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.

Goodbye?

How do you give a farewell
when time runs so fast
that by the time I finish
uttering ‘Goodbye’,
you have already traveled
257 meters in the air?

My hands tremble
as they try to become
conch shells, but fail
to save your voice,
like conch shells
save voices from the sea
from over a hundred years.

My back curls a little
and I bury my face
closer to the screen
to feel closer to pictures
we didn’t take,
yet the only thing
I end up feeling
is farther apart.

I don’t feel Gold is
the most malleable substance.
I’ve grown up to believe
it’s distance.
Because distance
can feel the same
across a bed, a room,
a city, a country;
an entire lifetime.

Have you ever thought
what it feels like
to see your memories
in advance? Would you care
to take a dive and tell me
how you deal with goodbyes?

Because I’d like to find out
if your heart does break
a little, and if you hide
a small tear, that builds
in the corner of your eyes
as you float up, and the people
you leave behind sink,
in some way or the other?

Letters get posted,
some received, some lost;
like songs.
Everything is risked
when you begin to feel
the heavy and the light
that comes with ‘Goodbye’.
You don’t know how many days
it will take to forget faces,
and places you went to.

It’s begun to rain here,
and it reminds me
of how you think
I am indecisive.
Words spill out
and become sentences.
Like days, becoming years.
My poems, you don’t understand
and for once, just for once,
I think it’s okay.

Her

This got written for The Great Indian Poetry challenge #12. The thing I was told to write about was ‘I couldn’t stop looking at her’.

She reminds me of postcards
and of the feeling I had when
I held on to my first set of crayons.
She’s like the first bicycle ride without a fall.
She looked at me from across the hall,
and I, couldn’t stop looking at her.

Supernova smile. Jupiter jawline.
Neptune neck and her earthly eyes.
She takes me along on cosmic walks
and bends me, the way light bends
near a black hole; she is all the gravity that there is
in the Universe, and I, have no choice but to fall.
Oh Boy, I couldn’t stop looking at her.

There are times when she tap-taps Morse code
onto my shoulders with her lips,
and I respond with profane gospels
mumbled into her ears.
It was 4 AM and we had just got done making love,
and I, couldn’t stop looking at her.

We fight. She has tornadoes
at the tip of her tongue.
She throws around her wood-chunk words
and I crumble them with my hacksaw haughtiness.
She looked at me like a bell jar
about to implode,
and I, couldn’t stop looking at her.

She now reminds me of songs
I will never be able to write.
and also of the feeling you get
when you lose your favorite action figure.
She looked at me from the photograph,
and from the deafening silence she’s now become.
Hollow, like eaten-up wood.
Winters did come; winters did leave.
Yet I, couldn’t stop looking at her.

For The First Time

Picture Courtesy: The Artidote

For the first time when I touched you,
I could feel my backbone dissolve,
one vertebra at a time.
My ribs turned to bubblegum ash,
as my lungs filled with the breaths you took.

For the first time when you tried to hold my hand,
your fingers became a crowbar,
trying to pry open my fist shut tight in vulnerability and defense
and heartbreak began to look like the Golden Spiral, in reverse.

For the first time when I decided to let my guard down,
you climbed into me from the broken edges,
and I let you shape me like a voodoo doll,
with your hands like thunder, touch like tornadoes.
You became my collapsed walls,
and my prayers were the bricks that fell.

For the first time, we fell in love,
I decided to give up poetry once and for all,
because every time we will kiss,
I will write you a poem, and you will never understand.

For the first time, my feelings
became alloys and amalgams of poems I’d written,
Like chemical reactions, happening off neurons and words.
Poetry would strike, when the bell tolls.

For the first time, I wrote a poem
that they did not understand,
I grew a little farther, a little on my own.
See, the thing is, no matter how much
poetry soothes on the surface,
beneath it, it seethes all the more.
There is no saving me, love.
I was forever gone.
My ceramic had hit the floor, when I read you a poem,
for the first time.

 

 

Passport

Painting by Alexei Nechytaylo

So this is what it feels like
to wake up in another country.
This is how the human heart
can ask passports to mind their own business.

