Of Hands, Ants and More

Picture courtesy: Anthonysarts on Deviant Art

Hands make me sad,
More often than they make me happy.
Because I think the only thing
Understands loss better than hands
Are your lungs.
Hands document the coming and going
Of lovers, friends, parents and pets.
Because hands touch you,
hands hold you by your waist,
Shake hands, touch feet, run themselves over warm fur,
And often, that’s all you end up remembering.

I thought suicide notes
And especially their last sentences would
Make me want to collapse under the weight
of the fact that I had no choice,
But to be born.
But instead, they just want to make me go to sleep
And wake up only when
I am ready,
or to be fucking honest,
Five minutes after that.

I think of ants and how
They can carry hundred times their body weights
and I wonder,
If I am one of them.
Because whatever is inside
is so goddamned dense and clogged.
Just like the drains outside my home. .
And when it’s monsoon outside windows,
and inside rib-cages,
I think the water that spills out,
is pretty much the same.

Diluted childhoods,
like jars of diluted suplhuric acid
sitting inside chemistry labs during summer vacations; forgotten.
Conveniently.
Children growing up smarter, but more scared
Not of jumping down cliffs at the mercy of bungee cords
Manufactured in assembly lines;
But of giving their everything to be kinder to people,
More tender, more free and more loving
than it is socially acceptable to be.

Poems, not understood;
Rather forgotten to be read by people they got written for in the first place.
Homes, not built, because dowry had to be paid.
Songs, lost, because there was no one you could sing them to.
A friend, who’s not here anymore.
Who’s not anywhere, anymore.
Gone, just like motivation.
Silent like mornings after storms.

‘Always’.

 

[Image taken from artpicsdesign.blogspot.com]

It’s been a while now. I’ve mourned enough in my own way. I’ve tried to draw little Snape-like figurines in my doodles. I have gone back in time and reminisced how I had diary full of Harry Potter things and how carefully I had written chapters from different PoVs. I have revisited my memory of drawing the Hogwarts seal on a friend’s birthday card. That was how much it means to me. Yesterday, I felt moved. I wanted to hug all the seven books. Yet now, as I look at my news feed overflowing with Snape and Rickman, somehow that makes me wince.

I don’t know where it is rooted, this wince. Maybe it is because I think I am too arrogant to believe that so many other people are feeling the same sense of loss. I have found myself thinking, “Did they even really feel the loss like I did?”. My loss is more infinite than the others’, my arrogance thinks. It is a little ego-crumbling to see so many people post and feel the things I thought only I felt so deeply. Funny thing, arrogance. I feel like they are throwing buckets of water at my colors of loss. My sense of loss feels so diluted. And then rationale knocks at my door.

Knock. Knock.

Rationale asks me what is so wrong with me. It’s a man I didn’t know. It’s a character which isn’t real. Rationale tells me to calm the fuck down. People die. They just do. Rickman did. Lemmy did. So did a lot of other talented and extraordinary and ordinary and forgotten and forsaken people. Rationale asks me to relax.  People die. Rationale barks like a mad dog to my mistaken self, “You think you understand loss?”.

I listen. I don’t agree. But I don’t turn away either. I stay. Rationale is an old friend. Rationale understands when it’s not time to come home. Rationale let’s me curl up in my bed imagining there is a book underneath my pillow.

Rickman, I know there have been more movies to your list of wonder than Harry Potter, but Rickman, I will miss you the most for your gift to my world. The character was undoubtedly wonderful, but you brought him to life. You gave him form. You blended into my imagination like a breeze. You are one of the reasons why I think I understand love a little better. You are one of the reasons why I never grew afraid of loving someone. Whenever I am a lover, I will be a little of you. Sounds like a lot coming from a 22 year old, but hey, look what you’ve done for so many like me!

As I write, I appreciate the fact why people want to mourn you so much. Because I was not alone in this. We’ve lived different hells and heavens, but we’ve all felt overwhelmed by your existence and its absence alike.

If many years have passed and someone asks me if I’m still a Potterhead, I’ll take a huge puff of breath and say like you did, “Always.”

Always.