I think about you all the time.

Day, night.

I can't stop.

I can't stop thinking of how your eyes twinkle, and how it might feel to kiss you.

I can't stop thinking of how it would feel to take your hand in mine,

To ask you to be mine.

I know some wouldn't approve, but I have never lived according to others' approval.

My parents are weird about gender, and don't believe in anything but cisgender.

I believe in it though.

I know it is not just two distinct things.

I believe in and know you.

Have you ever felt something this strong?

This is a first for me.

I wouldn't say it was love at first sight, because I don't believe in that sort of thing.

It's close to that, now, though.

What do I know about love, though?

Sometimes I think you might feel the same way.

It is the times I catch you looking at me while I am looking at you that makes me hope.

When we talk, you show no signs.

The moment I met you, I knew I was doomed to love you.

I knew that you would become my world.

Not love at first sight, but the knowledge that I would love you.

I have never met anyone like you.

To me,

You are a mystery.

I hope you think I am, too.

I am so, so used to being left behind.

I hope my relationship with you (nonexistent as of right now),

Doesn't leave me feeling the same way most of my others do.

Beth stumbled down the wooden beach stairs. She plowed into the sand at the bottom, submerging her feet into the cool, evening sand. In front of her, the girl with wild eyes and windblown blonde hair turned around and grabbed Beth’s hand.

She pulled Beth towards the ocean. As they ran, Beth tilted her head up to the sky. She could taste the ocean from here. And the dizzying stars looked down on her and the girl from the party both of them had disliked enough to leave.

The girl stopped suddenly. Beth almost fell to her knees but the girl grabbed her second hand. Beth stood up and found the girl’s eyes locked on hers. At that moment, Beth tried to memorize the girl. Dirty short blonde hair, green eyes that looked so alive, tank top under an oversized tropical button-up, and half a dozen bracelets. In the middle of the sand with her, and no one else.

The girl leaned into Beth. Beth was so aware of the girl’s hands in hers, her breath on Beth’s ear, and the girl’s hair brushing her cheek.

“You’re so pretty, it hurts,” the girl said quietly. Beth felt chills run up her arms. She knew those lyrics.

“So are you.” Beth brushed a kiss impulsively to the girl’s cheek. The girl lingered for a second, and then pulled back. She met Beth’s eyes again and then laughed.

Then, without a second glance, she turned towards the ocean and started running. Beth was dragged along, her heart pounding and rushing, screaming for more and to slow down at the same time.

They rushed into the water without hesitating. Beth felt the shock of coldness on her ankles but couldn’t stop. They ran until the water splashed around their calves.

“Can I kiss you?” The girl asked Beth when the waves had stilled.

Beth nodded and then she couldn’t think. Fireworks and melodies and magic took over her mind.

“You’re so pretty,” Beth mumbled into the girl’s lips. The girl’s lips curled against hers into a smile. In response, she kissed Beth harder. They were pressed together, this was the closest Beth had ever truly been to someone. And it rendered Beth completely breathless.

The sand grasped Beth’s feet. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to move. So she didn’t, even when the girl took a step forward and off-balance, together they fell into the ocean.

Beth gasped and put out her hands behind herself for support. The cold shocked her system but she was still transfixed by the girl. The girl laughed, on her knees down next to Beth. She had a smile that made Beth understood the song lyrics. This girl was so damn pretty. It hurt.

The girl smiled and lifted up her hand to trace Beth’s lips. She bent down to kiss Beth ever so gently. Teasing her. Beth arched up, pressing her lips into the girl’s, and lifted up a hand to run it through the girl’s hair. The ocean surrounded them, and Beth knew at that moment, if she had died right now, she would be happy.

“This hurts.” The girl pulled back. Beth could’ve sworn she almost had a heart attack. The girl was looking at her, at her, at Beth. And she was agonizingly beautiful. The girl was sitting next to Beth, with the moon faintly lit up behind her, with swollen lips and tousled hair. Half of her top was soaked in ocean water and Beth felt the urge to grab her and kiss her yet again.

“Why?” Beth asked.

The girl just looked around instead of answering. Her chest was rising and falling as she examined the ocean and beach.

“This is just, it’s just so beautiful,” The girl said slowly. Her gaze fixed on Beth.

