Leaving

“You have gone insane, haven’t you?” She asked me from the between the curls of hair that fell on her face. 

Her irises appeared darker than before, literally like bottomless twin pools. That I could drown in and not surface from. I had doubts if I would even try to hold on to the hands of a rescuer whilst I drowned in her eyes or any other pool in general. I had begun feeling like an ascetic from the past few days.

She reiterated the question, had I gone crazy. Her words felt like wisps of air escaping her brown lips, which were otherwise tightly pursed, awaiting an affirmative answer from me. I had begun wearing sunglasses in the house to keep out the excessive day light. She pulled them out from my face and I shut my eyes into darkness.

When I opened them again, in the clear afternoon light she appeared feral. Exasperated with my muteness she stood up and began pacing up and down the room. She hadn't evolved much in the last six or seven months that I hadn't seen her. I had imagined she would be unrecognizable. But why would she even alter at all?

I told her. “You haven’t changed much. You haven’t changed at all.”

She approached my chair and placed her left palm on my right knee and sighed deeply.

“You have to move on”

“I have. I mean clearly I have”

“You have gone insane, is what you have done”

“You make it seem like I had a choice”

“Oh don’t be silly. We had talked about this. So many times, over and over again”

“Well clearly, now that you've seen the aftermath, you must conclude, I am not the one for the talking”, I said hoping she would calm down with my ridiculous retorts.

“Honestly, I don’t have time for this. I have to get back, I can’t be gone for such long. You take care and, and just get your shit together”

“Yeah sure, get my shit together I will” This was more disgusting than expected. 

“You should go.” I paused. “Because if you stayed any longer, you never know, what I might do.”

That didn't slow her gait but she turned and looked at me. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m kidding. I’m joking. You of all people should know that”

“Can we just talk for five minutes, before I leave?”

She came closer and sat on the floor, with her legs crossed, instantly persuading me to climb down from my chair.

On the floor, she held my hand in hers and began speaking in slow wisps again.

“This is the last time you’re seeing me. I am not coming back. Never again. I want you to know this.”

I stayed mum, feeling rough in my throat, having nothing to say.

She spoke again. “I want you to tell me that you know you are not going to see me again”

“You sound like you are the one that needs some convincing”

“Shut up. Do you want my husband to explain it to you, how all this works?”

The mention of him crashed me back into reality. For a stretch of the hour I had imagined she was here for my sake and my sake only.

“Say it!”

“I know, I know you’re not coming back”

“I strongly urge you get a life. Listen to me, see someone else”

“Why don’t you fix me up with one of your single friends?”

“I can’t stay involved. But there are lots of women. I am told there are some dating apps and some real nice young things. You've always been lecherous, you would know everything”

“Serious accusation alert!”

“C’mon we know each other. We don’t have to wear facades.”

I broke her off in the middle. “If we know each other, why the fuck did you even leave me? Why did you abandon me? Why did you break my heart so irreversibly?”

Before I realized, I was screaming at her. She put her hand on my mouth to quieten me I guess but nothing worked.

And the next minute she was gone.

She had vanished so neatly, it was almost as if she had never been here. That’s exactly how people go. People who have made up their minds to go, they just leave so immaculately, the one left behind often is seen trying to grab on to the air that rushed in to fill the vacuum of sudden absence.

Dreams of Bougainvillea

It was a decent apartment. Slightly damp. Slightly dark. Breezy, but old. There were two bathrooms. One of them was permanently latched, from the outside. The other one had blue tiles. A wide window in the hall looked into the outside. There was a road, which was sparsely taken. Except by the kids when the school nearby closed for the day.

Beyond the road was a huge tree of white bougainvillea. The tree looked so gorgeous, it looked like Cinderella. Its leaves laden with winter dust, couldn't decimate one bit the sheer numbing charm of its white flowers. Margot couldn't fathom why, she hadn't known before that white was such a beautiful beautiful color. She always presumed it was the lack of it. 

