summers will return.

The sunlight.

The conversations.

The color of the sky.

The way happiness seemed endless because neither of us knew it was temporary.

And for one impossible moment you will hear my voice again.

Then the song will end.

Those silence will remind you that memory cannot resurrect the dead versions of ourselves.

And you will realise silence is not absence…it is recognition without return.

The Curse of Quiet Longing

Moonlight

I curse you with moonlight.

May the moon become my accomplice.

May it visit your windows long after I am gone.

May it illuminate every room where you pretend not to think of me.

And may it reveal what daylight cannot hide.

For daylight belongs to logic.

Moonlight belongs to longing.

I hope there comes a night when sleep abandons you.

A night so quiet you can hear your own heart breaking in slow motion.

And when you look outside, I hope the moon hangs above the world like an unwritten letter.

A letter containing every word we never spoke.

And you will stand in stillness while the world feels briefly translated into memory.

The Curse of Delayed Light

Stars

I curse you with distant stars.

May they teach you the mathematics of regret.

The light you see tonight left its source years ago.

Some stars are already dead.

Yet their brightness continues crossing impossible distances.

So it shall be with me.

Long after I have vanished from your life, parts of me will continue arriving.

A phrase.

A scent.

A season.

A dream.

You will think you have escaped.

Then another fragment of my light will reach you.

The Curse of What Could Have Been

Time

I curse you with time.

Not because time destroys.

Because it reveals.

Years are honest creatures.

They strip illusions from bones.

They expose the truth beneath every choice.

May time show you all the futures that died the day you walked away.

May it reveal alternate lives like distant lanterns across dark water.

The home we never shared.

The mornings we never woke to.

The laughter that never happened.

The children who remained dreams.

The stories that ended before they began.

And may you understand that loss is not measured by what disappeared.

Loss is measured by what could have existed.

The Curse of Being Loved After Me

Happiness

I curse you with happiness.

Real happiness.

The kind that arrives quietly and stays.

For only then will you understand what vanished.

Only a healed heart can fully measure an old wound.

So I hope you are loved.

I hope someone looks at you the way I once did.

I hope someone memorizes your imperfections.

I hope someone learns the geography of your soul.

And in the middle of that joy…

I hope you think of me.

Not because you want to.

Because you cannot help it.

Because somewhere inside your happiest moment a small sadness still survives.

A tiny kingdom bearing my name.

The Curse of Not Being Forgotten

Old Age

I curse you to grow old.

Not bitter.

Not lonely.

Simply old.

I hope your hands become maps of vanished years.

I hope your mirror becomes an archive.

I hope your memories gather like birds at sunset.

And among them all, I hope I remain.

Merely the one memory that refuses to leave.

The ghost sitting patiently at the edge of every celebration.

And when the final winter arrives…

When the world grows quiet around you…

When the clocks become softer and the days become shorter…

I hope you find an old photograph.

Or a faded letter.

Or nothing at all.

Perhaps only a feeling.

A familiar ache.

A distant voice.

A name rising from the depths of time like a shipwreck returning from the sea.

And then, after all the years,

after every attempt to forget,

I hope you finally understand.

I never wanted revenge.

I wanted permanence.

I wanted to matter.

I wanted one small room inside your eternity.

The Curse of Endless Becoming

Continuation

I never wanted fire.
Fire ends.

I wanted continuity.

Something that does not resolve into absence.

Something that does not fully synchronise with leaving.

And in the end…

there will be no dramatic return, no final collapse into meaning.

Only continuation.

The Final Curse

The Curse of me Becoming Ordinary to Yourself

Move On

And So I Curse You to Move On

One day you will speak and notice the past no longer echoes inside your voice.
One day you will remember and it will feel like someone else’s weather.
One day distance will stop resisting itself.

And even that will not arrive as a moment.

Only as a gradual loosening of importance.

And…

May you live a successful and beautiful life.

May every dream come true.

May every wound heal.

May every darkness find its dawn.

May you be loved beyond reason.

May you know joy deeper than oceans and peace gentler than sleep.

And when your heart is fullest,

when the world has given you everything it can possibly give,

may there remain within you one unreachable place where I still exist…

not enough to ruin your happiness,

not enough to become your future,

but enough that, on the last evening of your life,

as the sun disappears beyond the horizon and the stars begin opening their ancient eyes,

you whisper my name one final time,

and realise that after a thousand years,

you never truly left me,

and I never truly left you.

