Unknowable

how do you explain that love 
is a monstrous shape-shifting beast
and you can never tell what form it will assume next?–

will it dazzle you,
like a too-bright ray of light 
filtering through a too-wide gap 
in the curtains of a small cold room,
its form so breathtaking that
despite all the poems you could write about it 
you don't even really want to touch it?

or is it going to be the ghost
that startles you again only when you're alone,
when you realize no way in hell 
will you ever make it on your own?

or is it yet again, on some other hazy night, 
nothing but a sad girl's smoky cinnamon voice 
undulating in the background of your undulating mind, 
somewhere inside where you
still wait for the beautiful things to make sense? –

the dancing the colors the flowers the lights the laughter 
and 
the blindingly radiant people 
who seem to somehow know what it is; 
who you don't think will ever understand why sometimes
you just need to quietly observe,
because really, 
I heard you swearing, you said,

"I swear all this talking is just me trying to understand it;
I still find myself wishing I could."

Shehrin Hossain is in her 3rd year, studying English literature at North South University. Sometimes she writes, although mostly she thinks about writing.