I hate that I love myself Even when I can’t. At me the looking glass gapes With a shadow as lifeless As the idol’s eyes in the temple Looking straight beyond me When I once used to pray
I hate that I look at the glass Harder and harder Trying to imagine myself into An aesthetic self A wise woman A smiling soul Bubbling with joy With a contagious smile
I hate that I make myself believe I need not be anyone else My reflection is flawed but never me Only the glass could be purer Oh I couldn’t be surer
But I hate that I don’t love myself As soon as my coerced conception Breaks into pieces The illusion shattering into shards of glass Piercing me everywhere And I’m back again
Stranded in the dark alley Sitting with my knees bent Drenching in the never ending rain.
My sadness is up for sale
Packaged in a skin of rage
Buy it for your lover, Ma’am.
Buy it for your children, Sir!
My sadness is a ghoul you’ll get
It’ll stick to the soft terrains
Of all the lovesick souls that you’ve met
They will all forever be chained
Forever and ever, to you.
Black hearts work better than black magic
I’m selling you my best ever trick
It’s an offer that you all must use
It’s my offer that you can’t refuse
I have let my sadness loose.
The sand bag of my body Leaks through tears on the sides When I cry at night Stone chips rest on my chest They collect one by one Clink, clink, clink Seconds tick inside aloud
My sack is a shroud That I sewed for myself Threads made out of Agonising hate I’m cemented to the floor, I need some help I want to get back up.
Should I wait for the bulldozer to arrive On some time even gloomier than this? I’m perhaps already laughing at myself On the other side of the pain In moments of bliss and disbelief. I don’t need help, please.
Trailing down my arms
Your breath takes a walk.
City noises swell slowly outside us
To welcome the day that’s just begun.
I look at you and my eyes announce
I am running away from you my love
I’ll never call you my jaan, my life,
You’ll never know why,
Perhaps neither do I.
I bask in your devilish smile
For one last time
One last touch
Before we die to each other
Your lean arms wrapped around me
I untie them
I free you.
I still see her in my dreams, honey.
I never tell you
How she smiles in them
How I forget all about how I hate her
Her eyes as big as a still lake
I wake up drowning in joy;
You embalm my lips in grinning kisses-
I cannot mouth the words
It's not you.
I never see you in my dreams
But I love you
But you love me
I hear you whispering my name
Your lips quivering in soft sleep
But I’m not coming back.
Don’t you worry, love,
Someone will fill the gap.
My heart is sinking faster than my breath
Red hot metal scraps tinkling like rain
Voices loom outside the tunnel
I've been inside so long,
Do I want to go out?
I could ask for help and shout
But my voice chokes with rage
I want a carnage
Every part of myself torn apart
Sticking to the walls like abstract art
In a room without a door.
Explosions inside my core
Fashion themselves into frail groans
Dissipating into sullen silences
Too misty to grasp too well
Once they leak outside
Into the circle of light.
There's no fight left in me
I become the tunnel
I am my shell
Scrape my remains
Into a putrid bowl of poetry.
You'll finally find me.
If my memory was mapped with
Blood clots and muted screams
Would I be a patient, or a soldier?
If I were too tired
To believe in dreams of victory
Should I march any further?
Angry tears facing the wall
I fall, I fall, I fall
Thudding my way down every night;
Rock bottoms and nondescript floors
Are so dangerously alike.
A part of me sings upbeat karaoke
Pauses for breath and asks me if I'm okay
(Forgive me the pun)
And I sing along, it's great
What's the use of wallowing in sadness?
If keeping away sorrow was enough
I'd still have a chance.
But you can't just dance the way
All your life. Aim! Aim!
Be on top of your game!
(I could rhyme this line with 'shame'
If I had it in me. Sorry.)
I am sorry, but perhaps I'm not.
The guilt for the absence of guilt I've got
Eats me inside when I imagine my life-
A cumbersome, crooked centipede of Time
Always ending up smashed into a fleshy patch
A huge footstep crashing down, down, down.
Or maybe I'll just be around
For pleasant winters and sultry summers
Gliding with peppy music
Perhaps I won't be sick.
I think I'll fight it.
I may say that I know you.
But how could I?
When you have woven not walls I might climb
But long labyrinths coiled
Around yourself
There are a thousand and fifty one ways
But none of them reach your heart
Fresh fortresses at the end of every path I seek
The heaviness of the doors makes my heart sink.
When we speak not of the dreamy sunsets
But of the beauty of our shadows
Elongating in tune with the length of our conversations
On the steps of the river bank,
You smile with your endless eyes
I feel, a door has opened.
Yet the moment next,
The door disappears, leaving its shadow behind
I keep running after shadows.
I hold your hand sometimes
Will you ever squeeze it back?
You smile at me,
And I cannot think of anything else
For hours on end.
When I'm alone at nightfall
I replay your smile in my head
Clutching at a fleeting image
Lest it should turn to smoke.
