Monday 31 October 2016

Of the Lost and Forgotten.

I give you parts
Of a broken self
Whose these fragments are
I do not know
They may be mine
They might be yours
I give you lost pieces
Of a jigsaw puzzle
Someone once
Threw away
Whose pieces they are
I do not know
They might be mine
They may be yours
I give you a paper
With a story of heartbreak
Whose story it is
I would not know
It may be mine
I know it's yours
I give you sunshine
I saved for the darker times
Whose sparkle this is
I cannot know
I think it is mine
Because of yours
I give you a poem
I found crumpled near
A lonely curb of thought
Whose words these are
I think I know
They were once mine
Now they are yours.
~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Wednesday 26 October 2016

Her.


Her rattling rambles made their way roaringly into my resplendent reverie.

He chuckled.  Yes, that would be a nice sentence to start with.  He groaned.  He was using the word nice too often.  But what could he do?  With her, everything was nice.  Everything was sunshine and rainbows; and if it were to rain now, she would drag him outside his cozy, comfortable cocoon that he had relegated his entire existence to--but how he wished she would take his hand and, with an expression of mock scorn, bring out his special sandals and plop them onto the floor--or, to be less gentle, throw them down onto the floor, in clear disdain for his habits (or lack thereof, he smiled again) and the way he forgot everything around him once he started thinking about one of his musings from the night before.

"One of?" she looked at me quizzically, "Am I not your only?"

Yes, dear, you are, but I can't tell you that, can I?  I would like to keep that to myself.

You have made me an orange--stop laughing, idiot--you have made me an orange, or I should probably say onion, because you have peeled off layers and layers of me, and with each passing day, as I tell you about something quite spinelessly stupid that I have done, or said, you say you love me more and more, and I can only wonder.

For in the past, the other one--"There was another?"--yes, darling, there was, and I am sorry I did not tell you--the other one said she hated me, after a while.  I asked her why, she told me she needed someone more.

'More what?', I asked.  Nothing, she said, her eyes blank, just more.  I was never the same again.  I tried more-ing myself, my darling, I did, but I couldn't, because I had nothing left.  All of it went away with her, and I became empty, and emptier, until.  Until what?

Oh, until you.

And you found me at my emptiest, and I had nothing to give to you, and I was so ashamed, so withdrawn, and so surprised; a dangerous trio, that is.  A troublesome trio, do you see what I did there--"I do, yes, go on, I love listening to you,"--no, she never saw anything I did.  Or maybe she did, but she stopped noticing--and I--I still cared, and I wish I could have been more, but now I have you; so I will be more for you, dear.

You don't have to be more for me.  I don't need you to be more for me.  I only need you to be enough, the way you need me to be enough for you.  There is no 'more', is there?  Even if there is, more changes, enough is constant.  And even if we are not always, let us be now.  For a certain sometime when a certain someone is there with us to gaze brightly at the twinkling stars, and watch them greet each other, in childish oblivion, the night becomes all the more young, and free.  And should we be bound?  Of course not.  Though we are made of all things that are within limits, and we are told not to dream big, we are told to reach for the moon with one hand in our pockets, to curb ambition, because they say it is a sad, sad and lonely, desperate world, and we will help this world and each other, and tell them that all is not yet lost, my love.  Things change.  We must also change.  But we will have each other.  


~


"Two-fold intoxication, obliging nearness as necessity, excuse to be each other's pillar, pillow, or prize, the whole walk home.  This beautiful love simulacrum, stumble we shall not, for even now, dear, we might already have let ourselves fall once this night."

Tuesday 18 October 2016

The Aloner.

His words, I feel, are magic. You don't know where they come from, but they are always there, in the back of your mind, and they remind you of things like stardust and the aroma of coffee and cream in the morning, of fresh, warm croissants—these I have been missing of late—of dewdrops and wet earth after the rain, the almost scalding sunshine when you have no cap to shield your eyes, and that perfumed scent of the yellowed pages of a book that people have forgotten about, but you remember, and, oh, I could go on forever. For men may come and men may go; but he will always remain immortalized, past his time and life, and death, as someone who wielded words, but not as weapons.

He used words to make you exalt and suffer at the same time, as though he wanted to remind you of the maladies that most of us are, but he did not wish you drowned in your (inevitable) despair and sadness, either. Quite a paradox, he was. He buried himself, and still wanted people (me, I like to think) to understand. Amused, yet amusing. Half empty, and half full. Broken, but he would never break you. My truest friend and his own worst enemy.

~ migration.

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