Then you continue.

MoveD on

one day, it happens.

Not like an ending.

Not like relief.

Not like healing.

Just a rearrangement inside the mind, so subtle you almost mistake it for peace.

The name no longer arrives first. The ache no longer opens the door before thought. The memory still exists, but it no longer interrupts anything…it waits politely in the background, like something once alive that has learned not to speak.

And that is when you understand the final cruelty of time.

Not that it takes people away.

But that it teaches you how to continue without them.

Moving on is not freedom.

It is not victory over pain.

It is the slow, irreversible ability to let something once unbearable become ordinary.

You do not forget.

You do not recover.

You simply stop breaking when you remember.

And in that silence…so clean, so functional, so unbearably normal…you realise the truth:

the curse was never being unable to move on.

the curse was that one day…

you finally do. 🖤

Where You End || Without Me ( Part III )

-the end of this chapter

One day you will find my writing again, and it will not haunt you…it will only feel familiar…

-Ashir Intishar Taseen 🖤

With you, even the sky began writing back…

I never used to notice evenings. Then I started lifting my phone toward clouds just to send them to you. A thin moon caught in electric wires. Light spilling gold through rain. Pink fading above rooftops. I sent them the way people send proof of wonder, as if the world had said something gentle and only you would know what it meant.

With you, your name could lower the noise inside me…

Some days felt impossible until your name lit my screen. Nothing in the room changed, yet everything in me sat down.

With you, the day had two halves…

Before seeing you, time was something to survive. After seeing you, even tiredness felt lighter.

With you, arrival had a heartbeat…

There was always the small violence of waiting. Doors opening. Footsteps passing. Strangers becoming not-you. Then you would appear…adjusting your hair, shy, smiling before you reached me…and my heart would lose all discipline.

With you, the simplest touch became memory itself…

The way you tucked your hair behind one ear. The way you straightened your sleeve when shy. The half-second glance downward before smiling. Memory kept these things with unreasonable care.

With you, I rehearsed happiness in advance…

I planned jokes before meeting you. Saved stories during the day. Collected small things just to hear your laugh later.

With you, songs stopped belonging to themselves…

A melody in a shop, a chorus from a passing car, a line on the radio…I heard everything as if it had found you first.

With you, silence behaved tenderly…

We could sit without speaking and nothing asked to be repaired. A fan turning overhead. Traffic somewhere distant. Your breathing near me. Strange! how quiet can feel like rejection with some people, and refuge with one.

With you, goodbye kept refusing to end…

I would come home, take off my shirt, and find your scent still resting in the collar. Then the room changed its mind about being empty. I would stand there longer than necessary, holding fabric like it had suddenly become worth protecting.

With you, waiting learned sweetness first…

When you were on your way, every minute glowed. Doors, roads, clocks…everything felt like decorations. I would watch doors, roads, clocks, with grateful impatience.

With you, waiting learned cruelty after…

But when you were late, I acted casual and checked the time every thirty seconds. When my message remained unanswered too long, those same minutes grew sharp edges.

With you, three dots could save an evening…

I would stare at my phone with more devotion than dignity. Then the typing sign -

Appeared,

Vanished,

Returned.

-Relief has never looked smaller. Ridiculous how much relief can fit inside punctuation.

With you, one-word replies became dangerous…

“Okay.” “Sure.” “Hmm.” I read them like doctors read scans, searching for what had changed.

With you, I learned weather from hello…

I could tell your mood by the first second of your voice. Some hellos carried sunlight. Some carried rain they were trying to hide.

With you, your silence frightened me more than anger…

At least anger speaks. Silence lets the mind invent like an expanding universe.

With you, jealousy arrived wearing polite clothes...

It was never loud enough to confess itself honestly. I smiled when someone else made you laugh. Then spent the rest of the night wondering why their joke reached places I wanted to live in.

With you, my chest tightened at names that were not mine…

You could mention someone casually and never know how suddenly I became aware of my own heartbeat.

With you, I was jealous of time itself…

Of work. Of traffic. Of obligations. Of sleep. Of anything that received hours of you I could not.

