I sit in the corner,
watching them from the kitchen window,
where the light falls soft,
like an old memory they don’t share.
My parents never hold hands
unless it’s in the gurdwara,
where the priest whispers in a language
I’m still learning to understand.
I wonder sometimes—
what does it mean
to love someone you didn’t choose?
To wake up next to a stranger
who once wore a different name,
a different life,
a different love?
My mother’s hands are always moving,
folding, stirring,
fixing the things that need fixing
but never asking
if she’s allowed to need anything.
She doesn’t complain,
she doesn’t question,
and I watch her
as she settles into the shape of our home,
like it’s where she’s always belonged—
like she’s never wondered
what it would have been like
if she had been allowed to choose.
She tells me stories
of the family she left behind,
of the life she never lived,
but always in that quiet, steady way
that says she’s made her peace with it.
I don’t know if I should feel sorry for her,
or if I should just accept
that this is how love works—
that sometimes,
it’s something you inherit
like a second-hand suit
or the sound of a prayer
you didn’t choose but still repeat.
And my father,
he doesn’t say much.
His love is a slow, heavy thing,
like the earth moving beneath us,
unseen but felt.
I never hear him tell her
he loves her.
Not in the way that people say it
in the movies
or the stories I read in school.
He loves her with duty,
with sacrifice,
with the way he wakes up every day
to build this life
that sometimes feels too small
for all the things he carries inside.
But I see the way he looks at her
when he thinks I’m not watching—
it’s a kind of love,
I guess,
but it’s not a love I know how to name.
It’s like he’s given her his life,
but in exchange,
he’s given up the right to choose.
And that makes me wonder—
if love is something you give
or something you’re allowed to keep?
I don’t know much about love
except that I don’t know how to ask for it.
When I see them,
I don’t know if they’re happy.
But they’re still here,
still together,
and that has to mean something, right?
I don’t ask them
how their hearts feel
because I’m scared
they won’t have an answer
I can understand.
So I make my own,
in the silence of my room,
with the books they give me
and the stories they don’t tell.
Love, I think,
is what happens
when you stop asking
and just accept
what is.
Maybe that’s why I don’t know how to say it—
because I’ve only ever seen love
become something that’s “done”
but never something that’s “said”.
I think,
maybe love is like the food my mother makes,
or the way my father comes home every night—
it’s not always what you want,
but it’s always there.
And you learn to live with it
because that’s what love does—
it becomes the air you breathe,
the floor you walk on,
the way you learn to grow
even when the soil doesn’t feel soft enough.
I guess,
this is what I’ve learned
from their marriage,
from their silence—
that love isn’t always a choice,
but it’s always a way to keep going,
even when you don’t know
if you’ll ever feel “seen”.
And maybe,
just maybe,
that’s enough.