Look at us, what perverts we've become. Seething through time, hiding our mysteries, stealing glances from the mirror, what have we made of ourselves, baby! Long ago, when the day began and we were innocent children, I believed in fairies and stars. That picture is now lost in oblivion. And now, how with years, we have constantly drained that naivety out of our systems, effortlessly, with the lone whim of surpassing petty desires.

Did you ever imagine this? Nor did I. It's scary, how I've become somebody I would've failed to recognize a few years ago. And I have become this, in your shadow. Chasing you, in and out of the light, I have only bought myself so much shame that I cannot bear to look at you, or look away.

This just cannot be true. This is not me. And you're not you. This must be some devil's dream. Because we couldn't sink so beneath ourselves. Sometimes I convince myself so. But then I wake up the next morning, with my mind stepping back into every moment of the ignominy that last night was. And I can't help but lie down, let my shamelessness seep into me as tears would seep out.

How deep are we now? In this slur, I can't find my feet. All I can feel is the warm gasps of your breath and tickles of lust that suck me in. And precisely that moment, I give in. To the animal inside. And let go of shame and let me be me. For I have become what I have become.

Rift

I am like that creeper that grows on a tree. Tree, being you. I suck my life out of you. Have no roots of my own. And I am this way not because I chose this over the world. But there is no other way I could be. I am a parasite creeper. And my affection for you oscillates between murderous and suicidal.

You know the state of utter shock when you can't find your feet? Detaching from you feels that way. Feetless. It's like destitution. Estrangement is that impoverished nightmarish state, I wouldn't want to dream about even in my dreams. And you want to make it my reality. Hell!

Heartbreak is a disease. Chronic one. Incurable. It eats into strands of muscles, ends of nerves, scrapes off bones, every single moment of the day. They say. But there is nothing we can do about it.

So I appreciate that we're headed nowhere. And unlike all other instances of our lives, I beg you to hold my hands in this one. Give me sometime. A day more, a fortnight, probably a month. Or a li'l more. To let me let you go.

This is no race. I know you're in a hurry, to move on and move beyond. But don't just walk away. Nothing said. Nothing heard. For the sake of whatever was. You could pity me. Or believe I am simply incapable of weaning myself off you.

Let me sleep over this. Hold my hands while I am asleep. Somehow make me realize I can be without you too. Because I know I can't do this on my own. I can't. Or I don't want to. Whatever.

Wait it out till I step across this rift. So that we can walk away from each other. 

Nay

..Because there is this unstoppable echoing machine inside my head that keeps asking, what's there? These are words I can literally hear. They are as clear as whispers poured into my eardrums. What's there? What else is there? Is there anything at all? Anything that's a tiny bit worth of what I have become in the process of wanting to become a god-knows-what.

It's the uneasy ache I get when I try to sum up reasons for being alive. This is a very ungrateful thing to say, given that we are all expected to appreciate the gift that life is. But somehow I cannot drag this lie any further. I just cannot. Call me selfish, I wish not to see the reason in life you see. Because I just cannot. And pardon my inability.

When I look around, and this is not one of my midnight depressed rants, when I look around, I can't make any sense. There is the absolute pain of not being understood. And then there is the self imposed censure against even waiting to be understood in the first place. Besides, the lie of miracles coming true that we carry around all the time, but which isn't ever gonna happen. I think I should shed that. That lie has been the root of most of my disappointments.

The story is so unending. Obviously. And honestly, after all the deep shit we're in, I feel too fatigued to even call myself a full mouthed disappointment.

So call me insane and persecute me, but, Nay I don't see the so called charm of life.

Irony

May be because I am so afraid of drowning and dying, I love to sit by the sea so much. And wait for waves. Because they don't ditch you. And show up, always. Recede, but come back again. It's more therapeutic, than life in general.

What's more healing is this fellow woman who writes. Sometimes I wish so hard to write like her that it makes me want to quit writing altogether. Sans that, almost everyone on this planet is a jerk. Some are outright jerks, some are more tactful. But then that's about it.

This is not quarter life crisis. I know. I have always been like this. Annoyed. Terrified. On the verge of extinction. My only credibility is that I have made it so far. Crawling, panting, running for life. Besides that there is nothing. And I am totally aware that people who fret a lot and smoke a lot don't live long. Somehow, I just can't relax. This is not just quarter life crisis.