Perhaps it's useless to hope.
I labelled the unnamed longing in my heart
The Gross Over-expectations of Romance.
(Alternately,
The Downside of Being
A Clichéd Hopeless Romantic?)
When I stopped mid-sentence
Telling you about my
Better-than-the-average day,
You brought your empty eyes back to life.
Maybe you try too hard to mask them
For my sake, as a friend.
The myriad ways I try to reach you
Are always destined only to my broken heart.
I may say that I know you
But how could I
When you haven't truly
Given me the right?
When lockdown ends The flowers that have grown on my bedcover Will crawl back into their still shapes The grey floor that has stretched into miles Will squeeze back into the 10×10 room The hours that have become endless Will trap themselves inside the watch When lockdown ends I’ll come out of a Dali painting
And I’ll ask (perhaps in vain) Am I still the same? My mind tends to forget the worst She keeps me away from my own ghosts When lockdown ends Will it make sense, if I find That in the corners of my mind Greyish blue patches of memory have disappeared Forgetfulness spreading like fungus on old bread Where did the time go? Where did I? Where am I?
I might go round in circles When the lockdown ends Will I be able to make amends To those who I might have lost Might have crossed Out from my life When I perhaps dissolved in my endless room It is the season of doom, after all.
This is a little different from my usual posts. I mostly post poems here but I tried writing a short story this time. I hope you like it. ^_^
The coffee cup before me looked like the dirty puddle of rainwater I had splashed my foot into, an hour ago. You would think my day was ruined, but frankly, I had it coming. Who wears white on a rainy day? I didn’t really mind the brown patches that stained the hem of my kurti. It would make a nice conversation starter. “Oh hey, you have mud on your dress!” they’d say, smiling, and before they comment further on the gloomy weather, I’d chime in, “Haha, I’m so awkward…I didn’t see the pothole and stepped right into it,” I might even tuck my hair behind my ears and adjust my glasses- because, oh I’m so nervous and clumsy, don’t you see? People dig that, especially boys. It makes them think we need them. Well, I guess we do, otherwise why am I at a cafe waiting for my date?
I glanced at my phone. It was twenty past five. He had told me he’d meet me at five thirty, and his Instagram bio read ‘Meticulous| Merry| Marvel fan’. As much as you shouldn’t trust Instagram bios or any self-proclaimed declarations about one’s own conduct, I figured he would be punctual. I had reached the cafe by five, because I had wanted to look settled-in. A date is like a job interview, or worse; especially when it’s almost a blind date, so I needed myself to steady myself in a room full of strangers. That’s what a cafe is, isn’t it? Whatever soothing music you can hear in the background, don’t you feel eyes on you every second in a public place like that? The eyes of a stranger who you’ll potentially date are the heaviest of them all.
I had known him only for a day, after all. After I broke up with Rohan, I thought I was done with relationships, done with love, blah blah, all that nonsense that fills your brain right after you’ve dumped a piece of shit after realising (after six long years of not realising) what a piece of shit he was. The man sitting at the table to my right was holding a guitar by his side. It took me back to the hours we spent bunking classes and singing our lungs out on Rohan’s cousin’s terrace. I realised how much I missed that bunch of friends, and I heaved a sigh. The thing about nostalgia is, it somehow starts with making you happy but leaves you far worse than you were before. I wondered who he was singing to now, which of the two girls with whom he had cheated on me, or was there a new fresher he was advancing his friendly arm to. I looked away.
I sipped my coffee and pretended to read the novel I had brought with me. My date and I – we spoke about our love for reading, and I didn’t want to be a liar. I might not have touched a novel in more than five years or so, but I can surely bank on my adolescent years when I was indeed an avid reader. How do I explain that I was in love with books once, but that love has faltered? How do I tell him that I have an attention span shorter than the breath of a sparrow, that I skim through movies and series without actually taking anything in? It’s not easy to explain to anyone how day by day everything outside turns to nothing inside. It’s easier, in fact, to try to remember how you used to be, and maintain a facade solid enough to make the others think that you’re interesting enough, if not enough.
A loud noise of thunder crashed my train of thoughts. In a moment, a heavy downpour began. I looked at the hazy city outside the big glass doors of the cafe, and I asked myself, when was the last time I emptied myself, the way that the sky seems to do so easily? My friends were concerned when the break-up didn’t make me cry. To be honest, even I was surprised at myself. Surely something as grave as parting from a boyfriend of six years calls for some tears? It reminded me of that line from Tennyson’s poem- “She must weep or she will die.” I didn’t weep, so, did I die? In the poem the woman had lost her husband, a warrior in battle, and she was tear-less in shock. I had lost my love, but perhaps I wasn’t in shock. Somehow, I had always known. An individual is not a whole, there are so many selves inside one, don’t you think? I think that the betrayed lover, the girl who was never enough, has been hiding inside me since forever. Sometimes her imaginations come true, and I feel that I have known it all along.
