Memory Lane.

Made on Fresh Paint

I won’t say the cold is piercing because

I have known what needles feel like

Although

I haven’t been stabbed before,

I won’t say candies are sweet

For sometimes beginnings can be sweeter

Apples aren’t delicious because

Once I almost choked on a slice

Lights aren’t pretty

They might burn my eyes

Sometimes some music is noisy

All dark alleys aren’t poetic and beautiful

Neither are hearts, because they break

Nor are people, for they leave.

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.

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.

~

As You Like It.

How paradoxical it is that we are ambitious but also find anonymity appealing, my friend said to me as she gazed nonchalantly at the black ceiling, again, and again.  She had stared at the ceiling yesterday, too.  And the day before that.  And the day before the day before...

He tapped his forehead with his pen; seldom had he found it so difficult to put his thoughts into words.  Although he had observed that putting thoughts into words had become a little more cumbersome for him, of late, mostly because he was doing other things.

Thinking about other things.  And people.
Person, actually.

Was he fooling himself?  He would probably never know.

It was two in the morning, yet here he was (idly twiddling his thumbs to match the beat of the song that played in his head, as ever), imagining another life, in which anything was or could have been possible.

Possibilities--the word was as scary as it was exciting.  But isn't that what life was all about?  Scariness and excitement?  Of course, he could be wrong, but that wasn't the point.  The point was that he could be.

The past year had gone by pretty uneventfully (pretty--what an oxymoronic word to use), oh, except for one thing.  He would rather not be reminded of it.  The past month, however, had been, quite contrarily to the general trend (graph) of his life (versus time), extremely eventful.  The past month had been an enigma he was still trying to make sense of.  

She was someone he was still trying to make sense of.  How could someone who looked so small and wonder-less (but somebody would surely find her wonderful, no doubt) write something that stirred within him such unimaginable feelings of kinship, and regret, and admiration, and emptiness?  So much to feel, and so little time!  She was a rollercoaster, and he was a slow-moving horse-coach that, instead of horses, was being pulled by donkeys, of all beings.  Not a perfect match (not even to be friends, much--or so he thought.  Of course, there were other, more important things, that he held dearer to his heart, that beckoned him to talk to her every day).  

But friendship and love is seldom about matching.  Friendship is about staying even when you don't match.  Friendship is about tearing your paper heart in half, and giving one half to your friend if his heart is broken.  Friendship is about crusading silently, caped; masquerading as the Dark Knight for this one person in your life, because...because they are special.  Special, and no more, no less.  Friendship is about being the unlikely superhero for an irreplaceable person.  True friendship, and true love: both of these do not pull you down.  You grow with them.  

You might stay away from the other person for a couple of days, weeks, months, or maybe even many years, but when you see them again--it feels like you've come home.  Because you are home.  Those moments, those times you shared together--they are unforgettable, as if you only lived them yesterday.  And this is what friends are for, isn't it?

She smiled, and ran her hand through his hair.  He had fallen asleep on his diary, and his pen lay besides the window, almost invisibly, as if it held the night to be of no consequence whatsoever...again.

~

Little by little, inch by inch
We built a yard with a garden in the middle of it
It ain't much but it's a start
You got me swaying right along to the song in your heart
And a face to call home
A face to call home
You got a face to call home.

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).

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."

Tell Me.

Tell me how

Your day was today.

Tell me how

You felt when you walked

Barefoot in the grass

After the thunderous rainfall.

Tell me how

The blades pierced your feet, but

You were still happy about

Merely being.

Tell me how you

And your friends

Played ten guitars and

Sang a song together,

Tell me whenever

You want to talk to me,

I will always be there;

Tell me how

You spent the last

Five minutes, tell me

Something about yourself

That nobody else knows,

Tell me what

Time you wake up

Every morning, tell me

Why you have been so

Quiet lately but words

Rush through you

Like drops of water

On a leaf

Tell me

Everything

And I will

Tell you.

~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Two Friends: Part One

She sat beside me on the park bench we'd sat on for so many years.  Since we were eleven, to be precise.

Let me give you a brief idea about how we met.

So she was building this tree house in her backyard. (Her family has an apple tree. How cool is that?)  And-- you guessed it-- she asked me to help her. Me, a bespectacled, nerdy, lanky nine year old who looked like he hadn't played a day in his life-- helping her, the most beautiful girl on the planet. (I don't think she cared about the not-played-a- day-in-my-life part back then, though. She wasn't half as smart then as she is now. Or maybe she cared, but she acted like she didn't.)  Our ‘tree house' was basically a roof made out of sticks atop a floor made out of sticks with no walls in between. Very comfortable. (I'm kidding.) And it wasn't exactly on the tree. It was on the grass, so technically it should've been called a grass house-- but that doesn't sound as inviting.