And my life is not a sitcom. And nothing will ever end up fine. But a sitcom is another healer. Every sitcom is like a sensitive, humorous, non cheating, non desperate, tall boy friend that I've had. Also, I have this weird craving, to date a surfer. Once. And live with him in a hut, by the sea.

You see I always come back to the sea. Soon, I will become like one. And I will learn to swim then, or may be surf too.

My canvas, is part color, purple, and hues of violet, copper sulfate, streaks of silver.My canvas is half scratches too, of sketches that were abandoned midway.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about my Right brain. Sitting in the right half of my skull. And how capricious that crazy bitch is. She is one that's pushing me now. Will see me through, till the end.

And oh, happy Valentine's!

Stories from Nowhere-I

Some twelve odd years ago, when these coasts were hit by a demonic cyclone and when she was too young to document anything and too naive to proclaim the insanity of young love, goes back this story. Bottoms of the Indian Ocean conspired a mean depression and the mercury dipped, winds blew away asbestos roofs, coconut trees swayed in drunken fervor, birds were left homeless, and fear gripped her tiny heart. Trunks of mighty old trees uprooted, the roads deserted, no light in sight. It tickled her to imagine that they might run out of food. Though there still were some potatoes quietly sitting near the legs of a rickety ancestral bed. After seven long days that smelt of death, in between nightmarish nights, she survived to get back to school on the eight. By then she must have forgotten those pangs of first love. That afternoon from the last day of school a week ago felt slightly outside the purview of recent memory. That cyclone must have taken it away, as its black waters receded into their mysterious origins.. So, this forgetful, pubescent, sixth grader wondered, if she still loved him after the short hiatus.

Ten years from then and two years before now, a dormant volcano erupted somewhere in the middle of Europe they said.  Air traffic wouldn't be that paralyzed ever again. Soot enveloped clear skies..Days were whiled away in sleepy airport lounges. He could have been on the last flight that flew out of that loveless continent. But he wasn't. Stalled, he sat and mused. That volcano, Satan's  shadow had some uncanny sense of timing. Why else would it now! Only now? And no matter how hard he tried he couldn't not think of the shrewd calculations of fate vis-a-vis the naivety of the woman who waited for him by the sea..

Love and related disasters! 

Inching away

A creek in the sea. Distant lighthouse. Dilapidated..on a receding winter afternoon. An aimless walk, sans any thought/emotion. You know the story.

A gentle reminder of the worthlessness. Besides, the siesta breeze. Blue waves, now a few minutes away. Crashing like mad men on unforgiving rocks. You can hear the failed water, give up in a spray and return.

Lovers in distant ships, must look at the lighthouse. Pity its lifeless existence. While they float away for new shores. No one cares about what's leave behind. That's the remnant.

I feel breathless pants of woe, as you inch away. It hurts so much. I want to shrink into a tiny ball, and disappear.

Because things I can't explain are taking such a toll on me. Because no one can make me understand that this is only for the better. And nothing, nothing at all, can fathom my terror of being this absolutely alone. 

Inconspicuous

I

The beggar woman and her beggar children. One clutched against lose folds of bosom. With a bandaged ankle, still bleeding. Bleeding for the past few days now. I wonder if that's just color. The color of blood. Another, loitering around. In a torn shirt, bottonless. Bottomless. Begging, palms outstretched, everytime any traffic halts. Laughing, in the dark. When no one's is around to see. When I hop cabs. Silently pushing them aside, to cross the road. I see her violet skirt, torn and running on the footpath, from one car to another. Trying to steal sympathy from a home-bound exodus. In that impatient pause at a red light. Red light. Today that ankle-bleeding-kid, held a pair of balloons. Bright pink and dust green. And secretly smiled with famished eyes, looking the other way. Must've.

II

A cabin with scores of watches. Just wrist watches, to be repaired, brought back to life. Too many of them, the wooden-cabin-legs could crumble. Tiny hands. Hours and minutes and seconds, lost in the company of scores of such others. Absolute chaos. All time is literally messed up. One tiny bald man, with tiny hands, sits under yellow bulb, among dozen light-lover-bugs. Concentrates, on the arch between his caterpillar eyebrows, and promises to finish the gargantuan task of inserting alive batteries, replacing scratched glass covers, drilling holes into damaged bands. Bringing back the right pace of time. And placing it back on waiting wrists.

III

..A tiny hole in my heart