PROHIBITED

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Like wildlife reserves, even relations come with their own well demarcated, accessible and prohibited zones. There are these spaces where everyone is allowed. Every single soul, in their free, undisturbed roam can go wandering without any inhibition or even bothering to measure the consequences of their doings. Such spaces naturally come with an uncalled safety. There's really no one to probe you with the protectiveness of it all. Simply being ...there, letting yourself uncoil along the tide of your independent thoughts, you cannot help but feel immensely secured. And on the other hand there are these prohibited zones marked with red on your map, where we don't even desire to be present in person to feel the vulnerability. The very demarcation, the fact of being unguarded and above all, the fear in our heart, pursues our mind with an alacrity that manages to keep us away from such zones and their privacies forever intact.

I regret that I loved you from the accessible space in me. However, it really saddens me to absorb the idea of letting you into that region, coming right up close to my feelings. And just when I had my love plucked out of my heart, blossoming and fragrant and have kept it on your palm, hoping you would cherish it forever, the same way I did it for you, you closed your fingers and crushed those
breathing petals. Killing me altogether.

But then, I also loved you enough to keep aside a prohibited zone for myself, where no one dared to venture. Not you. Not anyone. Up there in my protected solitude, where the most dangerous animals are believed to reside, my feelings wander free - untouched and true at its heart. And sometimes, when the fact of being killed by you on the outer spaces of my world becomes a regret, it is those very feelings in my heart that becomes those wild, feared animals that keeps the world at bay and you, tightly held against my chest.

© Sobhan Pramanik