So anyway, we named it Veronica's and Andre's Little Treehouse. Veronica. What a  beautiful name. No one understands me like she does, and I love her, and that only makes it worse to be with her.
Y'know, accelerated heartbeat, sweaty palms, sweaty forehead, incoherent mumbled speech, that sorta thing. Butterflies. All that.

She doesn't know yet.

I don't even know if she likes me. She talks about that other guy, Cory, a lot. I, personally, would not stand within a five-yard radius of that douche (sorry, couldn't help it). You should see the way he talks to her.  Unfortunately, on this twisted geoid that is the Earth, all girls fall for jerks and the nice guys are left behind.

Sometimes I wonder if my parents named me Andre because they specifically didn't want any girl to be the... person... of my affections (I don't like saying object, it sounds impersonal).
I can tell Veronica likes saying my name for some weird reason, though. Most girls don't know how to.  They say “And-ray" when it's actually “Aand-re" with the “re" like it is in “in re".

I know, very simple.

Anyway, after building that tree house, we did spend quite a lot of time inside it, even though it used to get all itchy after some time. Then we used to go get some cream and rub it all over ourselves. And then we used to go sit in the tree house. Again. Because some things you just can't let go of.

The tree house became too small for us to sit in as we grew older, so we graduated to the park bench, and we've been coming to sit here and talk as often as our schedules permit.

We used to hang out every day, but soon both of us had other things to look after.  She had her boyfriends, and I had my girlfriends.  A few of my exes broke up with me because they thought I spent too much time with her.  To their credit, I did, mostly.

We're both nineteen now.  I'm only a few months older than her, so I'm going to stop being a teenager earlier than she is.

Wow, that's depressing.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?"

“Wha-? Oh, nothing much, really."

“C'mon, Andre."

“Just about our birthdays. About how I'm gonna be twenty before you are.  It's a little unnerving."

She laughed that tinkly laugh of hers.
“And what about all the other birthdays you had before this? You didn't look this, um.... bad before any of them." She cocked her head to one side.

“Thanks, Veronica," I groaned.

She softened a little. “No, but all jokes aside, I'm serious. I have never, in my ten years of knowing you, seen you as dejected as this.  What's wrong?"

“I came home way after curfew last night, and do you know what my father did? He's grounded me for three weeks now, and I have to be home by nine now."

“This is a new development. What'd you do?"

“Nothing, I was just wandering around town with.... with, um, Mike and Cory and all those guys."

“You ran off with Cory, of all people? No wonder your dad was mad at you!"

“Just to make things clear, run off with sounds a little weird, and the last time I checked, Cory McHall was your boyfriend."

“I honestly don't even like him, Andre. I was just with him because I didn't want him to try anything on me. That stupid spoiled brat. I'm surprised he even graduated from high school in the first place."

“You know, if some of his gang happens to be hiding in those bushes right now, they're gonna rat you out real bad."

“Oh, don't worry about that, he already knows."

“What?"

“I broke up with him two days ago."

“Really? Why?"

“ He's too narrow minded to understand that you and I are just friends. What part of just friends did he not understand?" Veronica was positively fuming now.

*

(To be continued...)

Carnival: Part Three

This is Part Three of Carnival.
For Part One of Carnival, click here.
For Part Two of Carnival, click here.



He parked his bike a few shops down the street, not wanting Laura to notice him coming—he'd heard Mr. Marlon saying she'd come back yesterday, so she would still be in the store.  In the back of the store, he hoped, so he wouldn't have to face her.

He opened the door slowly, staring at the floor.

“Hello, good morn—oh, it's you,” Laura said, blushing, “Haven't seen you in a while.”  
He looked up.

“Yeah, me neither.  You, I mean.” 

He groaned inwardly at his foolishness; Laura chuckled.

“What brings you here this late in the afternoon?  Weren't you painting, or anything?”

“No, I—I was, but then I wanted to—I discovered one of my paintings was missing,” Robin mumbled, wondering if he should have said that.

“I—er—I should probably tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“The....painting?  The one with all the snow in it? I....I'd stolen it.”

“What? Why?” He asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“I'm sorry, Robin, but it was just there, and—I, er, really liked it,” her voice became smaller and smaller as she said the last few words.

He inhaled deeply, thinking about how he should respond.  He knew he should tell her he had her diary, but she probably knew that anyway.  Even so—

“Oh, well, it's not a problem, really.  You can keep it if you want,” her face lit up in a smile.
“But on one condition.” Her smile faltered.

“What's that?”

“You write a story for me like the ones in your diary.”

