“It was not so much that he was shut out, but that she was trapped inside”

SO my friend sends me sends me an audio message this morning about how de-sensitized he thinks he has become for a period of time, how disconnected from everything and distant from everyone. I listen to the message, my upper lip curls and look around for a while.

I don’t remember the last time I felt connected to anyone, by anyone I mean ANYone. Now that I think about it, the last person I felt really in tune with was my sister and it has been a long while since she has gone. I don’t remember sharing a really worthwhile conversation for a long time, I don’t remember being absolutely happy or being utterly sad. A few weeks earlier my cousin said I really was dead inside. I haven’t found a book to die for in months. Haven’t had the stomach to watch an entire movie in one setting for over a year. The really, really weird psychologist I worked with for my internship tried shooting all kinds of darts in my direction, calling me an introvert, saying I never shared anything personal with the group the entire time blah blah blah and right now as the only friends I have in my college leave me to go out, I so wish I at least felt bad at not being included, or that the way I and Bubbly have drifted apart would affect me a little, or that sometimes it would give me a sting thinking how absolutely shrunken has my world become and that maybe I would breakdown thinking my mom would die any day now… but no. I feel nothing.
So what do I tell him?

The Light The Dark

When the light is dim, all weak and frail
It tells us the very outline, I hear
Whether it’s a man, a hound or a fly
Someone who knocks to enter my lair
But they say the brightness shows it all
The colour the shade the love and hate
The hound that stood, the man who crouched
The trick imitation that granted the pass
They fall at the hallway, some get a bit ahead
They walk they stumble, they run they fall
Nevertheless they never get too far
In the house of a Stygian relict
It makes me return to darkness and think
Their Light brought them here, light made them knock
My Darkness caught up and swallowed the damned lot
Halves of the same whole, white and black
Partners and lovers, divided to trick
 I sit and smile at the nature’s game

And as I lean back, laughing up so hard

Light bursts through the window and death does me part

 

Relieved is a strange thing to say – you really don’t feel that.

I am sitting on the stairs at my Uncle’s huge place. Feeling the light coming through the glass pane windows. I like it here. The damp smell, the empty house. Mom’s out. Sometimes I wish she didn’t have to do all the chores and I could do it for her but then.. we are two distant yet so close people. I don’t know her heart. She doesn’t know mine

After grandpa’s death last week, house is all silent and sad. Nobody told me about his death until Friday when I came from college back home and asked about him and Mom said..honey he’s dead. He had cancer, that I knew.

I remember when my grand dad died. My dadabu. And how that broke me. Through and through. He was my best pal. My mentor. One person who knew all the answers. He was old school, loved all his grandsons. Never much liked the girls. But I was the one girl in the whole family everyone said he loved. They said we were like friends. And I realized that very late..

So I am still sitting here. I won the interclass creative writing competition a week ago. And now I found out I came 2nd in the intercollege competition too. Kind of feels strange. I used to be the type that would spread happiness to the ends of the world once it came to me. I lost my cell. And then maybe nobody really needs to know.

It’s just, we all have thoughts and dreams and ideas. People and friends and foes. And sometimes it’s confusing. What to like what to love. What to hold on and What to hold tight. Turn your back on whom and let who go away. It’s a strange world and a very tricky journey..

Now, but never again

It took a while to understand
And a while to know
The road I went on
Was never mine to go

It took a while to look
And a while to see
The person you just buried
Was someone I used to be

I went on this path
With a flower held to heart
The one you laid
On my mistaken grave

It took all this time to feel
And all this time to say
You never loved me once
and I won’t love you again..

Never knew my heart was attached to wires

It felt as if someone ripped my heart out and left the wires hanging in there. I could feel the electricity crackling as the pain spread through my arm to my back, pinning me onto the bed. I wish I could scream. I wish I could tear away the pain but it spread everywhere. It blurred my eyes and numbed my brain. There are painkillers in the cupboard I won’t go for. I need to feel this agony, I need this torment to make me realize that I will have to accept the end of fate. The end of life and love as I know it.