As a kid, her father, the one she no longer spoke to, took her to the house of a friend of his. Who had a gigantic pond in his backyard. He reared fish in it. That pond had a dozen trees of bougainvillea planted around it, or more. Of all the colors, her child's mind could imagine. Red, orange, pink, all intertwined. It was as if a mother tree, grew branches and each branch flowered a different color. And they all reflected in the green pool water and created an illusion of twice the color. The melange appeared to be out of a painting, only it was real. But this is white bougainvillea. Something she had barely stopped to notice. And now that she opened the window, she couldn't move a step away.

This was a date. A mutual friend had suggested they meet. This was the second time they were meeting. Or the third. Probably, Margot didn't keep count. She recently had broken up. If you can call it that. That man, she had met online. And fallen in true love with. But after years of loitering around the point, she had decided, she was not getting anywhere. Now she was on the market again. If you can call it that. And following the mutual friend's suggestion, she met this new man. Whose apartment this was. Overlooking the white bougainvillea. 

Margot was twenty eight. 

The guy, with thick eyebrows, was rolling weed in the bedroom as she looked at the white flowers in the hall. She imagined what it would be like to stand under that tree and look up. What will bits of blue sky look like from between the gaps of white petals. That blue matched the tiles in his bathroom. The one he used. And now they were gonna get high. Really high. 

Penumbra

There was a time when we were all,
Gleelessly stuck in Penumbra
Between the ages, thirteen to nineteen
Or twenty-one

That teen angst, wasn't like nothing else

One particular afternoon,
I wasted sitting in the sunbeam
That trespassed through my window
In the dark, and writing a letter
On pen & paper, yes, real blue ink
And sprinkling it with rose petals
An unposted letter with that angst
About being alone and unwanted

Don't recall much else though
Literally speaking, for instance
My first sip of alcohol (cocktail - sex on the beach)
Or my first kiss
The first smoke,
But I know I had many firsts

Growing like a multi faceted organism
In so many directions
And with so less control
Nothing could begin to heal that angst
Not a box full of books,
Or nights spent drinking coffee
Or making craft

So many years of constant rebellion,
Do you recall yours?
Stuck in Penumbra, glee-less-ly
So long, so long.

To pay bills and die.

Stars come down to my bed
On some no moon nights
They glitter like insomniac jellyfish
And keep me awake too, and thoughtful

On Sundays, as the westbound sun
Dries my afternoon wet hair,
Clinging to my shoulders
I reluctantly give in again and think

What am I letting go, to become who I be

Which layer of me, be the true layer, like I were an onion

Every peel, and a new color. From dried and coffee brown, to orangish red and pinkish yellow, and the wheatish stem of the onion be my untamed soul.

Am I numerous persons, all at once
Or am I a process, and every day catalyses me towards my core being.

I know, it's impossible and untrue.

We are all tame, mostly, mere domestic beings, victims to carefully cultivated routines that keep us from thinking.

To pay bills and die.

But when a westbound sun, quietly dries my hair, I've gotta think.

Think on an endless loop. Think towards no conclusions. As the rest retire to siesta and my lunch awaits, getting cold.

Thirty

Is it indeed deliciously befitting to lose everything, indeed. Aging is losing something everyday. I stare at the mirror. At my pale midnight reflection. And lather coconut oil on my cracked feet, this winter has been harsh, particularly. Where my eyebrows meet a wrinkle has permanently appeared, I worry a lot. The eyes look exhausted, dreamless. Of course, it's midnight. That being my alibi, I dissolve into a dream. Suddenly I am eighteen again. I am young and plump. I write poetry about how my hair looks like a tree on above my head. About seeking out my shadow from among the shadows of dozens of trees while walking back home on late nights. The street lights dazzle me. I wean myself off my infatuations by writing their names on pieces of paper and burning them in candle flame by the window ledge. Turning love into ash by some warranted act of karma. Exploring newer ways to dispel the many jinxes of unrequited love. And learning to accept my body, of course. Everything that I came with. My bulging thighs, messy hair, my dusky tone, overall anti-delicate-femininity. That was at least a decade before the phrase body positivity was even phrased, and I was fighting my own mighty battle. And losing everyday. 