When your fingers ran on the length of my spine,
and on the periphery of my existence like dry ice,
I could see what ‘teleporting’ might feel like,
twenty times a second, or more.

When people hug, I think it’s like someone
offering you a cup of warm coffee on a winter morning.
When people kiss, I think it is ‘thank you’.
So, thank you, for writing songs to my soul,
and thank you, for everything true and untrue,
for they are all going to end up in the same abyss,
aren’t they?

You know somewhere in the night, I cried.
And by choosing to tell you,
I’m choosing to hand all the question and exclamation marks
in the brackets of your hands.

To wherever the stars take you, and beyond,
may this remind you of me,
and may I remind you of how
it feels like to wake up in another country,
how the human heart can ask passports,
to mind their own business.

 

Forest Fire

You’re forest fire, baby.

You’re burning me down by the acre.

A while back you were

grazing near my lips,

and suddenly now you’re

in the burning of my toes.

You feed off the breaths I heave

as you scorch through my insides.

Silence stokes our soul.

I feel younger, yet ‘us’ feels old.

Like a phoenix, you rise from my ashes.

Like a dry autumn leaf, I fall

and crumble on your merciless palms.

Your hands chart journeys deftly.

And my body reaches destinations.

We, are evidence why

fire is good for the soil.

I shrivel at the edges, like a paper

teased by a flame.

I mutter prayers whilst I burn,

waiting for my next turn.

You’re forest fire, baby.

And I’m not putting you out.

Hell no.

‘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.

 

 

 

 

If You Didn’t

Did you take a good look at her before you left her?

If you didn’t, you should have.

Because eyes like hers will change as people like you will come and go.

The clouds of doubt in her eyes will rain tears

and leave her cheeks a colder place to kiss the next time.

Her hair now erupts into curls a little more sadly

now that your fingers run through them, no more.

Her color is blue, that of numbness and dissociation.

That of forgetfulness and despair.

That’s the only color you left her with. Blue.

Did you touch her intently before you left her?

If you didn’t, you should have.

Because a body like hers will take the beating of time.

When you run into her thirty-eight years later, she’ll be sixty.

The skin around her lips will no longer be taut and welcoming.

She’ll have wrinkles beside her eyes and scar tissue inside them.

Her skin will hang lose, as if it has given up, just like her.

Her body will no longer be the wonderland.

It’ll be an abandoned city after a long war.

That’s how you left her feeling. Like a war zone.

Did you seek forgiveness before you left her?

If you didn’t, you should have.

Because you don’t break something she called her heart

And walk away without an apology good enough.

Wait. What’s which apology has ever been good enough?

You can’t unscatter people. They’re just gone.

Just like you.

That’s the only gift you left her with. Your absence.

Did you take time out to cry for her before you left her?

If you didn’t, you should have.

For all the conversations she wanted to have and you didn’t.

For the things she felt deeply and you did too.

For all the things that got lost between silence and sleepless nights.

You should have wept, for the damnation of incomplete love.

That’s the only constant you left her with. Incompleteness.

Did you say a goodbye before you left her?

If you didn’t, you should have.

Because dreams that die young haunt the worst.

She feels like a book you started reading

And never finished. You just left her on the bed, open.

Near the window, from where storms and rains

Came in and tattered her pages

and yet, no storm could close her.

That’s how you left her. Without a closure.

The Parting Gift ( Part 4 )

She woke up feeling restless in her bed. Her legs were aching and her hands felt like lead. Her head hurt and she told to herself bitterly, “There you go! Again such a great start to my day”.
This was how her days started lately. She would wake up feeling miserable. Every day. Every single day since the past few months. However, she was a tough lassie. She was the kind who would not give a damn. The kind who would look at the upside of things.Though, this once, it was becoming difficult for her.

Chitra got down the bed and walked to the mirror to look at herself. She was apprehensive of looking at what met her eye. She was barely 20 and her skin had started losing its glow. She did not have those rosy cheeks she was once so proud of. But she still had her smile. She flashed it across her pretty face and her big Bengali eyes curled upwards very graciously. She let loose her hair and saw the locks of her hair slowly reach down. She took her hair from one side and tucked it behind her other shoulder and looked at her neck. She ran her hand down her neck and shoulder and wondered if she was pretty. She looked at herself and wondered if any guy would ever love her.