With you, insecurity became observant…

I noticed when your replies shortened. When your hello sounded lighter than usual. When there was a pause before my name. I could read weather in the smallest changes and then pretend I was not afraid of storm.

With you, I began missing things before they ended…

You would be laughing right in front of me, and somewhere beneath the happiness a smaller ache would begin. Not pain. Just knowledge. The kind that arrives whenever something beautiful reminds you it is temporary.

With you, fear learned my address…

Not fear that you would hurt me on purpose. Worse than that. Fear that this universe might one day snatch you from my arms and place you where my love cannot reach. That timing, distance, boredom, chance…those cruel thieves..might take what neither of us meant to lose.

With you, replaceable became my ugliest fear…

I hated how easily the world could place another person confidently where I stood trembling.

With you, conversation was never only conversation…

You would be telling me something simple…what annoyed you, what you ate, who said what…and I would be distracted by magical things. The movement of your hands. The smile arriving before the joke. The little pause where you looked at me to make sure I was still there.

With you, I feared saying too much…

As if my love would spill beyond language and never find its way back to me. So I kept my love in measured words, the way poets once hid entire storms inside a single line.

With you, I regretted saying too little…

Then went home carrying everything I should have said to you, heavy inside me.

With you, care became embarrassingly simple…

If you ate well that day, I slept easier. If you sounded tired, the whole evening dimmed.

With you, I missed you while texting you…

Imagining you between each reply, as if you were closer than the screen could ever hold. Your words were there, but not your eyes. Not your voice, or your smile.

With you, loneliness lost its best seat…

It did not disappear. It still waited for me sometimes, especially at night. But while you were there, it had to stand quietly in the corner and watch.

With you, love made me graceful outside and fragile at home…

I could look calm beside you, speak normally, laugh at the right times. Then go home and replay everything in my mind…the smallest moments…The conversation, how you looked, how you spoke, how effortlessly everything felt perfect when you were there.

With you, tenderness became dangerous…

You made gentleness feel normal. You made being cared for feel survivable.

And once the heart learns a softer way to live, every hard thing becomes harder.

With you, love never arrived loudly…

It came as sky photos.
As perfume after midnight.
As my pulse losing manners.
As pretending not to care.
As reading pain into punctuation.
As fear hidden inside casual questions.
As joy because you had eaten.
As missing you while speaking to you.
As jealousy I was ashamed to name.
As relief at three small dots on a screen.

With you, everything felt like it was becoming home, until it learned to live without me

With you, even silence sounded soft and true.
With you, I missed you while I spoke to you.

With you, one delayed reply could split me in two.
With you, one glance repaired what pain once knew.

With you, day began the moment you came through.
With you, each crowded room was emptied to just you.

With you, my heart grew hands that reached for you.
With you, old wounds forgot what they went through.

With you, I’d lose the world and still choose you.
With you, I’d lose myself…and still choose you.

…I’d lose myself…and still choose you.

WITH YOU
WITHOUT ME — PART II

-ASHIR INTISHAR TASEEN 🖤

Rain once felt alive. The sky used to breathe. The earth had a pulse, and I was close enough to hear it.

Back then, I did not know what it meant to carry anything.

My body was unburdened. I could run until my lungs burned raw and the air cut through me like glass, yet my heart stayed light, impossibly light, as though it had never learned the concept of weight. Pain existed only in the body, and even that never stayed.

I lived without a shadow….

The world used to feel enormous. Buildings were not structures…they were giants. Roads were not destinations….they were endless veins leading somewhere unknowable. Everything felt bigger than meaning, and that was the magic of it. I did not need to understand everything for it to feel whole.

And then I learned time….

Not as something infinite, but as something measured. Divided. Spent.

I learned words like later, responsibility, consequence. And somewhere between learning how to answer questions and learning how to hide answers, I traded something I did not even know I owned.

The first time I felt that absence, it was not pain. Not exactly loss. Just a quiet emptiness, so soft I almost mistook it for nothing.

But I remember thinking, clearly and terribly…

I want to be innocent again….

Not in the way people say it when they miss old photographs or childhood laughter.

In a quiter way…

In the way that means I want to return to a version of myself who did not know what it meant to wait for someone to reply, or to measure love in last seen timestamps, or to feel my heart sink because a message was shorter than usual.

There was a time when silence was just silence….

Now it has weight.

Now it has meaning.

