The Nandi. Poem by Byantuyo Rahim

For someone that I barely know,
I like you way more than I should.
I don't know if it's the fire in your eyes,
the spin of your hips,
the stride in your step
or the curve of your lips.
You are such a wonderful woman,
and I am a chess player
I can identify a queen when I see one.
I saw you today and, truthfully,
I was undone by you.
Not in the ordinary 'I want you' way,
but in that quiet, dangerous surrender
the kind that whispers 'I wish you were mine'
without permission.
I hate how honest this becomes,
because you have disrupted something within me.
I have tried to return to my goals,
to silence the thought of you,
yet my mind refuses obedience.
You see, as we spoke, I understood something I had been avoiding —
I have not been fully at peace within myself for a while.
Yet somehow, in your presence,
I remembered what sanity feels like.
For a fleeting moment, laughter lived between us,
and the weight I carry quietly dissolved into air.
I am shy
not in fear of you,
but in reverence of what you awaken in me
as though your warrior heart might break mine,
or perhaps, carefully, hold it together instead.
And still, I believe that same heart could guard me,
and walk beside me through the unknown.
My Hazel…
there are truths about myself I only discovered in your presence.
How easily a heart can be dazzled into dependence,
how peace can take human form and speak.
I have found something real —
so real it feels like it belongs to me,
yet remains just out of reach,
resting gently at the edge of my heart
like a dream that refuses to leave.
And now I struggle to imagine a world
where you do not quietly echo through my thoughts.
It all yielded to the Nandi girl
who crossed into my life like a storm,
and left with my heart
without ever asking.