It was quarter to six already, was he stuck in the rain? I picked up my phone to call him but I put it down. Of course he was trapped in the rain, I should be patient. I could see the waiter looking at me and my searching glances at the door, and I would bet any money that he was smiling at my loneliness. Perhaps he wasn’t smiling at all. Or was it because of my muddy dress? I can never tell what it is about me that makes all the mouths around me twist into a crooked smile- my large unshapely body, my blank perspiring face, or the ridiculous way that I walk. It sounds like a wretched conspiracy that the world has hatched against me, but I’d like to think it’s all in my head. No one should care enough to judge me in this busy city. Thank God I don’t live in a small town that thrives on petty gossips, I pity those who do.
I looked at my half-empty coffee cup and put down the book. I don’t even like coffee, why did I buy it? Then I remembered, I always drink coffee on early dates. It doesn’t do well if you’re not into coffee, how else are you supposed to gaze at each other inside a beautiful little cafe- where couples come to discover and rediscover their emotional connection over lengthy chats and romantic strumming of the guitar in the background. I hated myself for being dishonest with myself this way. It isn’t a crime not to like coffee. No one would bat an eye if I said I hate coffee. But how could I say so, when he was clearly so excited for me to try the coffee here? I’m sure it wouldn’t really break his heart if I said I don’t drink tea or coffee or whatever, but I’m sure it would break me before I could say that to him. I have an unhealthy need to please others, my friends often remark. It’s not that I can’t be a bitch, but I need to set my heart that I will be a bitch, you know? My phone buzzed. Was it him? I checked my phone. It was my best friend, she sent me a meme. I hadn’t even told her that I was on a blind date. I was a hundred per cent sure that she’d call me suicidal, since this guy could very well be a catfish, a serial killer – and what not. I didn’t usually behave this way. I had been using a dating app for a month now and the guys I had talked to the most, I had made sure to virtually stalk all of them. Of course any girl would do that. But something had come over me the previous evening. I was tired of everyone, tired of talking to a bunch of guys who were talking to a bunch of girls and we all seemed to a drowning in the dating pool.
Suddenly this one guy had texted me, telling me he had decided to go on a date with the very first girl that appears on his feed. I had happened to be that girl, apparently. The sceptic that I am, I asked him whether he had been texting the same thing to all girls he could find, to which he was unsurprisingly offended, and gave me his Instagram id and immediately deleted his dating app account. I was quite amused and surprised, it felt like a breath of fresh air; I almost seemed to have pushed my head out of the oppressing water and an arm seemed to be waiting outside to pull me up. I forced myself not to think much about anything else. We had an engaging conversation for an hour or two, and I decided to give this a shot.
It’s not impossible for this guy to turn out to be a serial killer indeed, or at the very least the usual quintessential creepy guy. But I didn’t want to think about that. It would only make it worse; after all I was already there. He wasn’t, yet. It was almost six o’clock. I debated whether I should finally send him a text, and that’s when I found that my cellular network was gone, even the cafe WiFi didn’t seem to work at all. So much for a fancy cafe, huh. What would I do now? It was still raining outside, but the downpour had thinned into a slow drizzle. The rain holding up my date was too boring. What if he was secretly a superhero, busy saving some helpless little boy from a speeding bus? Perhaps he was someone only I could see, an apparition- hundreds of years old- who had materialised again into human form only to enjoy the pleasures and pains of love. I laughed at my superfluous daydreams. I tried to imagine what he would be like. The very little time that I had known him gave me the impression that he was more or less an average guy, with perhaps an unusual urgency to meet a stranger like me. He was funny, but not too edgy, he was appreciative and nice without being redundant in his greetings and niceties. He was polite and seemingly decent. What struck me the most about him was his intensity of wanting to form passionate human connections. He seemed so eager to meet me that you’d think we were long lost friends, who must meet before time runs out and each has to catch their flights going opposite ways. But who was he, really? A two-hour conversation might entirely be a facade, and I sure do know how easy it is to pretend to be someone you’re not.
Was I being stood up? I had managed to keep these awful doubts away from my mind, but he was supposed to be here a long time ago. The sky had cleared by now, and darkened at the same time with the tresses of nightfall. The fears of the insecure girl inside me came true after all. I called the waiter and paid the bill, struggling to wear a nonchalant customer-like expression on my face, reminding myself that he had no way to know that I was supposed to meet someone. Looking happy was too suspicious, I tried to look busy – as if my time for a cosy solitary evening at a cafe was finally up and I must get back to my normal, hectic life. I stepped out of the large glass door that now revealed beautiful yellow inlaid lights. I opened my phone. A bunch of messages, none from him. The newsfeed read that heavier rainfall and thunderstorm was to be expected in the next few days. Oh, and it reported the death of a young man in Kolkata by thunder strike.
