If there is one language common to the world, it is the language of affection. Attractions swells, sex sells, motherhood tears the body apart, nostalgia seeps into the soul, heartbreak reverberates in the thrum of our blood as humans continue to love and lose. I’ve been trying to encapsulate those affections that different languages across the world express, through a myriad of stunning words. Sensations of love, lust and loss are fleeting through the course of our lives and yet forever, as we grow into the people we are meant to be. Eternal. So here it is – a series of poetry that captures affection in every syllable and word.

Dictionary of Affections is The Zoya Project language, common to the world…

FANAA

‘Destruction of self for love’

I made a wish
Upon a shooting star,
That seemed to illuminate
The sky
As it went
From a heartless black
To
Purple, blue and silver
For just a second
And found you

And as we rewrote the stars
Redrew the constellations
Upon our bodies
With our fingers
I found a song
Skimming my bare skin
That penned into the cavities of my heart
The alignment of your name
Whispering secrets of the universe
In my ear
That the world was made
In the shape of our intertwined bodies.

But shooting stars
Aren’t wishes waiting to be made
They are simply meteoroids
Falling from the sky
And as you let go of my hand
The song ceased
The pen marks across my body
Scratched
To nothingness.
And wishes across the world
Died.
As a shooting stars turned meteors
Sped across the sky
To a darker dawn
Where the light of the sun
Makes them and their wishes
Obsolete.
उस इश्क़ में, उस फितूर में मैं फ़ना हूँ।
जैसे ढलता हुआ तारा गिरकर
अपनी पहचान को खो देता है।