My shoulder blades seared and I could feel the heat travelling through my body. Minute by minute my life ends and God it feels as if the end is so near.

You know they say we hurt most the ones we love??

Yeah..it works both ways..

For what is it to die, But to stand in the sun and melt into the wind?

Apple green and light blue. Simple colours that light me up. Brown wet hair blowing dry in winds and that sun warming everything up. It’s Sunday. That ball of light was up. I watched it the whole day, until it sank behind the trees I am not friends with

Sometimes, everything seems oddly at peace. We shut that mind that heart that conscience in us and for that moment everything is still. We close our eyes to everything we have done, all that we should’ve done and sit somewhere on the grass. Not trying to think. Not thinking. Not breathing. Not listening. Afraid that the tiniest of whispers would shatter it all. The mist would part and we’ll have to face it all. Face all that we left behind. Feel  her still there. In the past. Near. But so far from the heart.

But how long will she stay. How long will she wait. How long will she break. One day, when the clouds will leave and the Sun will pour itself to light your blind eyes, you won’t find that friend there. World’s oldest story. No tracks. Not a single reminder of her existence. Even the words in your head will sound distant and blurred. A slight sting would remain, buried somewhere deep in you. A thorn buried deep in your flesh.

No matter what, son, The Sun will rise. It will rise from behind those trees, that, ah, just never became friends of mine.

Title: Quote by Khalil Gibran

In a Disused Graveyard

 

                                                           The living come with grassy tread

                                                           To read the gravestones on the hill;

                                                           The graveyard draws the living still,

                                                               But never anymore the dead.

                                                              The verses in it say and say:

                                                           “The ones who living come today

                                                          To read the stones and go away

                                                          Tomorrow dead will come to stay.

                                                        “So sure of death the marbles rhyme,

                                                         Yet can’t help marking all the time

                                                         How no one dead will seem to come.

                                                         What is it men are shrinking from?

                                                            It would be easy to be clever

                                                        And tell the stones: Men hate to die

                                                        And have stopped dying now forever.

                                                          I think they would believe the lie.

 

                                                                   -Robert Frost-

 

 

Sometimes, no matter how much faith we have, we lose people. But you never forget them. And sometimes, it’s those memories that give us the faith to go on

Night or early day, I know not. My eyes flew open as the stab settled in

No, Lord NO!

I knew the pain that would take over, starting from the shoulder blades down to the arm, now the ribs too. Clutching my teeth shut I sped to the kitchen. No, God, no. Popped the pills and drank enough water to push them down. Quick opened the fridge and filled the injection. No, please, don’t spread. There was no time, plunged the syringe into my arm and slid to the floor. The pain would go in half an hour now. Recede to a level that won’t get me screaming. If I was not already doing so. If I was not already wailing. Stifling the cries as the eyes leaked with salt water, sliding farther on the cold marble

Pathetic. It was pathetic. My body reeked of pity. I so wanted to cry in the real volume. Sob harder. I just wanted the pain to end. Just leave my body.. just leave my existence

Got up, came back. Sat at the edge of my bed. Face wet and arms sling. Chest hurt. I was crying for Dad. I wanted to go to him. Lord, I miss him. He was the only person who knew what was wrong with me. The only person who understood me. Sob shattered through my weak ribs and made me shiver. I hated shaking in despair and agony. And it was getting worse. The pain won’t stop. The arms won’t recover. Dad was gone. Buried under a pile of dirt. Just like I would be. Soon

How long is ‘soon’? Four years? Five years? 10? 12? Tomorrow? This night? How long have I got? What difference will it make? Will anyone’s world shatter, just for a second. For a second will there be that realization that she..she’s gone? What will mom do without me? Others can live. Oh it has been proved…once..twice..thrice..four times. Lives don’t stop. I don’t want them to. It’s just that feeling when the world isn’t the same anymore.

