Livin-in

Sometimes, she would leave about strands of her hair red green over the floor, rolling in circles, to some mild invisible breeze. Playing tiny games till long after she's gone. Would have her earrings removed and slid underneath the pillow case, because they were too dangling to be worn around at home. And this, I would discover weeks later. One by one, many of her hair-clutches would disappear and stock up at my house. And by each day, her hair would hence grow, wild and untamed. Her head too. Corners of my room would not smell of her perfume or of her sweat. But of something else, those drops of secret vapor that leaked out the pores of her skin, and hung lose in the air, stood caged, for she kept my windows always shut. Her brassiere slung quietly beside my shirts, like she owned this place. The misplaced knife in the kitchen, the saucers out of place. And she never tightened the faucet enough and that dripped all night, not letting me sleep. Obsessing about her being in my house, livin-in, despite her having moved out days ago, weeks ago, months ago.

..

Before this: here

Perfume

My world of unhindered glee begins from under his nostrils. There is the half day old stubble, invisible but still there, brushes rough against my fingertips. A remnant aftershave under the chin, around the neck. 

Faint wriggling odor of deodorant off his arms. Last night's dish-wash mildly, mildly oozing out the pores of his palms. That faint lemon fragrance and our vague month old romance. 

His third shirt in one day. Sometimes that one shirt for three days. There is an odor of love that lives locked among those threads of fabric. In those checks and in those colors. There is that faded intimacy growing stronger by the moment. The blinded rush of passion. The dissolving taste of mouths. Leaving behind, thoughtful aftertastes. 

That last for days, sometimes for even weeks before they are written down about. Explicitly. Sans inhibition, like in the act of love itself. 

Life, lazy, languid. Time, we believe must be moving. Watches tied around tens of thousands of tiny wrists in the world must be ticking, because we believe they must. But we can't see that happen. 

Where we are, temporarily, in this exact fucking spot in time and space, our interlocked co-ordinates, I do not want to care. Whether it does or does not.

I am only lost. Only lost. I have even forgotten myself. Usurping the un-bottled perfume that exudes when our souls cuddle. Momentarily. Or so.

Idyll

When there is just the two of us in the room, and I am intently staring at how conspicuously his eyebrows meet, or the depression on his upper lip and talking about it, there is actually three of us in the room, I say. There is obviously the two of us in flesh and soul. And besides, there is another me. Right beside us, the couple. Sitting perpendicular to the axis that connects the two of us. Quietly, existing with large eyes she, the third person, isn't taking notes or anything. She is noticing the passage of moments. And submerging in our heavenly inaction. I tell him about her. Ask him to keep looking only at me though, and not get distracted by searching for where she is. Instead, he tells me, there is actually four of us in the room. I jump to an alarm, looking for that other woman of his imagination. But then he adds. There is obviously the two of us in flesh and soul. Then there is the other me, who I just mentioned. And then there is the other him. The fourth person. Our two other persons spare us a glance, and then continue at each other. We the real ones, end up sometimes as reflections and then sometimes those distant observers are the apparitions and we stay real. Amid such fluctuations, we inch closer to an idyll.

Between Lovers

They kicked it off on a good note. On a note of mutual ecstasy. Literally speaking, if the note were a note, you could see that chit of white paper with utter profanities scribbled on it lying between the distant silhouette of their legs as they walked away, holding hands and letting go, holding hands and letting go. They believed they owed too much to the coincidence that made them together. And that was the only one trait of gratefulness they had toward anything on the whole. For the rest, sometimes their misanthropy would tie them together, sometimes the endless talk of truths and illusions. Sometimes, the art they were about to unravel would make their hair stand up, sometimes it would be the intoxication or the libido. In that phase, when long time passed in slow undulating curves when they were away and in one sudden shot of alacrity when they sat talking, and undoing each others' minds, things were mostly this way. They relished their secret life under covers. They sewed together promises, of travelling to unknown countries and abandoned islands. Of cutting themselves out. Of knowing peace. The one within themselves. He and she, they would do their own curious experiments with life and then possibly for suitable stretches of time, merge into one person. Can you even imagine, what that would be like? Can you?

Later, much later, however, a certain immunity to whatever was unreal guarded their minds. The thick curtain of reality that hid their magnificent persons hung lose right before their eyes. Shrouding everything. Everything. They couldn't even see each other. Their sewn promises were left knotted, somewhere in the corners of the room in which they began. The love didn't wear out as much as how much the pinches and pinches of salt you are expected to take life with, coated it. Lathed it with true sounding lies. Reducing them to some two people, who instead of merging, began suspiciously looking deep into their systems. So as to fathom, how, just how, they were humanly capable of kicking it off as neatly as that.

Between Lovers. Between Lovers. 