“It is.” Beth threw her head back to stare at the stars. “It really is.”

The girl leaned over Beth. Beth picked up a lock of the girl’s hair and wound it through her fingers. She could feel the girl’s eyes on her. Beth let go of the hair and watched it fall. A beat later, the girl raised Beth’s chin so that their eyes locked. Green eyes met Beth’s, wild and free and yearning. The girl leaned closer until their noses were almost touching.

“Can I keep kissing you?” The girl asked.

Can you say no to oxygen when you are about to run out?

“Yes.”

In a universe very, very close to this one, we are together. In the trillions upon trillions of universes extending outwards, the one where we are together is only separated from this one by several decisions, mostly made early in her life. My life is mostly the same. At this point, I’m jaded and a bit wary about love, and I watch dubiously as this spirited girl begins to steal into my heart.

The difference is that, in that universe, she watches me curiously back from across the room. Her stormy eyes are clouded with all of the possibilities as she weighs them, and at night she lies on her bed and allows herself to think, what if?

In that universe, the little comments that people make about us, the way she is so easy with me make her stop and think. She puffs out a breath and thinks, “I don’t want any of them, those far off lovers who are obscure and powerful, tinged with unreality and desirable with distance. I want this girl right here next to me. I want her to stay by my side, I want to hold her at night as we fall asleep with our cats snuggled up beside us.” In that universe, that is what she thinks.

The thing is, I don’t live in that universe. I live about five universes to the left of it, maybe a bit more diagonal, where I am the same, but she is much more steadfast and steely-eyed, determined to stick to the path she knows. Her past has closed her mind to any possibility that she could love me. She watches me indifferently at the beginning of the year, and as we grow closer, she keeps the blinders carefully fixed around her thoughts of me. They must not wander past what she has deemed acceptable.

In this universe, she takes me for a drive in her vintage car as the sun is setting, and I laugh when she steps on the gas and the car surges beneath us, so powerful I imagine it will leap to the stars, pin us up as a new constellation. Beneath the streetlights flying past us overhead, the midnight-blue paint of the car sparkles like it’s brand-new, new as my heart feels pounding in my chest.

I look over and she smiles her characteristic crooked grin, and my heart jumps into my throat. The sun is setting just over her left shoulder in a final blaze of glory, shedding its colors like brilliant dresses, stepping elegantly into a waiting bath of swirling stars. In the small, circular side mirror of the car, I can see the purples and pinks and golds mixing together like a palette of bleeding watercolors in the distance. Her black hair is haloed in a fine outline of gold, and I think sadly how beautiful she looks and how I will never be able to tell her.

In the next universe over, we pull back into the farm, drive past the horses watching us knowingly as the moonlight bathes their coats in silver, turning them to ghosts. We park the car, and she walks around to my side and helps me out. We go down to the lake and sit side by side on the dock, our feet crossed beneath us as I gently guide her hand to point out the constellations spiraling above us. In that universe, she turns to look at me, and I can see the stars in her eyes, but not Polaris, the storms in her gaze are too wild for that and-

In my universe, as we sit on the dock over the void of the lake, she gazes up in wonder at the stars and then turns to grin triumphantly at me as she finds Ursa Major captive beneath her fingertip. Of course, I want to tell her. Of course. And then, It’s yours. That bear would curl up beside you like a cat and let you stroke its fur of its own accord, but if it didn’t, I would bring it down for you. I would tame it, even as its eyes spit starfire and its claws open universes, if only I could hold you for the span of a heartbeat, if only-

I think all of these things as I roll my eyes at her and climb back in the truck beside her. I think these things, but I do not tell them to her because she has sworn me off, and maybe I love her, I don’t know, but I do know I will never hurt her.

On a pier in this universe, two figures lie suspended in time, basking in the summer sunshine. The tide is perpetually coming in and the sea foam sprays up over their legs. In this moment, I look in her sea-green eyes and she laughs, and I realize that here, in this universe, she will never love me, even as, a few decisions and occurrences to the left, she does.