I was losing then, as I am losing now. I am thirty. It's a gorgeous age to be. Fucking gorgeous, mind wise. You have seen just enough of the world to start taking the right calls on it. To stand on your own two feet, somewhat. To have a place of your own. To quote from poets you have fallen in love with. To laugh quietly when you hear a book you read being discussed. Thirty is as good as it gets. 

But on certain midnights as these, now that you don't stare at the moon much, you stare at the mirror slightly longer than usual to notice the loosened skin on eyelids, the sagging arm flesh, the extra flesh in the wrong places as goes by acceptable misogynistic standards. You feel maligned. Wronged. Abandoned. Depreciated. 

So many years have gone by, so many of them. So many films watched, songs heard. So much prose written. So many many miles walked. Yet nothing has changed. At the end of the day, pretty is all you gotta be. #ohfuck 

Much Love

The cyclone that was to be,
Has now been averted.
A changed course,
Perhaps, on the way back from Myanmar.
Somewhere else, on this indented coastline
It shall make landfall

Now the coconut trees
In my backyard, shall live.
But alas, I have no backyard.
No coconut, just a sterile shrub of potted hibiscus
That refuses to even, flower.
And ants ate away the basil.

Now, there are long nights
And deep sleep.
Dreamless sleep against the backdrop of
Instrumental guitar
And the masochistic pleasure
Of losing oneself.

And never finding oneself again.
For there is a certain bliss in being lost.
You my judgmental friend,
Will never know, what glee this is.
You stay where you are,
Go to parties.

I will stay back and smoke in my portico
Releasing circles of smoke into still air
My toes resting on the grille
Beside my sterile hibiscus
With my head, between my deaf ears
Pregnant with memories, shallow regrets and the
Immeasurable joy of solitude.

Much Love

For: Donald Hall

Inertia of Rest

Lately I've picked up a rather weird habit. Before falling asleep, I listen to some guitar instrumentals, read my own poems and cry. Yes. And my nostrils block. But the nasal drop is in the top flap of my backpack on  the living room sofa. And nobody is gonna get that for me. So I turn sides half the night with a blocked nose and develop a slow yet stringent insomnia.

I've been living alone for the last six months or more. And it's one of the best things that has ever happened to me. There are fewer issues to be dealt with. Lesser questions to be answered to. Lesser conversations to be faked and alibis to be phrased. It's better. Definitely much.

But there's nobody to get you the nasal drop from the living room, in the middle of the night. Everything has its pros and cons. I learnt this phrase at the tender age of sixteen or a bit later. May be twenty-one. When I had begun having opinions about things. And I repeat it to myself very often.

I've never had strong opinions about many things, nor is my voice that loud. I am not that type of person. I am a classically mild person. A classically mild person who keeps a journal. In a layman's language, I am your typical run-of-the-mill loser. I am not trying to get anywhere. Except putting in all my might to avoid paranoia.

As I wrote, I read my own poems and cry. When there are at least three half-written-probably-abandoned stories waiting in my laptop for my collection of short stories. But the words wouldn't just come to me. Right now. 

Someone, probably a well wisher had anonymously commented long ago and had asked me to get myself checked if I had one of those syndromes. Asperger's syndrome. Because I am so completely shut off. You know. I felt offended immediately. But not anymore. Also another old friend/companion-of-sorts had written that life comes a full circle. That there is as much joy, as there is sorrow.

I am realizing that he is right. And waiting for my nose to unblock by itself.   

This

We are here now, because we couldn't be anywhere else. Life has taken the exact number of turns and twists that it has, taken. Shorter and longer paths. Through whirlwinds and thunderstorms. Night walks and dawn breaks. Deafening silences and paralytic dumbness, later, we are here. Because we couldn't be anywhere else. But now, here. This.

