One thousand and one texts

Lovers text. And text all the time. It's pretty much who they are. Gooey and cuddled up against each other via tiny telephonic devices. Their fingertips are like glued to the keypads. Writing love letters in shorthand. Baby this, baby that. And all that. No offense.

But mishaps happen. Disasters arise out of short message service. You wouldn't deny. Just one con of our non neanderthal lives. It's crazy, how inconspicuously some texts are lost. As simple as that. Just lost. Somewhere in the stratosphere/ionosphere, wherever. Never delivered. To the rightful other half of your heart. The godforsaken delivery notification beeps Pending and that's that. That sent text is pronounced dead forever.

It could've been a rosy text, it could've been a dirty text, a moist one sent from the faint lit fantasy of midnight, or anything for that matter. Very very momentary. A message whose message is very much contained in that very moment. And might be lost in the next.

If you're still reading this, allow me to make this banal assumption. What if. What if, one such lost sms, finds its way out to the erstwhile other half of your heart. Erstwhile. Months or years after whatever you'd wanted to say. Some crazy lustful night, depicting the exact technique in which you wanted to kiss him. Now that you're no longer together. I mean could it ever be more uncomfortable!

Monologue

Since long I have been planning to write this monologue. I wish to make it start like it were a dialogue. Of two people deeply involved in conversation. Talking about entirely unrelated ideas. But still involved. It's crazy I know. But who cares. And gradually that dialogue becomes a monologue. Because probably, the two ideas converge, when extended. Or because the two people were indeed one. One person, not two. Only they were under the impression that they were separate. But the one person was conversing with another shade of her own. And that's how my dialogue would translate into a monologue. It's crazy I know.

I get a lot more of these momentary mad ideas these days. Whenever I cross a street. Or stare at my monitor. Thoughtless. Unfinished sentences linger inside my head. Grey interiors flash again. Times come back, and whiz past. Mostly leave me unaffected. Because there is no time to breathe. No time to live. No time to pee. And this fatigue is driving me nuts. Venomous monotony is not a drop short of poison. For a mind as nascent as mine. This moment I am here, the next I am no-more.

What is to be done. Sometimes I remember, my greatest fear was that I would lose my ability to write. My uncontrollable urge to write. Write down, whatever's running inside me. The simple art of undoing my taut muscles. But today the paucity of words doesn't scare me. Somehow, I don't know how, but it doesn't. Probably I don't care that I don't write. Or have I found an alternative to writing. And am empowered by the more affordable choice.

My thoughts are so fleeting. They don't stay, I cannot remember. I cannot connect. Or build stories. Like I used to. My thoughts are random. Very wild. And make no sense at all. None. It's like I am in this unending monologue with myself. Realizing that all my stories, about sad and lonely people, written in the past few years, were indeed a monologue. And now all of them, have converged, when extended, into me.

Monologue. 
There is a sect of people who are meant never to be satisfied. In love. No offense, meant or taken. This is just a fact stated, honestly. And nobody is to blame. Probably fate conspires to get the hearts of the captioned people  broken irreversibly as soon as there is love in sight. Or probably these people are devoid of that gene that produces contentment. Somehow, anyhow, they are perennially shattered. Angry. In waiting.

I once met a man such. And a woman such. And apparently were reflections of each other with a minor alteration of gender. Both equally venomous, spiteful misanthropic loners, without visible reason. Somewhat intimidating at times. With such prominent shades of grey that could turn into black in the span of a heart-beat.

Somehow, no credit to me though, they met. And I am so told, fell in love. Had this passionate dream like affair that lasted not more than months. Turbulent. Very turbulent. Too much information in public domain, I must say. But what can we do. Gossip mongers that we are. Their love was almost written about. Read out loud. Bitched back at.

But, all this before the inevitable happened. They weren't meant to be. Together or whatever. Too much friction happened, I must assume. The heat could have killed either. They unfastened like two mutually destructive forces could never coexist.

And later, not much later though, I happened. Unfortunately, aware. With the wisdom of all truths. A friend of both broken sides, anti parties. Keeping record. Negotiating with life's ill meant pathetic co-incidences. Fuck

It's time to get drunk babe!

Make me close my eyes. Shut them hard. Hide my face with a pillow. And make all this go away. All of this. In a moment. Forever. And lets start over. Anew. I don't want to be my age tonite. But that unreasonable inconsolable kid who doesn't know how to deal with her problems. Please God make all of this go away. I know you and I haven't had much of an affair lately, but please. I need help here. Get me out. I shouldn't have to deal with all this. Understand. Save me someone. I don't want to accept defeat. I want back my fake fucking sheen. I want anything but the truth. Don't you get me. Reality is too hard to sink into my skin. My pores are too small. Hide me somewhere.It scares me to think that the only one love I have ever relished is the true love of nicotine. And that I am going to die soon of the consequences. The pictures inside my head are hideous. You have no idea. It's so gloomy in here. There is no hope. Make my past vanish. Please! Do something with the time machine thing. Take me to some other era. Where I am not. Where non of this is. And where trying to escape is no sin. All my life I have tried to escape from one disaster and ran right into another. Make me forget I have ever been this stupid. Incorrigibly moronic.Take away all memory of my mistakes. My shame. Of being who I am. My guilt. Of having tortured myself. Make me fall in the middle of this leap that I have taken. Right in the middle of it. I don't want to see the other shore. Or any other shore. For that matter.

Or just get me drunk. 

Touch me again

Don't rob me of my high, w'd you?
Let me lie this way,
In your shadow
Among cheap untruths.

For once,
Let me savour
This fantasy with shut eyes
The fragrance of bottled perfume.

Stay
Should I want to feel
The texture of your touch again,
Later tonight.

Hold on,
Draw dreams in my head
As I capture the warmth of your breath
For cold nights to come.

Push me
Off the edge of this cliff
Make me want to fly
Together, alone

And when need be,
Touch me again



Pins & Needles

It had happened once that I used to live in a room. All the color I saw was the pale yellow of the walls. The only fragrance was that of crisp folded sheets in my closet. A bottle of nail paint forgotten in a corner of my suitcase. Shoes flung under the bed. Hot showers after midnight. And passage of time meant nothing more than ticking of the clock. It was as good as me living in the moment before I  had moved into that room. Either days were too sluggish or were they too fast for me to even be conscious of their passage. They ended sometimes in inhuman fatigue and a sullen face of the cook who would threaten to leave. If I got back that late the next day.

Sometime in between, I stopped feeling. I felt pins and needles. You know pins and needles?

I called up people to tell them I had developed this incapacity to feel, understand. Loss. Loneliness. Hunger. Even sorrow. I couldn't even feel sorrow. There was this mild immunity that had grown inside me and protected me from almost everything. I used to feel like this body of flesh walking around.

After a few days of being that way, I felt a surge of fear. What if this numbness never left me? What would it be like to be marooned in this utopia forever? Alone.

So I pinched myself hard. Like you sometimes do, when your leg's gone to sleep. Because pain is the surest sign of feeling. I pinched myself hard.

Now it does pain. Sometimes, a lot. But I am relieved that I can feel. That I am more than numb. More than dead. More than utopian, I feel human. And a trifle alive. And even rarely, happy.