Simone de Beauvoir, from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris, Sunday, 10 September 1939)
You and I are prehistoric flowers and I absolutely love the way you came to be.
Where are you? It's been 39 days since the leaves in my tea opened up, seasons going back at their heels, winter almost bleeding into itself. I think about you.
Hozier says he’d never love anyone that he knows would not misbehave. I mean, if you really think about it, misbehaving is just being aware of who you are. I think that you and I were cosmic brilliance. Like, the world was crumbling and the two of us were Loki and Loki branching out time like nobody else. You and I were the disturbance that made peace what peace is. You and I never made sense and isn’t that the most liberating thing ever? To finally transcend sanity, to love like lunatics?
But, where are you? It’s been 39 days and you, my prehistoric water flower, are not here beside me. Everything is now falling into place except me. I’m dying down into tranquility and damn those 18th century romantic poets who said that this would finally make sense.
The way you came to be is only characteristic of how you’re not here anymore. My cosmic disturbance is not here, oh, but, where are you?
Written by. Bhavya
Painting by. John Singer Sargent
Bhavya has a very specific energy — imagine a classical British drama but with a Saroj Khan-choreographed dance number. That's Bhavya. She has been writing poems for nearly a decade and humming Bollywood numbers for nearly two decades. Bhavya resides and revels in poetry, literature, films, shows, and good food. She's the embodiment of the academic aesthetic and is always happy when she's teaching anything to anyone.