Dear Ophelia,
I know this is not your name. But I am going to call you by this for the time being. I can call you by other names as well. You can be my rosy cheeked girl, my Rubaba-veiled woman, or the aroma of a starry night. Whatever I call you, it all means that you reside in my heart like a petal of the prettiest flower with all its grandeur and magnificence.
I have been having dreams about our first rain walk. That crystal clear day with my hands slowly wrapping around your waist. It was like a stream of water sliding into a fountain deep within a mountain. My heart had the fresh air of an unpolluted sea.
As I was saying, I have been having that dream. Of you walking beside me with all the tenderness you had in your heart. I touched you for the first time, kissed your neck with all the affection I could master at that moment. A sense of rapture overcame me, intoxicating my sense with the odor of a nostalgia. The memory of this earths first love suddenly manifested itself in my brain like a flower bud within a heap of dirt.
From that day on, we had so many rains, tons of kisses. We held hands as if this is the only way our heart can beat.
Dear Ophelia,
I hope you understand what I am trying to say here. All I am saying is, I love you. The veins of my heart carry the air of your lungs. My mind drifts away sometimes but it never forgets to take you along.
It’s a pleasure, a pain, a wonder, and it crosses my consciousness like a dream sequence. Like a mirrors’ reflection within a mirror appears to be infinite in number, the amount of my affection for you is immeasurable.
I don’t know if this is in any way sounding like a death-letter, but just to clarify, this is not. But it doesn’t mean I am not dying. The veins that carry your breath are slowly drying. The veins are feeling suffocated within my chest like a trapped butterfly. It needs your breath to feed onto in order to survive.
Dear Ophelia,
This is not your name. Your name is much more beautiful. Your name has that feeling of an air that comes from cloudy skies. Your name sounds likes as if a herd of cloud breathed into a garden of lively lilies. In your name, there is the calmness of a lonely lake, the solitude of an old mansion, lost deep within a forest.
You have a beautiful name, the most beautiful one. And you have beautiful eyes with the most magnificent freckles. The freckles around your iris looks like supernovas happening quietly in a distant galaxy. In the stretch marks of your skin, there is the line of waves. And in the lips of yours there is an orchard of splendid cherries.
All these things are merged within you. This is why you are my peaceful abode, the place I call home. It’s also my shrine, my temple, and my whole world.
I won’t die without you. You won’t die without me. But it’s hard to leave one’s home. It feels like ripping an umbilical cord and separating the womb from the baby.
Be my womb, remain my home, stay as you are like my temple. I will bring offerings every now and then, and I will bestow at your feet the essence of my life with the hope that you will bless my heart with the nectar of eternal suns.
Yours Truly…
Abdullah Rayhan is a student of English Literature at Jahangirnagar University.