Happy Birthday, Anjali 🌸

Dear Anjali,

Another 10th December, another reason to be a little extra grateful that you exist.

We’ve moved through phases – from almost-strangers, to something more, to this comfortable “close friend who still knows a lot about me” stage. Through all of that, one thing stayed the same: you’ve always mattered to me.

I hope this year treats you gently. I hope you get more days where you actually feel understood, more people who notice the small efforts you put in, and more moments that make you quietly proud of yourself.

Even if we joke around a lot, I mean this seriously: I’m rooting for you. From a little distance sometimes, but always, genuinely, rooting for you.

Happy Birthday, Anjali. May your days open up for you like lilies in good light.

Five years ago, I let go of a hand
Not gently, not kindly — more like a storm
Raging through a world I couldn't understand,
When nothing in me felt safe or warm.

I was drowning in silence, in books, in grief,
Someone dear had slipped into the dark.
And all I knew was how to leave —
Not how to speak, or mend, or mark.

You came with light I wasn’t ready to hold,
Offered laughter where I carried loss.
But my hands were full of broken things,
And you paid the cost.

Now I hear you still care — a bittersweet song,
Soft as the memory of who we were.
And I wonder if I was the one who was wrong,
If time just made me blur.

I liked you more than I ever said,
But love felt like a foreign shore.
So I sank instead — in fear, in dread —
And closed the only open door.

I wish I’d left you kinder skies,
A softer end, not shards and flame.
But sometimes life just brutalizes
Every gentle name.

If you read this in the quiet air,
Know I was never meant to burn you so.
And though I couldn't stay back then,
I never meant to go.