Ca·dence

Our pumpkin colored cheeks, mild orange cum pink. Where the flesh shallows into tiny dimples. The glory on our white faces. Enchanted with stolen smooches. We, instantaneously are closer to the skies. If we jump and raise our ankles an inch above the gravel roof, we would gather a bit of the grey clouds under our fingernails. A bit of those unbounded water bearing uncut giants that hung low, undifferentiated from one another. One bit of them in our fingernails. And then we would stand facing the other and shine. With the aura of the future and the rust of the past both lost. Locked in one precise moment. Our gargantuan shadows crisscrossing each other on the wall. Like our true demons within. Unshackled, unsoiled and beautiful. Unafraid of being seen. Or indulging in the forbidden. 

Fossils

Past few hours ago feels like an ancient past. Figments of one day separated by half real half dream stretches of time, when I am with you. One single day lasts longer than twenty four hours. Morning feels as if the morning from yesterday. Midnight feels closer to dawn than it actually is. I see notice a multitude of shades. Magenta, white, vermilion. I see denial and a constructive effort to forget. Run over erase. Hear the jingling of trinkets. And insane flashes of light. Look down at the pool of water from above the balcony, and how the stars reflect. The lone few stars in a grey plate of a sky with one dot of a full moon. With its aura rippling on the surface of the water. I see long tumultuous drives in the rain and the storm. A merciless wind and the tearing apart of coagulated water on streets by tires under ruthless feet. Hear confessions of failed love. I see dormant volcanoes within quiet heads.

And him. The other him, the one who is not you. I see him, the faces that he shows me. His stunted bearded well to do face. His mother's and father's. And everything. I sit talking for hours, to check if my heart beats. But doesn't.

I wait for the spaces in time when I see you. You, the alternator of definitions. The twister of destinies. Clasp your hands on my chest to check if you make it rise up and down. Do you drag me out of my perennial comatose? Do you chase me into the jungles of my mind, where I seek exile?

I see conchs, holy fire. And a dozen people. Men with silence draped overtheir faces. Women with indignation. And wailing children. All this, besides the evident pointlessness of our existence.

Besides the one tiny point that we have made already, by peeking into each other, whenever we have the privilege of company, the liberty to experiment. See outside of. That's the part to remember.

Rest of the day's trivia, won't be held anyway as a memory. Or carried ahead. Because it's a mere arrangement of fossils.  

Excerpt

Excerpt from Silver Linings Playbook:

..

Pat: How'd you  lose your job?

Tiffany: By..having sex with everybody in the office.

Pat: Everybody?!

Tiffany: I was very depressed after Tommy died, it was a lot of people.

Pat: We don't have to talk about it.

Tiffany: Thanks.

Pat: How many were they?

Tiffany: Eleven.

Pat: Wow!

Tiffany: I know.

Pat: I'm not gonna talk about it anymore

Tiffany: Okay.

Pat: Can I ask you one more question? Were there any women?

Tiffany: Yes.

Pat: What was that like?

Tiffany: Hot!

Pat: Jesus Christ. Was it like.. older women, a sexy teacher who wants to seduce you--

Tiffany: Made me sit on her lap and do things? Yeah.

Pat: What? You sat on her lap?

Tiffany: Mm-hmm.

I quote this copious dialogue from this seemingly romantic comedy of a movie because, it keeps running in my head. On repeat. So the only way out is to write it out. Soon after that Tiffany, dragged down the table cloth, making all the cutlery crash on the floor when Pat casually confessed that he thought she was kind of a promiscuous bitch. Tiffany let lose and claimed to be a crazy slut with a dead husband. She said she opened up to him and he judged her. Now that's an intimate revelation. And this is a long post. 

Excerpt from Unaccustomed Earth:

I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you. It was another winter in Massachusetts, thirty years after you and your parents had first gone away. In February, Giovanna got in touch to say she had heard the news from Paola. A small obituary ran in The New York Times. By then I needed no proof of your absence from the world; I felt it as plainly and implacably as the cells that were gathering and shaping themselves in my body. Those cold, dark days I spent in bed, unable to speak, burning with new life but mourning your death, went unquestioned by Navin, who had already begun to take a quiet pride in my condition. My mother, who called often from India to check on me, had heard too. "Remember the Chaudhuris, the family that once stayed with us?" she began. It might have been your child but this was not the case. We had been careful, and you had left nothing behind.

I don't know why I quote this. Probably because this story is engraved on my heart. Hema (the narrator) married Navin, the man her parents chose for her after she came back from a romantic getaway with Kaushik (the one who was killed soon after). Hema, must have fallen for Kaushik. Must've. But she married Navin, out of convenience. Probably. Later, she quietly hoped that she was pregnant with Kaushik's child, but she knew she wasn't. We always wish, the one we love, left something behind with us. But he doesn't does he? We are so careful, and un-fuckin-touchable, he doen't leave a sign. Not a single strand of hair lying on the floor, not the crushed pillow, or the purple love bite on the shoulder.