On Our 22nd Date, He Told Me I Overthink

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He tells me that I overthink. I do what I always do. I look at him and I give him a smile. Giving a blank look, he repeats that I overthink. But you see, his eyes look at me like I’m a tree and all my roots take a form of my thoughts which keep on growing on the inside more than what it grows on the outside.

I…I am a tree. I am a tree whose branches meet the branches of other trees up on the top towards the sky and make love in the presence of the otherwise indifferent universe. My thoughts can be that of a normal tree. I…I overthink. He keeps repeating it to me like the words he’s said are being recorded on a rosary.

When we went out on our first date, he asked me what it meant to live. I took three minutes and 28 seconds to tell him that it meant to hold something precious enough to never want to let it go. He asked me what it meant to hold something. I said it meant to think something as a part of themselves and it needed the same and equal amount of oxygen as oneself needed. He asked me when does one feel that they’d need the same and equal amount of oxygen that someone else breathed. I told him that when the world begins to seem like an art created only for you to enjoy with that one thing or person, you’d feel the need to breathe the same and equal amount of oxygen as someone else is breathing.

He smiled at how I thought; pure, and innocent for him. On the fifth date, he held my hand like my hands meant something precious enough to never want to let go. That day I smiled at him. I slept with my hand unwashed and thought of it as something that was capable of holding stars. On the eighth date, when he dropped me home and kissed me a good night, it felt as if he never wanted the kiss to end. He had to breathe the same and equal amount of oxygen that I breathed. I was in love. I cursed my lips to regenerate the upper layer of the skin two weeks later. It had no memory of kissing him the other night. On the 12th date, I decided to tell him that I loved him. He told me that my hands were a piece of art he’d want to hold for an entire lifetime. I didn’t have to tell him that I loved him. I guess, he loved me more than I would ever be able to love him. I looked at my hands, I didn’t feel as if they were a piece of art. And when I told him that, he said that I was overthinking and laughed it away.

On the 22nd date, I kept looking at my hands that still didn’t seem like a piece of art and he told me that I overthink. I told him that I believed in the way he thought but I couldn’t see it myself. He told me that I overthink. I told him that his eyes asked questions that his mouth wasn’t ready to ask and he told me that I overthink. I told him that he feels things he’s not ready to say. He told me that I overthink. I told him that he looks at me like I was a precious thing to him. And upon questioning whether he really thought so, he said that I overthink. Soon his statement went from I overthink to I overthink a lot. I wasn’t a normal tree anymore. I am a banyan tree. The branches will root and grow into another thought. I… I am a banyan tree housed in the body of an overthinker.