When I think about my identity - when I think about trying to communicate my sexuality or my gender to people using a letter, or a word, or two, or ten - I kind of feel like I can't breathe. I get this overwhelming sense that I am not deserving of acceptance into the queer community because I love women, and hate men, and sleep with both. I don't know what to call a strong, powerful human being, capable of changing the world with their words, and their actions, and their voice, a person so wholly dedicated to this mythical 'greater good', who has empowered hundreds of teenagers to take agency over their lives, but looks at men and feels small, and weak, or looks at women and feels less than. I don't know what to call that.

What is it called when you have such a hard time identifying your own feelings that you don't actually know who you like? What is it called when you look at men and feel gross but also an incredibly overwhelming sense that you have to do whatever you can to appear sexually pleasing to them? What is it called when you look at women and feel this intense surge of the most intense jealousy that you will never look like that, and also the most deeply intimate sense of safety?

I don't know what I am. I don't know what of what I am comes from my hurt or my insecurity, and what comes from genuine unadulterated love. I don't know how to separate those out. I don't fit a stereotype. I am not a stud or femme or butch or I am not visibly gay or straight and I hate labels. I am untethered to an identity in a group of people who are all so comfortable in who and what they are. People who put L[G]BTQ+ in their social media bios because they want everyone to know something I have been begging to understand since the sixth grade. I love women, I love people outside of the gender binary, I love men - sometimes. I don't know what that is. I don't know if I want to know what that is.

Nobody likes the likes of me.

How can I tell them that I feel this way? How I feel about them?

Isn't it disgusting? Perverted? Out of normal?

Yes.

They are treating me like trash now, not taking me seriously. Am I really different from them?

We all love another, is it wrong for me to do so?

But, now, I felt stupid thinking and worrying about that.

Because I don't belong here:

The people that likes me will only be the people likes of me.

Thinking in another perspective; are they going to fit in here?

Aren't they going to be treated like trash here? We are so different now.

It's normal but heart-wrecking to be rejected by them. But is it necessary to be accepted there?

Because here, I am already one of them.

Every night I look at me through your eyes.

That’s the way I’ve learned to do it, hiding from myself.

I’m me, but I’m Cameron Diaz, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Xena, making me your and my ultimate object of desire.

I imagine myself with inky hair, purple-black, wrapped around your throat – Scarlett and Rhett. I dreamed an equation, girl + boy = good, girl + girl = bad, being turned by simultaneous methods into girl + girl = good. Meanwhile, I tell myself I should really start imagining you, find something in you to lust after, something in myself to respond to your body, your eyes, the reality of you, and finding nothing, what a shock, fearful. Better go back to looking at me through your eyes.

Thank God for one more night for you.

I’m a girl with no tattoos, no iron-tight beliefs, no heart to give to any man or a sign.

I no longer believe in fairy-tales or fascination, the world is black, if ever there was a soul to observe it.

She took both the world and the fairy-tales, the ink on my skin as well as the promise. She buried her heart in volcanic soil next to mine and said it was for keeps.

Now her body lay there in the ashes, buried two yards underneath. The world has moved on, as did her soul away from me.

My girl is dead, and that is the only promise left for me.

Mehreen Ahmed

Forget-me-not dear father. Please do not look at me blankly or ask who I am. For I know, I shall mope for days on end, when you do that to one of your own. Your own loving daughter, you raised with so much love and affection. This affliction hits you, now. It tears me from within. It tears me apart, dear father. Lump in my throat, you not around to mend.

I think of you and my mother. How beautiful she looks? Her skin, fair, soft in the moonlight glow, a midnight of cascading hair. You sitting by her side, holding each other in the clear, dazzling light, propped up by stars of a night; listening to Andrea Bocelli, singing, reciting Tagore and Nazrul Islam’s poetry. Tonight, you’re a different person, sensitive, caring and romantic, playing chess, laughing at silly, odd jokes, talking vibrantly, being the perceptive mind that you are.

Bocelli’s voice, smooth like an aluminium sheet over a placid sea. The blind seer, who saw how he could conquer; his vision peerless in his understanding of the world. But father, your mind, to the contrary, was not, hence your visions blurry. Dear father, did you not see it coming?

Alas! You just called my mother, your mother. Mother knows not that one day, you’ll not remember the distant past, and forget the formidable immediate. Mother knows not until this day, that you would be looking at the world through your netted mind. You, who made so many sacrifices, once. Your charities saved lives. Your readings, misgivings, your writings, musings, your first class brain, a full life.