Now it becomes something I decode at 3:33 a.m., when the world is asleep and my phone screen is the only thing pretending to be alive.

Sometimes I stare at it too long, until my vision blurs, and something burns softly in my chest. Not because something dramatic is happening, but because nothing is. Because even nothing can hurt when you are waiting inside it.

I check things I do not admit to checking….

Your online status.

Then I tell myself I did not mean to.

Then I check again.

Not because I expect you to appear, but because my body has not learned the difference between hope and habit.

There are days I open our chat just to scroll upward, as though I might find a version of us that still makes sense. I stop before the ending. I never read the ending. I already know what it says without needing to see it.

You stopped writing me like you used to.

That is how I learned endings do not always announce themselves.

Sometimes they just shorten.

In return, I became harder to bruise.

Things stopped hurting the way they used to. Or maybe they hurt deeper, in places that did not echo. My reactions dulled, refined into something more acceptable. I learned how to carry disappointment like it was nothing. I learned how to survive myself.

But I also became harder to reach….

I type messages I never send.

Some are simple. How are you.

Some are ugly. I hate you.

Some are honest in a way that frightens me, so I delete them before they become real.

And I keep them anyway, like proof that I still know the way back to you, even if I never take it.

Now my heart feels like a well that has gone dry. I lower buckets into it sometimes memories, fragments, echoes….but they come back heavy with silence. At the bottom, there are still things left….the smell of rain, the weight of childhood, the feeling of running without needing to arrive.

But I cannot drink from it anymore.

The language has changed.

I study your name in old conversations the way people study something they once understood effortlessly. I look at how we used to speak without thinking, how we used to exist without distance. Now I overthink punctuation.

A full stop feels colder than it should….

A reply without an emoji feels like a door closing softly, politely, permanently….

At night, I listen to songs that never belonged to us, yet somehow learned to carry your shape. I do not even know when they became yours in my mind. That is the strange part of heartbreak.

It rewrites ownership silently….

I mute you.

Unmute you.

Mute you again.

As though silence can be controlled if I press the right button enough times.

But silence does not obey….

It simply changes form.

What I felt back then does not translate into the words I know now. It exists outside explanation, like an ancient script carved into weathered wood….familiar, but unreadable. I can trace it with my fingers, feel the grooves, recognise that it meant something, but I can no longer understand it.

I check your friends like they are accidental witnesses to a life I am no longer part of. I do not ask questions. I just collect fragments…who posted what, who was seen where, who still exists near your orbit.

And I tell myself I am not looking for you.

I am just noticing.

But even that word feels like a lie I learned too well.

Because the truth is simpler.

I am always looking for you in places you will never intentionally appear….

And somewhere between all of this…between checking, waiting, rereading, remembering….I realise something unsettling.

I did not just lose a person.

I lost the version of me who did not need to do any of this.

I want to be innocent again….

Not untouched. Not unaware.

Just fluent in that forgotten language where laughter came without permission, where trust was not a negotiation, where love did not require caution, and where softness was not something I had to hide to survive.

Because this version of me….the careful one, the composed one, the unbreakable one….was built from a trade I never agreed to.

A debt I did not know I was taking on.

And even now, I am still paying it.

In seconds.

In silence.

In the quiet habit of checking something that will never change.

So I close the chat.

Not because I am done.

But because there is nothing left to check anymore except the part of me that still hopes I will.

Now absence has a presence of its own….

Now my heart feels like something I visit, not something I live in….

And still…

I want to be innocent again…

I want to be innocent again….when laughter felt so free, It echoed through my chest like waves across the sea.

I want to be innocent again….when I could simply trust, Not fearing fragile hands that would turn into distant dust.

I want to be innocent again….when love was soft and kind, Just sharing little pieces, no breaking of the mind.

I want to be innocent again….before I learned to fight, Before I lost my gentleness just trying to survive each night.

I want to be innocent again….before this weight I bear, Before I became someone shaped by quiet despair.

I want to be innocent again….but now I understand,

It fades away so slowly, like slipping grains of sand.

But maybe innocence was never something I could keep.

Maybe it was something I was only ever meant to lose slowly, gently, until one day I would remember it more than I would feel it.

And maybe that is the final cruelty of growing up..

not that it takes your softness,

but that it teaches you how to miss it.