I pull on my cardigan. Slide into my tight trousers. My forehead is slick and wet of the wave of pain that just receded. Mom’s asleep in her room. I wear my glasses and start digging into my drawers, until I find a shattered frame and a torn picture of..of my family. Broken ages ago. I see him looking at me as if I was just about to fall. As if he would catch me if slip from mom’s arm.

I’ve fallen dad. Once, twice, thrice.. four times

Slowly the medication takes over as I sway. Remove my glasses and fall over my bed. I see faces of everyone I have ever cared for in my life. The images blur my mind and the words crash in my brain again. It is silly how everything seems right and then everything is wrong. The world seems dull when the insides are gray. As my insides pain, everything around me is thorns. I feel Dad’s warmth as I fall through numbness

And If I have ever loved anyone. I have loved you. In so many smiles. In so many tears. In all this pain. And through all my fears..

Grave of the Fireflies

My house was burning

And I sat. Sat overwhelmed. Sat numb and pale. I just sat there. Sat watching everything burned away. I saw Dad’s picture eaten up by dancing yellow and orange flames. I saw Mom’s ornaments smashed on the hard floors. I saw the tablecloth I made last month stained with blood of my sister. I sat there. In my torn clothes and in my dead soul

What could I do?There were blackened bodies all around me. Blackened by the hatred that was never ours. Destroyed by the revenge that we never bore. Where could I go? I was stoned. Held to ground by a force that somehow spared me. Spared from the fate my family just witnessed. Spared from the end my whole city saw. What had happened?

All I remember was that air raid siren. Over the cries of the dead that is all I hear now. My ears ring with that gong of fear and death. All I see is Dad running towards me, beckoning me to run. All I hear is my sister dragging herself away, from the flames licking the house fast. All I know is Mom is somewhere beneath those hot logs. I knew I ran. I knew it was all over. In the fight to make the other lose, I had lost it all. Lost my beloved in a war that was never ours..

I knew I ran into the chaos. Those streets with men women and children for something. Life, loved ones what I don’t know. I don’t know why I ran. To save my life? My life? In that wild moment I just knew what Dad said. And I did it. Ran faster than everyone. Maybe from death itself. A race which every one in my family lost

Stumbling back to my burning home, sitting among the ashes of my love and my life. I never won I guess. Because this is what they gave me as my consolation prize. To sit with my bashed knees on grandpa’s soot covered sofa, to see this with these crazed eyes of mine, shaking with fear; Fireflies. All.. fireflies…

(for Japan and every single person who died and dies in my country. A reaction to the movie “Grave of The Fireflies”. The depression doesn’t leave my mind)

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it

It is a strange day. It is a stranger me. The thoughts, the feelings the perceptions are all new.. And all so strange.

I lie here, oh yes I do. On a soft bed under a soft quilt. Head resting on a soft pillow. Every part of my body pains. There are places of unknown anatomy that pulsate with known pain. My hands burn. My breath is shallow. Every breath I intake feels like hitting my lungs hard. It is so strange. So far away

I don’t care. About anything, about anyone. I am sighing these deep sighs. My eyes are dry. And I am so broken. So broken.. Lord every part of me has fallen apart. And the pieces that stick to me are nothing but jagged shards. Piercing me in places unknown

Hope.. yes.. I hope it all ends today. I have no curiosity no want to go ahead. People say there is a lot I have to see. There is a lot to come. I know that speech by heart. I have been making it to different people at different times. But no.. I don’t want to go on. I have seen enough. My soul is full of all the experiences. Body is weak. Heart won’t take more

Watching the eerie, unbelievingly white and clean ceiling. Watching through eyes so tired, so groggy. I lie here, breathing in rich medicine scented hospital air. I have loved, I have met lots of people. Made friends made foes. Lost people found people. Broke got up. Got practical got emotional.. I just wanna go home now.. I am content of all I ever saw of what ever happened… But now after all I went through. All I saw and All I felt. I don’t want to be wasted anymore. It is just plain refusal to fight anymore. It is just plain defeat of a soul that isn’t blue anymore…

(title: Quote by Oscar Wilde)