We have stared at graveyards, through nights. And written poems on heartache. Breathed in smoke. Breathed out fumes. Made strangers our own. Discarded the ones that loved us, and those we loved, also. Walked by hills, gotten scared. Felt infinite. Crumbled under the sad misery of our very very tiny and hapless existences. Tasted momentary exhilaration. Felt bound, completely incarcerated, sometimes. For others, for our own selves. We've blamed others for our endless suffering and passed the blame. With ease. And sat back, and turned away. 

We have walked towards and walked away from. We have tried to write. To read. See through others' eyes. We've won, sometimes just the illusion of victory, vis-a-vis sometimes having actually won. But mostly we have failed. We have mulled over ending our lives. Yes, we have. Shamelessly. And thought that there be no shame in that, either. 

But more than anything else, more than everything else, we've run for time, and against it. To get things done. Some many of them. Groceries, salon appointments, laundry, work-stuff, shopping dates, temples, cleaning and wiping and dusting, errands, payments, receipts, crap, crap, crap. More than anything else, we haven't learnt to pause. We haven't waited to absorb, whatever is happening to us. We haven't rested to appreciate, the simple, the tiny and the beautiful. 

We've fucked up big time. By running around and not pausing. To be here. Exactly here, now. This. Yes. You heard me. 

Moonlighters

Dirt can have categories too. There's several kinds of it. First, there's broken bottles, glass. Then there's cardboard, smashed cartons. Then there are polythene bags. Hordes of it. Like our worlds have collapsed into it. Also there are piles of scrap metals. Rubber. And other things, I don't know the names of. Everyday, they sit down in the morning heat and categorize the garbage they pick up. Women and children. Women sit around in spaced out semi circles and talk in their high pitched voices. Covered from neck to toe. Except their beautiful pale yellow faces. Like features carved out of stone. In an artist's mind. Hair tied in a bun. Women who are barely even women yet. Holding babies, clinging to their chest, bend down to inspect the scrap collected for the day. They laugh, their shrill voices aloud. 

Their children, each must have at least four or more, play stray games every day. All damn day, no school. No books, chalks and pencil sharpeners. They roll around cycle tires with a stick. Sit in old abandoned cars and pretend they drive. And there are lots of them. So many of them. Young girls, too hold babies. Boys chase trucks that drive past. Their laughter sounds like utopia. Like the last knot of constraint on human life has been undone. These boys experience, fathomless freedom. The younger ones are naked. The older ones don torn pants and crumpled dirty shirts. Barefeet. Some of them pick out shoes from the garbage it seems. The girls sit on trolleys and watch. In the yellow moon of dusk, they begin to look more like their mothers. It's a scary bent in time, when that happens. The drunk men, who would have just gotten up in the afternoon, after a change of clothes may be, head out to be drunk again, tonite. But before that, they sit down, where the garbage had been categorised in the morning, for a quick game of cards.

The slum nearby is that of prostitutes. It's said that some of these garbage picker women also moonlight as prostitutes. And give them a run for their money. And why not!

Spot

Now, indeed it does feel unreal. The day. Whole of it. I perish into moments after midnight, compulsively forcing the assumption, that it was probably a well concocted stretch of illusion. But then, there's you. 

The hours, the sundry minutes in each, did tick by. We kept an intermittent track of time. Sometimes, it felt like a whale, sometimes like a firefly. All I can truly recall is asking our hearts to slow down. Keep in more blood, hold on. Expand every moment and live through it, at a molecular level.

Also, I remember paper cups in the shades of orange. The yellow hue of the sidewall. The crumple in the bed sheet. A mild odor of smoke in the air. Rustle of autumn leaves outside the window. The sweat underneath arms. And crevices of knees and ankles. All curves of flesh, observed, loved. Black spots, counted. Birthmarks kissed. Secrets exchanged. Tales of the months of separation, told. Every bodily shame, uncovered. 

You, seated on scanty pieces of furniture. The look held in your eyes. The wait, in our breaths. Fast expiring patience. Like we had waited for years and decades. To be there, together, at that spot. 

