someday i'll love simba shi

i.

head first, arms outstretched, we took a leap of faith. i remember the first time you waited, hair wrung out in pearls, arms reaching into the tropical heat, a wry smile imbued across your face like a secret heard at last. as i catch your gaze in the distance, your palms a polka in synchronisation, i wonder how every person who has ever met you doesn’t fall at least a little in love – how their hearts don’t beat their wings a little, their souls baptised. with you, i was already lost; surrendered to my own will & could never conquer again.

ii.

i remember the night i asked you, under a milk-blue moon, to be my forever. late fall, it was. gazing into the sea-black sky & lying across the cold stone slabs, november moonlight pooling into our cheeks, i whispered i love you for the first time. & a thousand syllables later – under distant stars, nebular clouds & misty skies – i never looked away again.

iii.

what is the role of humanity in a post-agi world? dreams, i am told, are nothing more than regrets from our past lives, but i dream it often – that in a few years, some say three, or five, or ten, ai will do everything that we can do. at the behest of scaling laws, we watch our existence crumble into fragments. will it lift us from maslow's hierarchy or reduce us to hollows? can we live our lives the way the dead chase after days? do we have souls? can they love like we used to, wrapping their arms around the nape of their necks, tracing moons around their names? my mother told me i could be anything i wanted, but i choose to be a humanist. tell me i was born to taste your lips, our bodies folded in fabric wet as wounds. like a true ilya – i love you all.

iv.

& if this is the end, i wish we never meet again in any life or universe.