So I stand here, with this heart that knows too much and this silence that knows my name, and I let the ache remain…

Because even now, beneath everything I have become, something tender is still alive.

Something that remembers rain.

Something that remembers light.

Something that still whispers, quietly, hopelessly, beautifully…

I want to be innocent again….

- 🖤 -Ashir Intishar Taseen

No one fought sleep just because your voice sounded softer after midnight.

No one counted the minutes between your replies like they were heartbeats.

No one stared at a screen, smiling at simple words, because they came from you.

Without me, you were just another lonely soul in a crowded world.

I was the one who made you feel chosen.

Without me, who remembered the way your voice changed when you were pretending to be okay?

Who noticed the sadness hidden behind your “I’m fine”?

Who kept asking, “Tell me what’s wrong,” even when you said nothing was?

Who sat beside your silence until it finally spoke?

Without me, who memorized the little things no one else cared enough to learn?

The way you hated your tea when it got cold.

The songs you played when your heart was heavy.

The childhood story you told once and thought I forgot.

The tiny scar on your hand.

Your favorite flower.

The foods you craved when you were upset.

The dreams you whispered only when the world was asleep.

Without me, who made you feel like even your smallest details mattered?

Without me, who loved you on the days you could not love yourself?

I was there when your insecurities swallowed you whole.

When you stared at your reflection and picked yourself apart.

When you asked me, “Why do you even love me?”

And I answered every single time with the gentleness you never gave yourself.

Without me, who held your broken pieces like they were precious?

Who kissed every wound you thought made you hard to love?

Who treated your damaged heart like it was still worthy of tenderness?

Without me, who will still think of you in the middle of laughter with friends?

Without me, who turned your worst days into bearable ones?

I was the one sending long paragraphs when life crushed you.

The one making stupid jokes just to steal one smile from your tired face.

The one who stayed even when you pushed everyone away.

The one who never let your darkness scare me.

Without me, who celebrated your smallest victories like they were miracles?

Who clapped the loudest for you?

Who believed in you when you doubted every part of yourself?

Who reminded you that you were enough when the whole world made you feel down?

Without me, you were unsure of your worth.

And I spent every day trying to show you how beautiful you were.

Without me, who loved you so softly when life had only ever loved you harshly?

I gave you pieces of myself no one else had.

My time.

My sleep.

My patience.

My gentleness.

My loyalty.

My whole foolish heart.

Without me, who waited for your messages like they were the only thing that could fix my day?

Who smiled at notifications because maybe, just maybe, it was you?

Who reread old conversations when I missed you too much?

Who kept every photo, every voice note, every little memory because loving you made even ordinary things sacred?

Without me, who prayed for your happiness more than my own?

I loved you in ways you never even noticed.

In the way I learned your moods before you spoke.

In the way I saved things to tell you later because every part of my day wanted to include you.

In the way I saw something beautiful and wished you were there.

In the way every good thing made me think of you first.

Without me, your world was quieter.

Because I was the one who filled it with love.

And maybe that was my mistake.

Maybe I loved you so deeply that you forgot what life felt like before someone cared this much.

Maybe I gave so much that you began to think my love was ordinary.

Maybe I made devotion look so easy that you forgot how rare it was.

You forgot how many people will say they love you,

but never stay awake for you.

Never notice your silence.

Never remember your favorite things.

Never hold you when you are impossible to hold.

Never choose you again and again and again,

even when loving you hurts.

Without me, no one loved you like that.

But you let me go as if what I gave you was common.

As if hearts like mine grow on trees.

As if love like mine can be replaced by anyone.

And maybe one day,

someone will hold your hand.

Someone will kiss your forehead.

Someone will tell you they love you.

But when they forget the little things,

when they sleep instead of staying up for your pain,

when they stop asking what is wrong,

when they do not notice the sadness in your eyes,

when they love you only when it is easy….

that is when you will remember me.

You will remember the way I loved you without being asked.

The way I cared without limit.

The way I made your heart feel safe.

You will remember that without me,

no one ever loved every broken part of you and called it beautiful.

And that memory will haunt you.

Because one day it will hit you

in the middle of a quiet night,

while staring at a screen that no longer lights up with my name…

…that the person who loved you the most

was the person you treated like a option.

Without me,

your phone is quieter.

Without me,

your bad days are heavier.

