Writers Jam

love tastes like burnt sugar on a cold tongue sweet only in the beginning, then bitter where it stays too long, leaving behind a charred aftertaste you spend years naming as nostalgia. it is the ghost of tea that once steeped in silence, lukewarm and left untouched beside apology. it’s the sip you take after a fight when the world inside the cup is too quiet to forgive you. love is the iron aftertaste of a blood- sworn promise, sealed in a moment of trembling when eyes were glass and hearts were fists. it is warm bread torn between shaking hands, shared on a monsoon day when the power was out and so were our truths. sometimes, love tastes like stolen fruit - overripe, forbidden, its juice dripping down your wrist like guilt disguised as indulgence. you lick it clean and call it intimacy even though it rots the moment it’s named. other times, it is the flavor of rain on rusted rooftops- metallic and ancient, like secrets passed down through generations of women who loved too quietly. it is chalk dust in your throat from writing “I miss you” on the blackboard of a closed room. it is eraser shavings on your tongue from all the names you’ve tried to forget. love is the salt from tears you refused to admit were yours you said it was the wind, the smoke, the onions, anything but the silence left you in. and still, you taste him in every dish you make alone even in the mangoes he loved peeled just right and in the chocolates you swore you’d save, but never could. it is the ash of unsent letters, burned for warmth in a winter where no one returned your calls. you watch the flames as if they’ll write you back. it is the taste of someone else’s breath in a kiss you didn’t expect one that made you believe even dying could be beautiful if done in someone’s arms. love tastes like home but only the kind you run from. It is the flavor of burnt rotis and your mother’s silence folded into the chawal-daal (into your bones) she makes when words run dry and eyes are tired. it’s the comfort food of grief, the kind you eat crying while pretending you’re just sleepy. it is your father’s unfinished stories that trailed off mid-sentence whenever the word “feelings” walked in. it is your father’s holiday special paneer that’s too spicy, paratha crisped with pride, served with stories he never finishes. his way of saying “I’m here,” without ever saying anything. love is your sister’s strawberry lip balm, the one she hides in her bag but always lets you steal. it is her half-bitten ice cream cone you finish even when it’s melting- a soft rebellion against time. It is your brother’s untied shoelace and the way you both eat ice cream after ruining dinner, laughing through sticky fingers and things you’ll never say aloud. the mango pickle that stung too much but you ate anyway because nani made it. it is chole bhature in the college mess with a friend who knew your name before you did. the laughter that spills from plates, the pickle that burns, the memory that stays. it is your best friend’s laughter echoing down a corridor you can never return to, and his name lingering like cardamom on the edge of a memory you’ll pretend was just a dream. and if you’ve known him - the one who ruined coffee for you by loving it the same way you did, the one whose hoodie still makes your skin smell like want and regret then you’ve tasted the cruelest kind: the love that coats your mouth in hope but never nourishes. like chewing on poems that refuse to end. like wine that knows you too well. like mangoes in winter out of season, still you search the kind of love that tastes like confessions made in borrowed beds, laced with lies that sounded beautiful. the kind that made you write whole novels in your head but never one chapter in reality. love, in its truest taste, is everything you swallowed when you should have screamed. it is the unsaid “don’t go,” the untouched dinner, the unclicked photograph. it is the final bite - cold, quiet, left alone on the plate as the door closes.