Come what may, it is always good to know. That there always will be such very specific spots. Wherein, we will find ourselves. Locked, faithfully in dimensions of time and space. In the shade of a certain tree, or by a certain window. And inside those, we are in absolute seclusion. Only the scope of the immediate periphery would affect us. Everything exterior to that boundary would lose the capacity to touch us. Hinder us, from being our soulful true selves.

The Pursuit of Depression

I

I owe my existence partly to Chuck Lorre. I wanted to write this sentence for a long time on this blog. One, because I quite like the way his name sounds, like his surname itself was a story. And two, because I do. From the bottom of my stomach, I am thankful to you, Chuck Lorre. For being there, throughout. Whenever I have needed to unscrew my life, watching an episode or two of his or his kind, has seen me through. Even when there was nothing else to hold on to, he was.

So, recently I read this somewhere that dear Chuck has this tendency to fish out the singular point of contention even from a paradise. As in, he looks out for things that worry him even in the most hunky dory of situations. Far more than being a tendency, it becomes a habit, then an obsession, when you just can't stop worrying. You be constantly perturbed by phantoms you can't see and then, life screws itself irreversibly up. 

I suffer from that, yes. That's the one governing pivot about which I revolve and lose my way numerous times every day. We, Chuck and I pursue Depression. You know unlike Will Smith, who pursues quite the opposite. He is the antithesis of us.

II

On the other hand, there is the nitty gritties of love. Time bound phases in an hour when you need nothing else. When he pins your head down onto is lap, but only mildly. By shutting close the lids of your eyes with his two fingers. So that, you being the little girl you sometimes are, aren't overcome by the whim to open your eyes wide and just see. Him, his face right above yours. Holding you down that way, he drifts closer to you. You can feel the warmth of his breath growing lukewarm. The whiff of air leaving his nostrils, you can now feel on your upper lip and then he plays a bit of it upon your other lip, chin. You can feel him, milimeters away, teasing the air between your faces, but he isn't there yet. He's playing it slow, real slow. Testing your patience. Which apparently is the key to a lot of things. And you can't see a damn thing, his fingertips keep you in perfect pitch black darkness. You go crazy and part your lips to sigh. Then, exactly then. He. Seizes. You. 

The wait before that, feeling his hot exhaled air, was the Pursuit of Happyness. Yes. 

I Hope You Love Me

Because love is as fickle an emotion as it is mighty. I can only hope, you love me. Love me back that is, as I have let my guard down. Also, because I have had enough of love, of the unrequited kind. That's good for only a fucking love poem. And not to keep alive. So, I can only hope that you love me. The real lasting bearable kind. Because love is like smoke in hot air, now it's here and now not anymore. Despite who I am, and despite who you be, the love in between has to simmer like a third person. Like a child. And it should be, no matter what you and I evolve to be. It may not be everlasting alrite, but it should last the decent span to sew together my broken heart and keep it that way or whatever. This may read like sleep talk, or gibberish. But aren't the stakes high enough. And this assurance I shall beg, no matter what. No matter who. I can only hope you love me. The real lasting bearable kind.

Breaking Out

Stout diabetic man. Staring at a lunch of boiled vegetables. In the corner. The smile in his voice. His nonchalance. His apparent lack of fear, wants me to break out. The strings of gerberas hanging from the walls. In bunches, between leaves they don't belong to. In dim lit wedding days of previous besties. The angst in their voice when we understand. How bad time is tricking us. Into believing that it's running slow. When it's not. When we are losing so much and so fast of our quintessential past that seemed like nothing more than average. Until now, when suddenly we are beginning to feel that we are growing up faster than we can handle. So we pause. 

For a while, hold our wrists between our thumb and the index finger. Merely to feel the pulse. To realise the restlessness of all that blood, flowing for no purpose. Chasing something that may in the end not be. Like running toward a mirage. Wasting our destiny, erasing scratched fate lines on our palms only by worrying. Worrying that we are getting nowhere. 