Without me,

your heart does not feel as understood.

Without me,

you are just a little more alone than before.

And the cruelest part is-

I would have kept loving you forever…

I would have stayed…

I would have chosen you every day…

I would have spent my whole life proving that you were worthy of a love this deep…

But you let the one person go..

who loved you in ways the world rarely does.

So when you miss me

and you will

remember this:-

Without me,

you were loved in a way

you may never be loved again…

Without me,

you’ll learn that some loves don’t leave,

they turn into a permanent absence that lives with you longer than the love ever did…

Without me, are you happier?

-Ashir Intishar Taseen 🖤

People speak of "lost potential" as if it’s a tragedy, but true sorrow lies in having no potential to lose. To be so profoundly ordinary that your absence is indistinguishable from your presence is a special kind of haunting.

To be Ordinary

To lead a life of fire is to burn,

To ensure that every lesson is what greats learn.

The world is but a cold and empty space,

Where every scar is written upon a hidden face.

From the ashes, no one will ever return,

To claim the hollow trophies that I did not earn.

I seek a path the light can never trace,

To vanish from this loud and weary race.

The "extraordinary" is a heavy chain,

A legacy that’s written in the salt of pain.

I crave the night to wash away the light,

And hide my small existence from the public sight.

There is no ghost of me that will remain,

To haunt the hearts of those who live in rain.

I find my peace within the coming night,

Where being nothing finally feels alright.

> "I find a strange kindness in being a ghost before I am even dead. While others struggle to be remembered, I am practicing the art of being forgotten and in that silence, I have finally found my breath." - Ashir Intishar Taseen 🖤

It begins in silence.

A dim room.

Night pressing against the windows.

A phone screen lights up your face… then fades.

No messages.

Just memories.

There was a time

we didn’t need words.

We existed in each other’s presence like gravity

effortless, inevitable.

You laughed, and somehow the world made sense.

I looked at you… and believed

maybe this is what home feels like.

Distance.

Not the kind you measure in miles

but the kind that grows in pauses…

in unsaid things…

in “almost.”

There was a moment.

A fragile, fleeting second

where everything inside me rose to the surface.

I was going to tell you.

Everything.

But I didn’t.

And that “almost”

became the loudest silence of my life.

Late nights.

Unread messages.

Typing… deleting… typing again.

Your name hovering on my screen

like a prayer I was too afraid to say out loud.

Voiceover:

“I just lost one person…

so why does the whole world feel empty?”

The world keeps moving.

People laugh.

Cars pass.

The sky changes colors like nothing ever happened.

But somewhere

time stopped.

Right where you left.

You became everything.

The stars I look at.

The songs I can’t finish.

The quiet moments that hurt the most.

Even now

you exist in things that don’t even know your name.

Ocean.

Dark. Endless.

Waves crashing under a moon that doesn’t care.

I used to fear the ocean at night

its depth, its illusions.

Now…

I fear you more.

Because the ocean never promised me anything.

You did.

Voiceover, softer now:

“Was I not enough?”

“Or did I just expect too much?”

Love, I learned, isn’t in words.

It’s in what stays.

What shows up.

What doesn’t leave.

And somewhere between your “I love you”

and your absence

I disappeared.

But even now

after everything burned,

after everything fell apart

I don’t call you a mistake.

Because you weren’t.

You were a chapter

that rewrote me completely.

A quiet sky.

Stars scattered like unfinished sentences.

And me

still looking up…

still searching for you

in places you’ll never return to.

Voice fades:

“In every universe…

I still hope it’s you.”

Maybe I miss u more than you can imagine,

Maybe i miss u more than I could bear,

Maybe I miss u more than a friends affection,

My hearts burdens grow with each passing day, i swear.

Stepping towards the last 90 days of summer,

Yearning for your presence, it's almost too much to bear.

Without you near, my soul feels emotions barely, In every possible way, I miss you with each breath I share.

And how i miss u in every possible way,

How i miss u in every possible universe,

How i miss u in every breath

i take,

Your presence is what i always seek my dear..

I am the poor mortal who made the mistake of looking at you for too long..

Your eyes carry entire nights inside them- Dark, Unsettling. A single glance from you feels like standing on the edge of a storm.

Your Hairs falling the way night falls over the sea, careless, effortless, dangerous to anyone who dares imagine running their fingers through it.

