Separation.

A differential distance slyly separates 

The dark day from the nimble night

The ocean from the sky

The shivering sun from the monstrous moon

The nest from the branch

The writer from the pen

The nocturne from the canvas

The black bracelet from the wrist

The henna from the palm

The dancer from the stage

The musician from the flute

And me from you.

~ Vruta Gupte, 2017.

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.

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."