Who now holds Shakespeare’s complete works in his hands and pretends to read it. You, who knows enough to hold the book, although the words may fall through the holes of your once whole brain. Words melt away, Words writ in water. But you did that much, at least. Hold the book closely enough, salient like salinity to an ocean, faithful to your art; hold your pen upright, to your diary. I often watched you, a little girl in awe, how you cut and pasted, sentences with scissors, in those days, without computers. How you edited, You knew your words so well, in your meaningful hay day.

You took me to see a circus once, you caged me within your arms, dear father, so no one would brush past me, or hurt me inadvertently in the crowd-filled circus-park. I have not forgotten anything father. But you have. Your memory has lapsed. You go out for random walks, beyond the rail tracts, and forget your home, the little blue house. These long walks back, not wilfully wayward, but to ensure safety, I had to lock you in the house, so you would not lose your way, back to us.

Your brilliant mind, the much lauded works, the published newspaper pieces, bear testimony to that. Now, you forget people’s names, friend’s names, your children’s names. Oh! Forget-me-not, dear father. I cannot endure this. But if it’s in your genes, then you cannot help it. How helpless people are when they cannot remember, forget the next word. How overwhelmingly, helpless it must be, when you can’t even recognise your own beloved wife, let alone the names of great writers of all times, Iris Murdoch. Today you have shared the same fate. Iris Murdoch, who knew so much, then knew not what words to put in a sentence string.

What sort of morbidity is this within your mind? How do you interpret when you see faces? This blinding world of nothingness, yet, nearly, not half as blind as the world of Andrea Bocelli of notes, rhythm, tunes and modulation. Every chord, he feels. Every spice on his palate, explodes in celebration of this world, which has thus far distanced itself from you, and rendered it off limits, that you descend into this chaotic place of discordant beats of no taste, certainly no musical vibrations. In severe cold, you forget to put your black coat on. And you forget to select shoes from your wardrobe of hundred pair collection.

You decline sharply, to a merciless, dull spot of muteness. Living in this speechless world, is perhaps much braver than we’re willing to give it credit. Out of bare ignorance, it must feel like blackhole, which no light can ever penetrate. This life of forgetfulness, forgetting, and to forget at a frightening pace. All things, present, near past and then distant past, information lost in this fretful deep well, things, names, places, and babbles.

Forget-me-not, dear father. For I’m your loving daughter, who may one day follow your footsteps, like many demented others. How rapidly this disease grows, accelerates to invade the most private thoughts and not so private. The most cherished ideals, blighted in the brain, just as vices of every deplorable sin, leaving no room for confessions, amendments, let alone forgiveness. To become blank slate, a vacuum without any traces of vices, or virtues, records of ever praying at evensong. A flat line, father, is all you display, mere shadow of yourself without smiles, breathing expressionless and wordless, statued on the sofa or lying stiff on bed. Mother by your side, as ever; we around, but a faceless number to you. Your books, your writing desk stares at you, dear father. Even the inanimate speaks volumes.

Why though, father dear, my sorrows, vapid, unbound. I miss you. I miss you. I get claustrophobic, thinking of you. I know not, how you feel in your mind, claustrophobia of a kind? Indescribable that you will never be able to express. No more, no less, it is you though, who ultimately carries the burden of wealth in that paradoxical net of your brain, knitting this wealth of knowledge of all the lights, the world cannot see. Nor reach new heights. Knowledge of this ugly barred condition, eludes wisdom and sanity, the world waits to garner more brain as much brawn.

There shouldn’t be a need

But there is.

For Rainbows and letters and Pride,

I mean.

There shouldn’t be a need

But there is.

I never discuss my own sexuality.

Probably this is true of most people.

I don’t wear a badge saying “I’m straight”,

Whatever that means.

Because I’ve never been attacked or abused

Or put down

Or discriminated against

For being straight,

Just like I’ve never been attacked or abused

Or put down

Or discriminated against

For being white.

“It’s not natural”

They say,

Though it’s more natural than fake tan

And plastic surgery

And whitening your teeth

Or carrying a gun,

All of which are deemed perfectly fine

(Though not mentioned in the Bible, the Quran or any other religious book I know of.)

So, it’s true.

There shouldn’t be a need.

But there is!