She had been with a guy once and that nitwit had ruthlessly broken her heart, stomped on it, and left her alone to gather the pieces of what was left of her. Not that she was a sad wreckage or debris, but her heart ached in the most loneliest of times. She cried for three days, and the fourth day she did not give a fuck. She was that girl. Not that she did not flinch when old memories came up, but then,”retrospection was for morons”, she told herself to keep going.

But today it was strange. She did not know what was going on in her body, why she kept growing so weak, why her skin didn’t glaze any longer… It was driving her crazy. So many tests, and medicines, then again some more tests and more medicines. She never really bothered to know what was up with her, but now she was getting restless.

However, these were the things she admitted feeling. What about all those things she felt but did not agree to feel? What about her parents? What about the divorce? What about the fact that she hadn’t spoken to her father in years, not even met him despite all the efforts he had made to make it up to her?

“You never get to make up a broken marriage Baba. I’ll never forgive you”. These were the last words she had told her father many years ago, when he had come to meet her.

But she had. She had forgiven him years ago. She just did not want to admit it. But why?
She did not know. Maybe because forgiving a father who walked out of years of marriage seemed like a very un-cool thing to do. Maybe because books and movies and friends had told her that she did the right thing by not forgiving.

But then why did she forgive him at all? Maybe because, she had realized what many people fail to. That forgiveness is easy. At least easier than hate. Forgiveness must be extended to a father who had loved her. To a father who had been trying so so hard to mend things with his baby girl. Maybe she did not want to do both the things, the forgiving, and the admitting. So she continued to be that grumpy girl who never ever talked to her father.

She brushed these thoughts away as she took a heavy breath and sat down at the edge of the bed. She felt tired from all the standing and she hated it. She was tired and angry at God. Very angry. Her wrists were tired from all the writing she had to do in her class. Her eyes were tired from all the drooping in the lectures. Her back hurt when she sat up for long. But what hurt the most was her soul, too tired from holding behind her tears that had been wanting an out. She was hoping for a miracle. Her miracle. That one miracle that would change her life.

Little did she know that the next few months would bring a change in everything. How she looked at her father. How her mother looked at him. But what none of them knew was that all this came at a cost none of them were willing to pay.

‘But I don’t love you.’

                       ‘But I don’t love you.’ ‘That’s okay.’

I just read something beautiful on the Internet about how sure all of us are about love, and how we just can’t accept that the people who can’t or won’t love us, aren’t broken or incapable of emotions. This reminded me of a guy I dated. He couldn’t get himself to love me and I just kept thinking how unfortunate his existence was. ‘Unable to love me’. That used to exhaust me. I felt like a bunch of photons near a black hole. All I had and all I felt went into him, and nothing came back ever. I kept wondering why sometimes every thing is okay, except the fact that ‘they’ don’t love you back.

That’s our problem. All we have been taught about love is that it teaches us to be better people, makes us more tolerant and loving and how love must most certainly be complete only if we receive. It’s high time people talk about the importance of unrequited love to their kids and fairy tales learn to keep it real. Love can’t always be for the better. Love doesn’t mend, all the time. What about the kind of love that lets people drown themselves in bathtubs? What about the kind of love where people become the monsters inside their heads? Why is that not love? Why is any thing fucked up not love? Obsession. Rebound. Abuse. Why are we so afraid to agree that even love smothers souls, even though love is meant to repair?

If ‘they’ don’t love you back, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation. Sometimes, it doesn’t need mending. Sometimes, it is okay to not be loved back, because ‘they’ are people like you and me, and sometimes, we just mess it up and don’t fall for people like we’re supposed to. So if someone doesn’t love you back, don’t try to make them. They’re not a candle and you’re not a moth. You have wings. Fly away. Love and learn to leave it at that. Fulfillment lies not only in requisition but also in denial. The colors are different and yes, you’ll cry yourself to sleep for a week or two, but then, that’s that. Heal. Tragedy is beautiful, yes, but learn to know that sometimes, you’ve had your share.

‘Even love unreturned has its rainbow.’ 

Let it rain, human. Let it at least rain.