When that pause ends, we decide to make our deal more peaceful. Our thoughts more legible. With more foresight. Such that we chase things that only matter. Matter more. Such that the blood through our wrists slows down. Our temples don't sweat. We sit under trees of silent thought, holding love close to our chest. Like real tight. With a respect for our own self, that we don't shy away from the mirror every time we try to look at it. 

Because, in the end, we all become the stout diabetic man staring at a pale lunch alone in the corner. And then, all that would matter is did we have courage in our soul, that absolute lack of fear. Did we stand up when we should have. 

Date

She removes her sunglasses and shoves them in her bag. He catches her eyes, for the first time. Looks away before it gets uncomfortable. She gets into his car. Her red heart, is about to burst. He says something about the other car, the one he couldn't get. Instead, he had to get this one. The older one, the crumbling one. Some excuse. She's not listening. She is floating on cloud 9. He throws a bunch of chocolates at her. Nonchalantly. The ones he had gotten from his last trip. With no particular girl in mind. But he knew he was going to fall in love that summer. Hot summer of 2003. She was eighteen. He, twenty-one. His bloody hyphenated existence. 

They walk into some restaurant, after a little dialogue over choosing that place over another, and another over someplace else. In the glass walls, they see each other, side by side. Juxtaposed human specimens. Pretty divergent. In their corner table, he orders pasta. She asks for a coke. He says she should eat something. But hungry is the last thing she is. Her stomach is full of butterflies, already. 

Waiter comes back, says the guy that makes pasta hasn't come so early in the day. He chooses a pizza from the one page menu. She helps him pick it. Suddenly they have nothing to do. Their heads are empty. They talk of the heat of summer. And how the roads have gotten better over the years. And other illogical nonsense. 

Later he pours ample amounts of ketchup on her slice of the pizza. Thin crust, strewn with peppers. She takes those few seconds to look up at his downcast eyes. Is this it? Or probably not. 

An hour later, he drops her off at the same place. It's a milder afternoon now. There is no need to hide behind sunglasses. She stands there, smiling with her naked eyes as he pulls away. Knowing that this is it. For them. It it.

They are, dated forever. 

Haiku

This is not a Haiku. I just named it that to drag you here. If you already know what a Haiku is i.e., or just Google it. Take a break from your respective missions, everybody.

Because I am on none. It's disheartening to see my time whiled away as I see everyone around me haranguing about how else I should take things. Coating layer on layer of paint on their faces. Coaxing themselves to thinner waists. Comparing bust sizes. Buying things en-route to their materialistic paralysis. I see nothing except a race. 

In the beginning, before a lot of beginnings, I had believed that the ultimate idea behind running this race was to be able to get out of it someday, to become capable enough to call it sham. But that isn't true, is it?

Once you run, you have gotta run. Once you fall, you fall.

There is always a list of things to be done with. Wrinkles to be tightened, belly fat to be lost, money to be saved, money to be spent, places to fly to, pictures to be flaunted, things to be bought and stacked, and stacked, until they suffocate you with regret of ever having been that incorrigibly desperate.

They sell magazines, don't they, which apparently tell you that there is a shortcut to get flat abs and have great sex. And you buy them, only to discover that it's after all not a shortcut at all. Then there is the harangue. Somebody just pops up from behind the white clouds on the blue skies and tells you, that see, s/he had told you there was no shortcut. And that you have to burn your ass. And you should turn your sleep cycle topsy turvy to actually get there. So back in the race you go.

There seems to be no way around here. To take things at my own pace. All I sometimes want to do is, watch a solo crow fly revolving about an unknown axis in the blackish white monsoon skies, full of rain and never landing. Being in that state of perennial fight. Apart from that, I merely want to be. And write things that are abandoned unread.

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.

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. 

