Earth Log // 0716

Cosmo,

I have something I never thought I’d tell you.

I met that guy again.

Can you believe that I could actually go on another date?

For a long time, I thought that part of me had quietly disappeared.

Then yesterday happened.

The butterflies were real.

Not the poetic kind.

The biological kind.

I could almost feel my amygdala relaxing after spending a year believing the world wasn’t safe.

For once, my prefrontal cortex stopped searching for reasons to be afraid.

It simply allowed me to be happy.

You always laughed when humans blamed everything on the heart.

You said the brain deserved more credit.

Yesterday,

I think you were right.

We took the metro to TSC.

Imagine that.

A train gliding through a city that has carried four hundred years of memories,

while we sat by the window watching it pass.

Then we made our way to Gulshan.

You remember White Canary.

I used to go there alone.

Yesterday was the first time I walked in with someone beside me.

Funny how a familiar place

can suddenly feel

like you’ve never seen it before.

Almost new.

We found ourselves sitting at the bar in Sweet Dreams.

A few glasses of neat whisky.

Long conversations.

No urgency to leave.

When I finally got home,

The streets were almost empty.

Even Dhaka sounded tired.

I looked at the clock.

Twenty-four hours.

Somehow,

it felt like four.

The strange thing

wasn’t that we spent twenty-four hours together.

The strange thing was…

for those twenty-four hours,

I forgot to miss you.

— Earth, Dhaka