The snow song

sixteen years is a long time
to share a bathroom mirror
and forget to see the other person.

you're Russian…
built from winter and stubbornness,
the kind of man who can stand at a window
and call it a conversation.

I’m Indian…
fire tucked under bangles and chores,
spice in the air even when I’m tired,
a whole festival folded into a Tuesday.

we used to touch like it mattered,
like the world might end
and the only proof we had lived
was the small heat of each other.

but time, time is a cheap landlord.
it collects daily.
it doesn’t care if you’re in love.
it wants the sink cleared.
it wants the floor swept.
it wants the trash out.

then one night…
nothing special…
your shirt smelling like outside,
my hands smelling like onions,
and my old laptop on autoplay
coughed up a song
like it had been saving it for us.

“Sneg kruzhitsya…”

snow is swirling.
even in our warm apartment
even in our city that never goes below 0’,
the snow came back…

Russian snow,
white as apology,
soft as the first time you said my name
and didn’t rush through it.

your face changed.
mine did too.
we both pretended not to notice…
because that’s what grown people do
when their hearts start acting young.

the melody moved through the rooms
and suddenly the years weren’t years…
they were just coats
we could take off
and leave in a heap by the door.

I remembered you smiling,
real smiling,
the kind that cracks a man open
and makes him look harmless.

you remembered me dancing in socks,
burning rice,
cursing in two languages
and then hugging you anyway.

the song kept turning,
snow turning,
and all that distance we’d built
out of pride and exhaustion
started to melt like cheap ice.

you didn’t say sorry.
I didn’t either.
we’re not saints.
we’re not poets.
we’re just two people
who stayed.

you reached for the volume button
and instead
your hand found my wrist.

I looked up…

and there you were…
not the husband
not the roommate
not the man who forgot to buy milk…
but the boy from another country
who once believed
this could work.

and I was there too…
not the wife
not the schedule
not the list of complaints…
but the girl from another world
who once decided
to trust your cold hands
with her hot heart.

we stood like that
while “Sneg kruzhitsya”
kept circling the air.

and in the slow spin of that Russian snow,
in the dumb miracle of a song
finding its way through laptop speakers,
thin and tinny through the static,
we found the old map…
the one with all our missing roads.

sixteen years.
two continents in one bed.
winter married to monsoon.
and still…

when the snow swirls,
even the toughest people
remember how to come home.