A Stupid Animal

Iman Poorfarokh©

Love, we were taught, comes in one colour:
white dress, white lies, white picket certainty.
But I have learned it bleeds in shades
bruise-purple of almost,
scar-pink of too late,
the sick yellow of timing
that mocks us with its cruelty.

I am washing dishes when your message arrives
my hands in grey water, grease floating like small continents
And I have to grip the counter
because your words
three lines, nothing profound
undo me in ways I didn't know I could come apart.

You've misspelt "definitely" again,
that specific failure of autocorrect you never fix,
and you always sign off with "x" even in serious messages,
that small intimacy you give to everyone
and it's this, these stupid details,
that makes me want to burn my life down.

The tea towel in my hand still smells of last night's dinner,
ordinary things, the architecture of a life I built
because I was too afraid to build anything else,
and on my phone: another notification,
another child dead in Gaza,
another building turned to bone and dust,
And I am standing here intact
breaking apart over someone I've never even touched.

I scroll past the rubble to find your message.
I scroll past the mothers screaming
to see if you've read my reply.
The algorithm feeds me genocide and your face
in the same breath
and I have learned to hold both:
the world ending
And my heart is breaking over you
as if they're equivalent tragedies.

They're not.
I know they're not.
But the heart is a stupid animal
That doesn't understand scale.
Or maybe I do understand
And this is worse
Maybe I choose the smaller grief
because it's one I can hold,
because wanting you asks nothing of me
except to keep wanting.

You live somewhere with different birds, different rain,
and I've memorised your timezone like a second heartbeat—
when you're waking, when you're sleeping,
when you're most likely to be lonely enough
to need me.
I have built a religion out of your sporadic attention:
morning prayers to your timezone,
evening vespers of rereading your messages,
the sacrament of typing and deleting,
typing and deleting,
never sending.

Last week I saw you—no, not you,
someone with your shoulders, that particular slope
of someone carrying more than they should
and I followed them for three streets,
My heart is doing that stupid thing hearts do,
Before I remembered: you are a screen away
and a lifetime away
And those aren't the same distance at all.

Someone asks if I'm alright.

I say I'm fine.
I am never fine.
My tea has gone cold in the cup.
Here's what I don't say in my careful replies:
I have invented a life for us in my head
where we are making breakfast,
where you are reading the news aloud
in that voice you use when you're angry,
when your accent gets thicker and you can't sit still,
where I am allowed to touch you.

But if I'm honest
And when am I ever honest
I don't want you.
I want the version of me
who would have been brave enough to choose you,
Who didn't build this small safe life
out of fear and exhaustion,
who said yes to the risk
instead of yes to the comfortable slow death
of never trying.

You are the fantasy I use to make this bearable.
I know all this.
I have known this for months.
And I am still here, still refreshing,
which means the knowing is another kind of hiding,
means I am performing self-awareness
the way other people perform happiness,
means even this poem is a way of not changing.

Another voice note at 2am
You're crying about the news again,
about the UN doing nothing,
about how we are all complicit,
about borders and bombs and the price of looking away
And you say my name like it means something,
like I am your person,
and something in my chest
cracks open like a window I didn't know was sealed.

I want you.

What if I'm wrong?
What if this isn't fantasy?
What if I've talked myself out of something real
because real things require risk
And I have made myself so small
I've forgotten how to reach?

No.
No, that's another story I tell myself,
another way to keep the longing alive,
to avoid the test of having,
The disappointment of arrival.
I am a coward who loves you
from the only distance I can manage
far enough that you can't see
how small I've made myself,
close enough that I can pretend
This means something.

I refresh the news.
Thirty dead. Fifty dead. A hundred.
I refresh your Instagram.
You've posted a song. A show. Your dog.
I have not slept properly in weeks.
I have not looked my own life in the face
since I learned your name
and I am disappearing into this,
becoming less than I was,
smaller than I meant to be.

I put my phone face down on the counter.
I finish the dishes.
I do not text back immediately
because I am learning—slowly, badly
that some loves are meant to starve.
Outside, the streetlights are coming on,
the ordinary machinery of evening,
And somewhere you are watching
a different sky darkens,
not thinking about me at all.

I have made a soulmate out of someone
who sends me memes and voice notes
and does the same
for six other people
in six other time zones,
calling it fate when it's just cowardice,
calling it a connection when it's just
Two people scared of their own lives.

Tomorrow I will wake up
And the news will be worse
And you will still be impossible
And I will still be here.

Soulmates can mean:
the person you use to avoid becoming who you actually are.
Or the person who shows you
who you've been afraid to become.
I don't know which one you are.
I know I'll never find out.