Love is magic. People, however, are not wizards.

He went out with Nair to buy some magic for their home. Their list was almost completely crossed-off now, one final trip to a couple of stores and all that was left was a wedding. Mike wasn’t too keen about the idea of finishing their home with an impending danger looming before them. Nonetheless, Nair was firm in her resolution.

“I want you to remember me like this, Mike. It’s only fair,” she said, inches from him on the rattling bus, “that I give you one last good memory before we live in tomorrow’s bad one forever. I want you to live in the present one last time before we start living in the past.” She was quiet, composed, but her face was screaming. You could definitely suppress a scream, but silence in difficulties was louder.

There was a wall in his head he couldn’t scale, with a door that locked him away from his words. He begged himself to say anything to make her feel better, knowing full-well that the bandage of words peeled off easily. Perhaps the best thing to do was hold her hand, remind her that he was there for her. Her hand was cold and shaking, but she managed a fleeting smile that seemed to weigh down on her. In the end, even a smile was faster than us, leaving our lips behind, for just like people, they didn’t like everyone’s company.

He spoke her name, whispered it, and she smiled, tittered even. Leening into him, she asked, “You still like saying my name?”

“Always.”

They rode past a wall covered top to bottom with posters of the president. A couple of feet away from it was an animated wall graffiti that depicted the president hailing a mass of supporters, small children were actually squealing, clapping, and chucking jasmine and sunflowers at him. Every time the president walked past them, the scene replayed.

“Even when I rejected you the first time?” she said.

“What’s got you thinking about that now?” He smiled.

“Just answer me.”

Sighing, Mike answered, “I kept whispering it to myself nonetheless.”

“Why, Mike? Why so much love?”

She wants a flowery answer, I think.

His smile beat the answer to his lips. It was an instinct. He was born to smile at her.

How can I say how much I love you without betraying my obsession? He looked around, anxious of how his words might be lost in translation to people’s ears. After all, love was a language few could understand let alone speak. An old man sat behind them, leening away from a brunette whose handbag separated their seats.

Will they accuse me of exaggeration if I say the truth about my feelings? Will they judge me and place me in the prison of their twisted imagination until I can’t escape the shackles of my head?

He stammered, tittering.

“What?” Nair, holding his hand, asked.

You can’t explain love, Nair. I saw you and I couldn’t see anyone else. Suddenly, in my head and all around me, you were there. Every time I saw a girl, no matter how beautiful, your face appeared instead of hers. You weren’t with me, but I took you everywhere I went, rather I found you wherever I turned my head. My mind painted me a picture of your face and perfected it with the colors of my imagination. But your face is only perfected with your voice, a complete portrait that speaks to me. Now tell me, Nair, how can I say all that to you and not be judged for what I can’t control?

“Come on,” she smiled, “you are an author, aren’t you? You are supposed to know how to describe your love.”

I can’t give you a bouquet of roses but I can give you a rose of words. At least this one won’t wither and die. “Nair,” he finally said, “I was homeless until you took me into your arms.”

“Oh, Mike. All that?” Her face broke into a look of helpless plea. Her loose curls danced behind her in the blowing wind, sunlight rippling across her skin. She didn’t close the window.

He tried to turn his face away, wondering, without answer, however he managed to win her love. Could love even be won, or was it a destiny you couldn’t refuse? He hoped it was destiny, because he knew he was too weak to win something as huge as a game of love.

Every expression she made, every bat of her eyelashes, even her beautiful chestnut eyes, she shared with him. But that wasn’t all, she shared with him what gave her life. Love was a sharing of hearts, because you couldn’t keep a heart in one chest forever. And then he looked again, only to see the same expression that made him certain of his weakness. How could a single smile make people smile? Perhaps lips were somehow connected to the same memory, thus the shared smile.

“And so much more that I can’t describe,” he confessed. “The only description I can find is confessing to you all the time. Because, at least for me, you can’t confess love just a single time.”

“Mike, I will say yes every time.” She smiled.

“I know,” he whispered. And he whispered her name again; this time, however, she didn’t hear it.