There are evenings when his body returns,
But his spirit arrives later,
Smelling faintly of somewhere else.
Raphic Burdo, a poet from Sindh, the Land of Indus Civilization shares his poem
Soliloquy of an Almost Enough Woman
He loves me.
He says it in the way he holds our children,
Not hurriedly, not absentmindedly,
But with reverence.
Like they are made of my breath,
And he still owes me something holy for it.
He respects me.
He lets me live fully:
My mind, my work, my freedom,
All intact.
He calls me his equal,
And I believe he means it.
But I also know what he does not say.
There are evenings when his body returns,
But his spirit arrives later,
Smelling faintly of somewhere else.
Of a smile that wasn’t mine.
Of a softness that didn’t begin in our home.
He never confesses.
And I never accuse.
We both dance around the truth like seasoned diplomats,
Knowing a single word could unravel something
We’ve spent years building with tired, trembling hands.
I am not shattered.
I am not naive.
I know the shape of devotion,
And I know when it has edges missing.
There is no lipstick on his collar,
No unfamiliar perfume in the air.
Just silence.
Just pauses in conversation where desire once lived.
Just the echo of a man who loves you,
But not only you.
And still, I do not leave.
Not out of fear.
But because I have learned
That staying
Can also be an act of power!
I am not a victim in this.
I am the ground he walks on when he is weary.
The arms that hold the weight of his contradictions
Without folding.
But some nights, when the house quiets,
And the children dream in colors I gave them,
I sit alone.
Not lonely, but alone.
And I ask myself:
Is love still love when it is not whole?
Is respect still respect when it is shared in pieces?
I carry a sorrow
Too elegant for pity
And too sharp for denial.
It lives beneath my ribs,
Next to the knowledge that I am his compass,
But not always his destination.
I have given him everything
Except the parts of me that ache in silence.
Those I keep.
Those are mine.
They are the altar I return to
When I need to remember who I am
Without his gaze.
Yes, he loves me.
But love is not a rope.
It is not a leash.
It is a wind,
And sometimes it circles you only to drift away
To someone else’s window.
So I rise each morning
With grace stitched into my spine,
My dignity unshaken,
My sorrow folded neatly beneath my smile.
He may never be entirely mine.
But I,
I will always be wholly myself.
________________