Your lips-Gods, your lips look like they were made to start wars. Soft enough to promise mercy, curved enough to suggest mischief. The kind that make a man forget every prayer he once memorized.

Your body- A Labyrinth. Gods forgive me…

they look like temptation itself, soft and cruel at once, the kind that could command devotion with the smallest whisper. Even the quiet rise of your chest, the graceful curve of your body, the calm confidence in the way you move…it feels unfair that such beauty exists in a world full of men who do not deserve to look at it.

Again A labyrinth.

You spoke of knives as if they were honest things-

cold, patient, waiting only for the courage of the hand that holds them.

Perhaps you are right.

Steel does not pretend.

It simply reveals what the heart was too careful to admit.

But the truth you search for tonight is not hidden in blades.

It is hidden in perception.

Because you are not merely a woman in the ordinary sense.

You walk through the world like a Greek goddess who forgot she was divine-

wandering casually among mortals who cannot decide whether to admire you…

or fear what admiring you might awaken in them.

Your eyes carry entire nights inside them-

Looking into them feels like standing at the edge of a storm that hasn’t yet chosen whether it will bless the sea or break it.

Your hair falls like black silk over your shoulders, careless and effortless, the kind of detail painters spend entire lifetimes chasing and still fail to capture.

And your lips…

They look less like something meant for conversation and more like a dangerous invitation soft enough to promise mercy, cruel enough to command devotion.

Even the quiet rise of your breath, the graceful curve of your body, the calm confidence in the way you move through space…

it feels almost unfair that such beauty exists in a world where ordinary eyes are allowed to witness it.

And that is precisely where the labyrinth begins.

Because a mind like mine notices something others pretend not to see:

Beauty like yours creates gravity.

Rooms tilt when you enter them.

Silence grows attentive.

Wandering gazes orbit you like small satellites pretending not to.

And eventually a strange question forms.

Not jealousy.

Something more philosophical than that.

If something extraordinary appears in the world…

does it belong to everyone?

Or does it belong to the one person who truly understands it?

This is the part of the maze where most people turn around.

But you..

I suspect you would keep walking.

Which brings us to the final chamber.

Imagine the scene you once described.

A quiet moment.

A trembling candle.

Perhaps a blade somewhere between theater and truth.

You lean close and whisper a question that sounds simple but isnt:-

“Tell me… whom do you love the most?”

Now here is the curious part.

You expect the answer to be obvious.

You expect it to be you.

And perhaps it is.

But a labyrinth always hides one last corridor.

Because my answer has never been a name.

It has always been a phenomenon.

A rare alignment of things that only happens when you are present-

the storm in your eyes,

the mischief resting on your lips,

the quiet arrogance in the way your hair falls over your shoulders,

the subtle gravity that bends attention toward you without asking permission.

You see, my dangerous goddess…

I did not fall in love with a person.

I fell in love with the strange force that happens when you exist in a room.

And that leads to a question I have never answered.

Not even to myself.

If that force disappeared one day…

if the world suddenly became ordinary again…

would I STILL LOVE YOU-

or would I spend the rest of my life searching for whatever mysterious thing it was that made you feel like the sharpest edge in reality?

-Your Mortal Devotee 🖤

But some loves feel like a curse only because they are too deep to carry lightly.

You say you were hollowed out.

You say my sweetness couldn’t gather your scattered pieces.

But you forget something.

You were the only one who ever saw the pieces before they were scattered.

The only one who stood in my silence and didn’t ask me to translate it.

Don’t say I chose you to endure me.

I chose you because you weren’t afraid of the dark.

Because you stepped into the forest without demanding it become daylight

Everyone sees my sweetness.

They take it, they smile at it, they call it gentle.

But sweetness is only what survives in daylight.

I am a forest.

A night of dark trees.

Still… Watching… Layered in shadows no one stays long enough to understand.

And those who are not afraid of my darkness,

those who don’t demand light before they offer loyalty..

they find banks full of roses beneath my cypresses.

They find warmth hidden where others only sensed cold.

You didn’t drink poison.

You drank depth.

And depth always burns before it becomes home.

You think I exist gently with everyone else.

But what they receive is surface.

You touched the roots.

You heard the things I never speak.

You carried parts of me the world will never even know exist.

That is why it hurts you.