Settling Down

The mind wants something tangible now. Tan-gi-ble. To smell touch and feel. To lather up in foam, watch. Some definite matter the way physics defined it. Long long time back in school books, when the heart hadn't learnt to yearn, yet. Pleasures were unknown. And we waited to age. Our lives to ripen. Now that our minds aren't pink no more, and we have chased half our lives away chasing, the vague, the non-existing, the intangible, it dawns upon our silly dwarfed psyches that, everything was a lie, all that was a waste of time, hope and even imagination. So now not that we regret that we half lived our youths by whiling it away in bitter-sweet waiting, we just sulk. And break down within sulks and sigh wanting to have a relapse to the childish excuse of pursuing our unreal dreams rather than settling for what's real.

You were an unreal dream, honey. I am completely over you now. I wish I was. But I believe I am already. Or may be not. What choice do I have, what choice have you left me with. Nothing. Zilch.

This is not poetic heart wrenching writing, but now I would rather have a different life. Of settling for what's real. And touchable. And not so vague. Real with faults. Not completely adorable, yet lovable. Not you, never you, but. It's all I have and I am happy. Or I should be. Or may be not. Who knows, who can tell. What choice do I have, what choice have I left myself with.

Blah blah blah. 

Implosion

I wish I had this juvenile ability to pick up two people from one point in time and drop them within another, doing the exact thing. Ceteris paribus. Everything else remaining constant.
That way I would crawl backwards a few days, to the night when you were singing to me. Forgetting lyrics midway and not caring. Inserting words as you fancied. In some impeccable American accent. Unashamed that I was there to hear you. Judge you. Rate you. Because I wasn't gonna do that anyway. Midway shifting songs, you halted on a soft romantic one. And I noticed there was a string of pain in your voice. The one I had been looking for forever. And was worried, wasn't able to find. But finally relieved I did.
And then how, just how we wrecked our brains because we couldn't remember what song it was that you wanted, only the video kept flashing across our midnight minds. That debilitating muted feeling, felt happy though, because I was with you. At a point, when I felt that my memory has been wiped off of that song, I felt like my heart would implode with the joy. The joy of trivial amnesia and another of great love. Later when I googled the lyrics for you, you were cold asleep.
I wish I could crawl back in time, pick the both of us from that moment, and place us here now. But I can't. Nothing can, bring that back.
Atleast I am glad, we don't have the other juvenile ability to forsee the future. For if, that night, I had seen that this was what our future was gonna be like, I wouldn't have let you have me, the way you did that night.

Phonebook

I was in the mall picking up groceries. I got a text. Someone thought we shouldn't see each other again. That's called breaking up over whatsapp. I choked. Couldn't breathe for a span of a few seconds. A paralytic pain took over. I walked out for air. From that groceries section to the hall where children played games. Clutching my bags in one hand, I took out the phone from my pocket with the other. Then took it out of the cover with my teeth. That part was always the trouble. Read that text again. It went all hazy over my head. Was choking still. Deleted it, that text. Breathed in two three deep breaths of air conditioned mall air. Told the friend who I was with. She asked me why I hadn't told her inside. Like that would've helped.

Nothing helps. Nothing could. The worst happens, invariably. We had been talking in spells. In an on and off fragile acquaintance that ran across years of our adult lives. Between other fragile such acquaintances, with other people who cared the same or less. Whenever we talked, was good. Nothing extraordinary, but good. Sometimes it even felt just about alrite, tending towards the meant-to-be category. 

The moment I got that text, I assumed he was getting married. He must have been getting into something very committed and serious. And honestly, I even felt happy for him. He had been wanting to settle down for quite sometime. He used to tell me about it. And what was the cheapest alternative for love but marriage. I totally got that. Yet I was shocked.

I got over him with time. Over long walks. Unfinished blog posts. Most of him when someone else happened. 

But now, I stare at my Phonebook. I am yet to delete his number. It isn't synced with anything else though. Just his name and number. And a black and white picture of his. I like that picture. I love the look in his eyes. I wonder if he got married. I wonder if I am ever going to delete this contact. I stare at my Phonebook. Blank.