مون

August sipped away like a bottle of wine
'Cause you were never mine

A year and a half ago, I first spoke to him, hoping for love. Now, as I lie on my room’s floor, bracing for the days of our separation, I clutch my stomach where it aches from missing him, and I cry. What can be said about young love? I fell for him on a rainy day in the most clichéd way, and now, like all stories, this love must end with a departure. It all felt like a storybook—only this time, the pain in my stomach and chest is real. Instead of reading the lines, I lived them. I felt his touch, and August witnessed our last moments together. Now, it’s just him, me, a migration, and an ending. I’m still unsure if it was the right decision. Was it necessary? Could it have been avoided? Should our 22-year-old selves have been bound together forever? Should we be in love forever at 22? How has this love changed me? What was I before him, and who am I now? And again, was this change necessary? Then again, maybe all these questions are just clichés of a romance novel. And I, the heroine, am playing the role of the stereotypical woman who leaves her relationship behind. 

When I read Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour two years ago, and she said, “Free, body and soul free,” I whispered it to myself at least 20 times. Free, free, free. Freedom from all the masculinities of the world. Freedom from my father. Freedom from the girl who pretended to be a man. Freedom from the masculinity I had to endure every day. And then, something changed. A man came into my life—still masculine, yet he made space for my femininity. For the first time, I realized I might be more comfortable in this feminine form. I was scared. Others shouldn’t have noticed that I was a woman, but he did. He saw something in me that I had always wanted him to see, forever. But what is forever and will it ever be owned by young loves? 

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