I keep combing my hair, and all I gather are strands fallen to the floor. "Is it a big deal?" he asks, eyes half-interested.
Isn't it? I whisper silently to myself.
That's how I've been taught to love - like the women I once read about in books.
When I finally had someone to call mine, I realized the fantasy was kinder than reality.
He no longer holds the comb the way I longed for - not to braid my hair, not to trace the weight of it with tenderness.
These days, if his hand reaches for the comb, it's only to leave my hair loose - sorted, not touched.
I still remember meeting Rashi five years ago during college orientation.
She sat beside me, her hair open like a quiet rebellion. That moment marked the beginning of something I didn't yet understand.
Rashi had way with her words- slow, deliberate, like raindrops on parched earth. Her conversations weren't loud; they drowned you gently.
One night, I found her lying in the mud, her white churidar stained with soil, laughter bubbling through her. The scene caught me off guard - earth against fabric, spirit against norms. Something stirred inside me: she was bare before the world, and I felt guilty for stealing glances, for feeling... something. What was it?
I am a married woman now.
Still, that memory plays on loop - like a scene tucked into my body, surfacing each time I try to make love to my husband.
Yes, try. Because what he seeks is release, not connection. I don't hate him. I don't blame him. I simply expect nothing anymore.
Years of marriage have taught me a strange truth: perhaps neither of us knows how to love. He cannot love me, not the version he hoped for. And I cannot love him because he is not the wife I wanted.