“You read it!  Did you....did you like the stories?”

“I did, I loved all of them.  Especially the last one.” Robin answered, clearing his throat a little, hoping she would get the hint.  His palms were sweating.  He wiped them on the front of his jeans, took the note out of his pocket and gave it to her.  

“I need you to read this—not now—after I leave; and if you...” he phrased his sentence carefully in his head, “if you....like it, you...can come meet me near the park fountain at eight?” He raised his eyebrows tentatively.

“Okay.” she said, smoothing out the crumpled paper, careful not to tear it into tiny shreds.

“Alright, see you later then.  Nice seeing you after so many days.”

Laura laughed; the sound was beautiful, and it reminded him of the creek where Rita and Jason met in Carnival.  “You make it sound like we've met each other after a year!”

“Hey Laura, you wanna commack and help me sort the Fizzlies in this box instead of talking to that boyfriend of yours, eh?” Robin jumped at least a foot into the air, out of pure shock alone—he hadn't known Mr. Marlon was there in the back.  His face felt hot; he looked up and saw that Laura's face was pink, too.

“Er—I guess I should go, then--” he began.

“Oh, well.  Here,” Laura tossed him a green apple flavoured lollipop from a carton.

“He won't mind?”

She laughed.  “Of course not, Robin!”  She lowered her voice to a whisper.  “I've nicked a whole lot of them myself, and he hasn't noticed—yet.”  And with that, she turned on her heel and marched to the storage room.

Robin smirked, then ducked out of the door into the sunned, crisp air outside.  He'd never known this side of Laura, sure, she was funny, but she had always been about thoughts and ideas, not people and, well—mischief.  Mischief.  It was a rather absurd way to think of her.

*

In the storage room, Laura waited anxiously for Mr. Marlon to go get his tea, or at least go to the bathroom, so she could read the note Robin had given her.  The opportunity presented itself five minutes after the old man had called her back inside—an important client had called, and Mr. Marlon was not one to leave important clients waiting, even if they were particularly nasty and called him a “blasted ol' slagger” (whatever that meant) in full view of his subordinates in the store.

Laura pulled the note out of her pocket, unfolded it and began reading.


Dear Laura,

I've wanted to say this to you for a very long time, but I couldn't find the words to tell you.  I wish I'd told you sooner.  

First off, I left the painting in plain view because I wanted you to take it—I'll tell you why.

You told me once that you like snow, and that you think winter to be very beautiful.  It is.  The trees are draped in soft white and you said you would rather not lean against them, because your clothes would wipe some of the snow off, and you don't like wiping snow off anything except maybe your driveway, but that's only because you have to.

You said you like a warm mug of cocoa when you get home from the store in December.  And then you watch a detective show on television.  Then after, you write two sentences in your notebook for the stories, and then you purposely drop it onto the counter of the candy store and hope that I will pick it up, and that I will take it home and read it.

You take the painting of snow and children ice skating (you like that, too) from near my window, and you realize, hopefully, that I have hidden your name in the trees.  If you haven't seen that yet, you have plenty of time after this to admire it anyway.

Laura, you and I both know why we did the things we did.  
I told you about my paintings, about my thoughts of you and the things you love, because I love you.

Things will not be the same after you've read this, but then again, I probably wouldn't want them to.

Do you want to go out to dinner tonight at Piazzo's?

Yours,
Robin.



Laura smiled.  “I love you too,” she whispered, “and yes, I would love to go to Piazzo's tonight.”

*

It was seven in the evening.  Laura stood in front of her open wardrobe.  She never seemed to have just the right dress to wear to a fancy place like Piazzo's.  She cocked her head to one side.  Maybe Robin doesn't need me to wear anything fancy, she thought, maybe he's alright with me wearing that velvet navy blue dress with the silver and gold butterfly sequins and lace.  That is fancy.  She giggled.

She put on the navy blue dress made of velvet with the lace and the sequins and looked at herself in the mirror.  She did look very beautiful.  The dress brought out the brown in her eyes.
She fixed her hair into place with a navy-blue-gold barrette and decided that was probably enough for Robin to like her even more.

Laura took her car keys from the table and waltzed out the door.



Robin was already waiting for her near the park fountain.  He wore a black suit with a tie, and a coat on top.  

“I brought your diary,” he said, and gave it to her. “Do you mind if we walk to Piazzo's?”

“Of course not, I'd love to.”

And then it started snowing.  Robin's golden-brown hair looked good with snow in it, too.  She put her hand in his.  He looked at her.  

They smiled at each other.

It couldn't be more perfect a day, Laura thought, and they walked slowly, together, leaving all their worries behind.

THE END

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