The Last Dance.

This is not a love story. This is not the soul of a heartbroken man laid bare on paper, tied together with ink stains and needles, falling apart because he keeps rewinding the tape inside his mind to those very same moments that he once cherished, trying to glue himself back together without reminiscing about the perfume he was drenched in on this night exactly two years ago. This is not a cry for help; those days have long since passed. Those days will never come back, even though he tried his best to use them. He used to them to buy her little presents, wrapped with brown paper, with a red ribbon-bow on top, and her name on them; except he was used and thrown away before he could give her the tiniest of boxes with the tiniest of things: he hoped she would wear the thing on her finger, but that day never came; it never came at all, and his ambitions scoffed at him and bit the dust.

The nights after were horrible and pierced his heart, like thimbles pierce his skin when he presses them onto his fingertips. His fingertips are bare, as was his being when he gave himself to her, piece by piece, little by little—inch by inch.

It is midnight, but he can’t sleep.

“Do you want to look at the moon?” he remembered her asking him, one night. Her fingers ran through his hair, and he was in heaven.

“I am, already,” he had said. The smile he had received would have been photographed and framed had its desirer not known it would be one of her last.

He would have looked at that framed photograph every morning, just to see her face once again; but now he can’t, because she’s not here, and he misses her—she’s somewhere he can’t go. He doesn’t want to go there; He’ll have to kill himself before he can do that. His insides are torn, he is just a shell, barely breathing, not dancing to her favourite songs, hurting from all the pain.

This is not how he thinks it should have ended. He still want things to change, and he still wants her back, because every time he thinks about her, it hurts where it shouldn’t. He used to hum the loveliest of songs when she was around, but now he is alone, he has no one to dance with, and he can’t dance anymore, and he loves her.

~

I can't write a poem.

I can’t write a poem tonight,

I went outside and took some pictures,

And my right shoulder is aching.

I can’t write a poem tonight,

My brain is too full: I’d rather

Write something really really (really) long,

So that people know what I’m thinking about—

Not that that’s interesting; who I’m thinking about

Would be more enticing to read

And to know, quite frankly.

I can’t write a poem tonight

Because pouring myself out would be so much easier

Than freezing myself into short lines

(They read like stubble, not a long, flowing beard.)

You should know that you’re the one

Who made me want to capture in prose again

You’re almost like a plucked marigold flower—

It hurts a lot, but you still love helping people;

And sometimes it hurts me that you’re hurting.

I can’t write a poem tonight,

I’m thinking about you:

Not that I mind.

~Vruta Gupte.

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."

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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