For Darkness.

I don't know if I love you or if I just love you being around. I wish sometimes we would see each other more often, because my heart does need a certain amount of sweetness; not the one that comes with chocolate, that is tinged by the bitterness of hate and anger--I need the one with honey, it brings dreaminess to my eyes whenever I think of you.

And so we must meet at night, for the glowing lightness in our steps when we are together will offset the damp darkness of the pitch black road we walk on; we are like stars in the heavens, and our carefully constructed conversations are stardust, golden-bronze and silver and crimson red, as streamers hang from the ceilings at parties.

Since parties are loud, let us walk in silence, to nowhere at all. Let us walk in circles and figures of eight like infinities back to where we started from. Maybe we could hold hands (well, or not). Sometimes the beauty of togetherness is that it still allows you to be separate.

If I tell you I love you, would you still walk with me? Would I have to resign myself to glancing at my empty screen every five minutes for a message that might never come? Will you leave me, or will you stay, when I break, of illness and too much carbonate? Will I have to reduce our time to just memories that might be forgotten over the years?

I would rather our memories be of weaving our way through the darkness, holding hands, than remembering someplace just because I sent a text to you there, when I was alone. When you are here in person, you won't have to zip your mask up like you always do; and neither will I. Even if you aren't in love with me, at least I will know who you really are.

At the Tunnel's End.

Some days you would rather sleep through.  Some days you would rather not live.  The minute you wake up--these days--you get this empty feeling around your heart or in your stomach or wherever it is saying something is wrong.  

Something could go horribly wrong today.  

I feel like this right now; I don't know why.  Probably the weather; probably the fact that I've got submissions due, and books to read, and problems to practise, and facts to memorize (this is the distasteful part--although sometimes, some days, one must do what is necessary to stay afloat and not drown in this ocean of thoughts and obsolete prerequisites), and it all becomes slightly overwhelming at times.  Or very overwhelming.  It's like a cycle, really, happy one day, sad the other.  This is part of the reason I don't like cycles much, but it is not as if one could change this cyclic nature of life into something more appealing (to me).  Some might say I'm mad.  Some know I am.

Some days you feel like you are falling into an endless abyss of thoughts dark enough to kill Death.  Some days you feel empty inside--maybe it's because something happened, long ago, that you're trying to forget and move on from, but with each passing hour, you find yourself being dragged deeper and deeper into that black hole you so desperately wish to escape.

I guess everybody feels this way once in a while.  Or twice.  Or more.  I suppose the real question would be that if sadness is inevitable and cannot be beaten, what do we live for?

I do not know the answer; I can only guess.

You live to come home from a long, tiring journey from the deepest, vilest pits you encounter during these necessary excursions into this thing that is called the outside world.  The outside world can be cruel sometimes--so much so that you have to look at Facebook posts detailing how someone's faith in humanity was restored: it is quite sad it has come to this--but things can change.  I hope they will.  It would not be good for humankind's skeletons if we were to go about falling into pits like Cheerios from a cereal box (except the bowl Cheerios fall into, here, has an end and a boundary).

You live so that you can taste the wind and feel it blowing through your hair in every direction, like a cloudburst of air.  So you can smell the smoked corn cobs as you walk by a lone stall near the edge of the sidewalk, and buy one, relieved that you can finally pay for your food in Indian rupees.  Maybe so you can photograph (and participate in) the explosion of colours during Ganesh Chaturthi or Pujo celebrations--or you might want to spend an afternoon with coffee and your favourite books--or coffee and your favourite friends.  

Maybe you live so you can watch your favourite band live after nearly a decade.  Or so that you can write.  Or so you can dream.  It wouldn't hurt to dream for a while.  Nightmares are dreams, but all dreams aren't nightmares.

This is just a real-life nightmare; this too shall pass.  It is only temporary, and what I should probably remember is that life is a rollercoaster that only goes up, and keeps going.  Eventually, the skies will clear and the sun will shine so brightly that--it won't blind your eyes--but instead of black and white shades populating the cones inside your eye, you could see something profoundly new.

~

Oh, now I'm floating so high.

I blossom and die.

Send your storm and your lightning to strike 

Me between the eyes

And cry.

Believe in miracles.

Oh hey, I'm floating up above the world now!

Oh hey, I'm floating up above the world now!

The Wall: Part One

The Wall: Part One

Photo Credits: www.wikipedia.org and myself.

She stood in the darkness, alone, cold, and pale.  She wondered who was coming to get her out of this hellhole.

But nobody knew she was here.

They had taken her, taken and fled.  Then they had left her.  Alone, in the darkness.  There was no window in the room.  The room itself had a stone floor.  It was not warm.  The door had a dog flap; they gave her food through it.
She didn't know who they were.  She had given up asking questions a long time ago.  She never saw a hand give her food through the flap--only a plate entering.  They gave her water to drink in a small, sealed bag.

She had tried to escape once, but the alarm had gone off.  She had run outside, but she had seen only bright white light, and nothing else.
Nothing to figure out where they were, or where she was.
Nothing but piercing white light that made her think she was surely going to be blind.  But she had slowly inched forward regardless, and she had felt--bricks.  She did not open her eyes; she couldn't.  So she ran her hand along the bricks.
It had felt like a brick wall of some sort.

Then she had felt a pair of arms dragging her towards the room.  She did not struggle, she had nowhere to go.
She had been here for so long, she didn't remember anything about the world outside.

And now she had felt that wall.

Why were they keeping her inside?  Who were they?  What did they want from her?  Where was she?
Was something wrong with her?

Or was something wrong outside?



(To be continued...)





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