Lumi and Neveah

Inner monologue: “Life is a bit sometimes. You don’t know what might happen the next moment. Currently having my lunch, keeping all my random thoughts aside. It’s been raining since morning. These days, my mind keeps drifting from here to there like the weather. The weather is so uncertain, so is my mind. 
 

Life feels so pathetic at this moment. Like, how unstable could it become for me? I wonder if I hadn’t met people on the way, and only if I hadn’t wasted so much time and effort on them! How amazing would it be for me? How can I blame the bad weather outside when I’m to blame for not taking the necessary equipment? I didn’t shut my window.... sometimes wonder when it all started… Maybe the day when I had learnt how to tie my shoelaces or when I could cross big roads on my own without needing the big warm hands of my father.”
*
Neveah wonders when it all began to feel less like a human connection and more like a train journey, meeting new people only to watch them leave at the next station. Perhaps this belief has begun to take root in her since the day she started losing people, even after giving her all. She often finds herself reminiscing about the letters she once wrote, wishing that the people she has lost, at least, could read them. 
 

In one of those unsent letters, she wrote: 
 

Dear best friend, 
 

It’s been so long since I last talked to you. I know I could text you and check up on you at any moment. But how can I do that when you have been the one to put winters in our hearts? Do your eyes still twinkle whenever you think of me? Or do you still have dimples when you hold back a laugh? Does your cat ‘furry’ still wet your bed? Do you not miss me? I still stare at our shared memories with affection and warmth. Is your life better when I’m not in the picture anymore? Why is it like that you’re more present in the memories you left than in the ones we made together?

“Lumi and Neveah” was the second runner-up in the poetry segment of the creative writing competition at NSU DEML 2025 Winter Fest.