Woman in 801

Woman in the next flat

The one in 801

I've never seen your face

Wonder how you're never out in the corridor 

Going about your business 

Neither am I, but yet.

You've got curly bushy big hair

And you almost always dress in man pants

You got your backpack and your helmet 

And your motorcycle. Yes 

You live-in with a man, sure do.

Both you get your dinners delivered.

Accidentally if we both open doors at the same time

You're almost like a body without a face, hah

And you have your animals

A brown cat that waits in the window 

And white little dog that barks a lot

Am sure you have interests and such

But your succulents die on the windowpane

And your pots are empty, unwatered

You forget, we all do, to water, of course

Which is fine. As long as you have a life. As you do.

Unlike me, the woman in 802, the checklist maker, doer of tasks, taker of calls (back to back), the juggler of balls, the hustle maniac, buried under bags, jumping from errand to errand, having eroded into a person with no semblance to her original self. 

Weight of the Day

Weight of the day, won't lift. My shoulders droop in exhaustion and embarassment. What am I doing that I am so weighed down? Nothing of substance. Only the mundane. So what's pushing me down so?

It's only 9 in the morning. My day is already the worst. Everything is falling apart and I am sobbing loudly in public transport. Yeah. So much for being pedestrian.

What cost am I being made to bear? Victim mentality much? 

Well atleast I am getting by. There are some who've given up already, long back. Well atleast I am shooting pointless email after email, crumbling to my fears, people pleasing incessantly, sorting my laundry, running errands, buying essentials, screaming at my mother, screaming at my child. But I am still here. 

However, I exist only superficially. I exist because people call me. And there is no deeper reason for my existence. I have eroded over the years into nothing. Depreciated into zilch. 

But that doesn't matter. Because all that, I take cognizance of. I am one hundred percent aware of these futilities having engulfed me and shat me out. 

So why am I stooping so low for the half dozen bags I carry? Why can't I be erect, why can't my chest fluf up. How dare I cry in public transport. I ought to be stronger because I am aware of these defaults and my perseverance to be this person, despite. 

But my day weighs me down. Relentlessly, every day, every night. Making me a comatose jaywalker in the day and an owl like insomniac all night. 

Everything for Nothing

Watch me, as I crumble, everyday

See me simmer and spiral

And spiral into my many abysses 

Everyday

Without pity

For I chose this 

Cherry picked this, very much

The spectator that you are 

My precious erstwhile lover 

Watch me, alone, as I seethe and tear up

As I exhaust and self destruct 

And realize that everything is for nothing

Shape

How deeply I felt my love for you, shaped me. You wouldn't imagine, how something as quaint and inconsequential as unrequited love, can leave an impact so deep that it runs life long. But it does. How I yearned for you, endlessly, it carved out the being I was then, am today. How I see the world and the people it contains. And how I imagine the world sees me. 

Decades have gone by, but it stands true. Whenever I forget who I innately am, and I desperately want to remember, and feel akin to my original self, I remember how much I have loved you. And then it all comes trickling back to me. Because those times when I was so pathetically infatuated with you and the idea of you, I spent a lot of time figuring myself out. And thinking why I felt that magnitude of an honest and naive yearning for you. I realised how near perfectly complete and at peace I felt, with you.  I never had that kind of patience with people after you. Thus, you're the key fossil in my past. I envy you for having left such an indelible impact on me. Almost in the same breath, I pity you for being unaware of the magnitude of your hold on me. 

Or may be not. Perhaps, you're aware very much. And you've been waiting for me to confess - all this time. Never too late, huh.