No Surprises.

We are far from invulnerable
when we fall,
when we tinkle like
the stainless steel
against
the delicate china,
but break in a frightening crash.

Except maybe, less glamour-
more clamor for lives
not yet lived and roads
not yet taken.

Maybe, maybe all we wanted
was a chat over some
mango pickles and the
monsoon passing by our windows
and sticking eager faces,
summer skin out to lap up the rain.

Maybe a time where
you and I, or them,
other manifestations of us,
loved each other for exactly
that. Each Other.
Where it was easy
and the word outside
was a reference to summer rain
and hot tea.
But, alas.

BidderSweet.

Won't you take it all,
you silent, beautiful lull,
you endless, sweeping thing that
snatches and snitches on
this solace that has been
gnawing away,
pecking and gnawing,
You pest, you creature, you mirage.

Would you let me forever hold my peace,
If I for that one moment refuse to speak?

I bid goodbye to
your bids on my love,
You sweet, sweet bidder,
Auction me off,
I trust they will
to the highest, to the best-
Perhaps to you and this heart,
this infinitesimally beautiful,
this petrified,
this caged
thing will be yours to keep.

To what end,
For what purpose?

Silvia.

Did I say too much,

Did I say enough?

I don’t know, Silvia.

I don’t know, Silvia…

I don’t know. The questions circling around in your mind will find no answers by stumbling into me- there’s not much to see here, let alone find. You will dig deeper, and be rewarded with ashes of what I used to be, used to feel. Now I can disguise myself and carry on like it never happened. The pages no longer turn, we are no longer dancing in flames that licked at our consciousness and burnt our beings into contemplation. My words are as empty as my soul- perhaps the latter is emptier than the threadbare pocket of a homeless, washed out bum. I’m still waiting for the pennies you may have, to throw my way. A dollar, a nickel, a cent- aik paisa hee dedo, kuch tou dou, idher tou dekho..

Circle round the room still,

Often breaking my will,

Know I can’t have you here,

Someone else on your skin..

Two minutes- all you need is two minutes to forget my face. That’s all anyone ever needed. Really, it’s a joke when we profess our inability to live without one another. It really only takes two minutes, whatever your interpretation of those one hundred and twenty seconds might be. How does one love? How does one find that love? And how does that love last? How does it not break the heart after taking, and taking, and taking- and in one final plunge emptying it of a lifetime of painstaking giving. And when I’m empty, when you’ve had your fill, when I have given it all away, when I am dried up, where will you be?

Not here, maybe in another dimension of my thought, maybe when I will think about you one afternoon- far into the future, far out in the distances I see from my window. I may see us, and I may dwell on it for the tiniest of moments, form one of those impossibly long nexuses; then forget it ever happened.

That forgetting part, it helps me stumble through.

And the lights go out,

Will there be a trace

That I loved Silvia?

That I loved Silvia….

That once we loved and gave and fulfilled and promised.

Once upon that time, so long, long ago..

I spend a lot of my time thinking about how, next year, I'm going to be twenty. Even eighteen seemed quite young, being an adult was still far away, something in the distant future that I wouldn't have to worry about for a while. I enjoyed my bits of freedom, and let growing up wash over me in a lazy wave that struck every now and then, but never too often.
I still haven't learnt how to drive, or acquired an ID card. The only form of identification I possess is my passport, and my school ID card, that makes me feel like- well, like a school kid.

I realised why, sometimes, people refer to college and university as school when it isn't school. It's holding on to something that has been so important to them. My sister just got to fifth grade, and she's so excited about using a pen to write. I'd have thought "Yeah. A pen. Big whoop.", but I remembered how excited I was as well- being a fifth grader, being allowed to use a pen- these things were signs of growing up.
And now it all seems to overrated, this getting older thing.

I know I'm old enough, but I don't know for what. On a peculiar level, I actually appreciate it now when mum barges into the room at 4 am in the morning and asks who I'm on the phone with, when she refuses to close my door and makes fun of the word "privacy", when she tries to force feed me and when she tells me where I can and cannot go. 

I have, what, four and a half more months till I'm entirely responsible for myself. Where I go, what I do, who I meet, what I wear, my timings, my choices, my friends. I have yet to decide how I feel about all of that.

They don't love you like I love you.

It beats in surrendered corners and
in shreds scattered through the wind and
In ashes that fed the bonfire we lit and
(It was never so bright before)
within us.

An inkling of the cracks,
this is the surface too but
it's just inside, I'm just here, but
it's unknown to you and
you are within me, deeply
as I am outside the world that
is you.

Wait, they don't love you like I love you.

Reach out and extend arms,
inward please, not out,
but no- that's not right-
You can't reach in,
And I can't come out.

I'd explain it if I could, tell you why I write these morbid little monologues about things that were and will come to be. But my job is to reveal how it feels, and not why- ironic, because I'm the ever-unfeeling, the posterchild of heartless and faithless and hopeless. These things you attach to me, without ever asking me to give you a penny for my thoughts. It's too expensive a bargain for most people, especially in these times of recession- our hearts are emptier than our banks. We'd much rather cut forward than let the weeds of our pasts shackle our ankles and drag us into the inky black of memories. What's in it for me?

That's one that always evaded me.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. -Marilyn Monroe

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing. -Sylvia Plath

Some things just make more sense than others.
Yeah.
If you knew, if you figured out that essentially, there is nothing about me. That's all there is to it. Nothing.