50 Questions to Ask Your Partner

"What would be an absolutely perfect afternoon to you?"

"Do you fear growing old?"

"If you had one last day to live, what would you spend it doing?"

Some days it's "25 questions to ask your lover" or,

"17 things they'd do if they truly loved you."

You ask me questions you found on Pinterest or Tumblr, and I answer them as patiently as I can.

I know millions and billions of facts about you,

If I wrote them on post-it notes and burnt them on my windowsill, wishing they turned into stars,

Nighttime would burn brighter than the sole Sun ever could.

I bring you a selection of your favourite desserts according to the day of the week, and you

match my ties to my shirts because you know I have terrible taste in fashion –

I do not watch your favourite movies without you,

You always make sure I have a wooden spoon and not a metal one, because I'd burn right through my tongue trying to have soup.

I don't put uncooked onions in the salad because I know how much the flavour disgusts you,

You stay up at night when I have to finish dreary, repetitive tasks.

"What are we doing wrong?" I ask myself as I

pull up methods and ways to rekindle one's relationship, friendship, companionship, anything-ship;

At the hopes of salvaging whatever I could.

The tabs keep piling up on top on one another like unwashed laundry, and they all say,

We are doing it right.

But when I hold your hand, I can no longer read

What you tell me in Morse with each twitch and squeeze you give -

Trust me, I spent nights trying to decipher the pattern.

When you hold me, you place your ear away from where my heart is,

which, I suspect is because you know it doesn't beat faster every time we touch anymore.

Hours feel like hours and not minutes when we are together.

We play ball with compliments and gifts and kind acts of service.

We race to apologizing first.

"Let me," we both say and try to take the fall, the burden, instead of trying to split it.

It's a tug of war, and none of us wants to let go.

I stay, and I think you do too,

Because I still hope,

One day I'll wake up feeling loved and able to love again.

Upoma Aziz is a slouching, crouching, grouchy Goblin with a hoarding problem. Tell her to declutter her desk and her mind at upoma.aziz@gmail.com