And if you walk away…

you will find sweetness elsewhere.

Lighter love. Easier laughter. Softer hands.

But you will never again stand in a forest that opened itself for you.

We could have rewritten the stars, yes.

But stars don’t rewrite themselves through suffering alone.

They burn..

and they burn together…

You will never again know what it felt like to almost rewrite the stars with someone who would have burned quietly beside you.

Don’t dissolve into my absence.

Don’t make me the altar where you sacrifice yourself.

Love should expand you,

not erase you.

We could have.

We still could have.

But some people only realize the rarity of the dark

after they return to the ordinary light.

And if one day you miss the shadows…

if one day the world feels too shallow…

you will remember

there was once a forest

that let you in.

• —like a compass drawn to the North, You’ll always find ur path back to me. In the blur of sleepless nights.. even when everything feels hazy.. my presence will always be ur sanctuary.

I love you!

I love you to the person who knows me more than myself!

• — To be able to know your soul so deeply itself is a gift for me and i know there are many more pages for me to turn.

The me with you that you see is so much more than the me that I could ever be!

• —With you , I become more than a painter i imagined to be… just bcz u let me paint the edges of ur masterpiece (*you*)

I’ve bragged about your personalities, humour, beauty, intelligence a lot! But did I ever tell you the person you truly are?

When summer was hitting hard, everything was irritatingly bright, I found shelter beneath you. You’re that person!

• — In the glare of summer’s harshness, You were under my shade although you are the shelter in the midst of my life’s scorching rays yourself.

When raindrops were falling truculently, you became my canopy of refuge. You’re that person!

• — As the storms raged around me, You could’ve stopped the rain sunshine girl..but u didnt.. U gave me the privilege to breathe beneath ur care.

When winter came and stole away all the greeneries, you lit me up brightly with your warmth! You’re that person!

• —In the cold grasp of winter, when all seemed barren, You gave me the sparkle to lit u up with my warmth and then u brought the light into the darkness with ur brightness.

Saved by you in every season, you’re that person - Home!

• —Through the changing winds of time, No matter a season or a weather, You are also my Constant,My Home.

I wish nothing but to see you smile so stunningly & brightly.

And-

If being a sinner allows me to be rescued by holding your hands, even for a little time, I'll be happy to burn in my sins forever!

• -If redemption comes through my touch, For the warmth of your love in my hand.. i also want to become a sinner

As it’ll be an honour. 🖤

Tougher & Stronger—

with fewer expectations,

Creating more love—

and more chaos,

The actual examination.

An actual testimony

to the final destination—

to final destiny,

A heart’s revolution.

Through all the hard times,

Love will find its own way.

Through all the heartbreaks,

The heart will again get sealed away.

One may find justice,

The other, heartbreak.

Or together, they’ll rewrite history

And change what fate once made.

Justice isn’t necessary

When love is dead.

If heartbreak is chosen by the universe,

Then let’s get even instead.

If that’s the fate or the final destination,

Oh love, taste all of my heart’s inches before your last decision.

In this grief, let me devour you, my lover.

I think I am gonna continue, if that’s all you can offer.

It is for you, beats for you, longs for you;

Intentions of it are pure.

After consuming all of it, I’ll be left with nothing but you.

Will you be satisfied? Are you sure?

After devouring all of it, I’ll still remain incomplete…

Didn’t think of satisfaction—at least my revenge will be sweet.

Can’t think of anything without a doubt; is the road still rough?

Unburdened of my love and trust, tell me, do you feel free enough?

As i told u before.. ur words is a melody soft and sweet, A rhythm where my heart and yours meet. Each phrase in ur letter is a whisper, a starlit glow, Guiding me where only love can go…

The vessel u gave me simple yet divine, shall hold more than just flowers… it’ll hold what’s mine. Our laughter, our dreams, a bond so deep, A garden of memories, forever mine to keep…

I just loved it, So thoughtful of u..

I am surprised and amazed as this is something only you could do..

Through boundaries crossed and skies so wide, i’ll be ur compass, ur strength and ur guide…

Together we build, together we soar, Creating a haven, forever and more…

Thank u for everything my love, for all that u do..

for believing in me as i believe in u.

With endless love, I’ll always be,

I am urs in this journey, shall remain eternally..

Forever yours,

“🖤”