Hello, safe space?

Hmm. Here because everyone else shunned ya out? Uh-oh. Okay, what brings you here where you’re not even real. But reality can be so scary, you know that already. Never judge anyone on fearing it. For not being their harmless-for-others untrue self.

Still so complicated, your sentences. Ew. Told you I didn’t like poetry. The f with you.

Acha what brings you here then? Go on, I’ll listen. Wow, ehsaan much.

I read this poem from twenty seventeen. Was going through my archives to find something to letter. I did pick a line from it that you see in the photo above. And then put the poem in the caption. Read it out:

All our issues and one

Sometimes,
When I should be elsewhere
Inside Dreams,
I lay awake instead, and
Assemble a questionnaire in my mind:
Everything that I have now yearned too long to ask you, I would;
“This is going to be a very, very honest conversation,” I will say.
It’s our final friendly law.
A sudden surge of happiness like a reflection of seven colors on my sooted heart—
If you call me again I might at least find my name
And as we’re talking, I will ask— no harsh feelings, hey!— but why did you think it was okay to do what you did?
How many others have you scarred the same way?
Alas! In the back of my mind the colors shift
A curtain closes
Rubbing the drama away in one swift move:
How will I know if you won’t still be lying?

---

Idk if the ending feels as clear to me now. I remember knowing back then also that it was vague but for me the meaning was clear. How will I know if you wont still be lying, huh? Ajeeb matlab. Duh.

ANYWAY. I’m ranting to not think but I’m thinking all sorts of things. With so much speed that it’s hard to catch up. Painful that I can’t take your and your and your name. Matlab pagal hi bana diya.

Sigh. My bud-dua or yours? I remember this other poem — feels like another life when I wrote those but hey, — and it talked about the dua part will remain even after nothing else does. And then I think I mocked it in the same tone. I totally meant the mocking, you know? Because you’d think it’s a “good dua” while it might not be? And other meanings so f it too.

It’s such an important day I don’t want to use a wrong word. Especially when I’ve kept the decency salamat so far. eh tainting the image now? No please. Wont even dare.

Phew. All our issues and one. This late night. This needed apology. This lack of understanding. And not me. For once, I’m not the issue.

Life not life, More unedited.

mirage. embodiment of a faraway feeling. ethereal. magic. longing. desperation. void in a voice. void in a connection. a connection about slow failure. a connection of ultimate longing. endless, never reaching manzil. a breath taking view but also lungs constricting, tear inducing. sob in the pillow, drink down the scream. so tough. so lonely. so unloving. temporary peace. temporary laughter. temporary butterflies. hand out. reach out. get out.

the way to you

if difficulty is danger
and so is insecurity
anxiety-ish, that deep twist in the stomach,
if danger means this spikey knife
set in between (standing upright)
to pierce through my self-esteem,
self-confidence, self-whatmore
then the way to you is laced with danger
and I cannot miss the signs anymore

Letting go

Hello, you.

My friend texted me to say she saw me in a dream and misses me. I couldn’t help but feel awfully helpless remembering I saw you in a dream too. How I wish I could tell you.

I want you to know that it’s been immensely long but I am going strong, and yep, it’s because I crafted another challenge for myself of which already a large part has been spent but still, still your name comes up everyday in my mind, and though I’m trying, I cannot forget you enough because I heard enough means letting go.

Letting go means cutting open and slicing out a part I’ve kept so close.

It’s amazing how this is! Because there’s no real string (like a real tangible truth) binding these. These, as in, this thing in the heart and your place in the…heart? and the future that holds neither. Wow, what a thing to bear.

Hello, you.

The only way this can really reach you is when you claim it yourself. Which is another way of saying: agar wo pooch len hum se kaho kis baat ka gham hai// tou phir kis baat ka gham hai agar wo pooch lain hum se. Oh okay, I just added this one because it wouldn’t leave me otherwise. You get the point.

I sometimes search for you amid crowds When I write again it won’t be about you.

Khatam Shudd

Darwaza khula chora tha meny. Chahtay na chahtay nazar uth uth ke jati thi, wehem ne dil ko yun muthi me jakarr rakha tha ke sirf takleef milti thi aur us se bhagnay ka koi tareeqa samajh hi nahi ata tha. Tum se bhagnay ka koi tareeqa samajh nahi ata tha.

Mujhay lagta tha tum aogay.

Jantay ho, har ahat par chonk jati thi. Har shor pe tufaan uthta tha. Sab bikhar jata tha, mai samait’ti thi aur phir bikhar jata tha. Maine bohat koshish ki ke jo umeed phool nahi kaanta ho, usay zabardasti hi sahi kheench kar bahar nikal dun. Apnay aap ko bacha lun. Lekin mujhay darr lagta tha ke aisay zakham gehra hojayega. Aur ab nazar ata hai ke khula chornay se tou ye naasoor banjaega.

half a string

On the third floor of the building, halfway through the long, long corridor were two connecting stairs. When we sat there, the sun was almost setting. We felt tired, and another mix of emotions with no particular name. A feeling of togetherness, a feeling of uncertainty, of hope, of struggle, of what it meant to us. Everything. It was like we were on one of the most important points in our respective lives, one that didn’t have much to do with the other — in fact, nothing — save for the fact that we were friends. And we were in it together.

We knew it was either a dream-come-true situation or nothing. We could have it, or we couldn’t. But there was also a third case.

“Maybe, it’s for only one of us. The other will return and later on say that they know it was for the best. They will sound very convincing, will ask you to actually believe them that they are content, that it doesn’t matter, that they’ve realised the wisdom behind ‘why not’…”

“But it won’t be true.”

“Yes, it cannot be. Know that deep down it will hurt them enough to never say a word about it. That something will shatter anyhow.” The same happened.

But there was also a fourth case.

all that

a g i t a t i o n

This time of the year you want to give up. You are so done. You could pack a bag and scurry off to the hills or something… even though this wasn’t what you wanted. But if you could find peace in any form you’ll want to go after it.

You are happy. You are laughing. You are making others laugh. There are fun sounds and dramatic gestures and such a sacred feeling of gratefulness it scares you.

You can see the mess. You know what it is even when you’re tapping your fingers on the keyboard pretending you can’t find the word you know you know the word, you know it’s called s t r u g g l e and sometimes it’s a name and sometimes, it’s a silly count of all your poems you never had the guts to share. When you end a day and begin another, you pat yourself on the shoulder because you can cut one on the self-help calendar in your mind, now it’s just 37 more days. After that, you will probably come up with another idea.

I wish I could tell you your burden is not your own but everyone’s collective burden is hell so yours is yours alone. Though there’s still some hope because – oh, I don’t know. But there is a heaven as well so there should be.

out in the cold

What a stubborn child. Still sitting in the middle of nowhere, heart in hand. Hearts don’t mend like that – only sell. And you can’t afford that, can you?

What a stubborn, stubborn child.

Keeper

Secrets are gifts. They don’t belong just everywhere. A secret lives where lives Love.

I have my grandmother’s stories within me,
and my mother’s, and yours—
Why do I have yours?

I have someone else’s anger, a tragedy from another place in time
Where I wasn’t, where I’ll never be – except in the future of their past
that is already a memory
Numberless faces read out their stories and not one I could tell not to
Like I could not tell you

“I don’t want your stories!” I scream now when it’s too late—
Waking up from a dream, and sleeping into another
Why do I still find you near?

Spots of No light

Everything is fine. Outwardly. Where out is the edge of earth I’m standing on; inside me is a lava. It’s ready to erupt but wouldn’t—you’d think my body is brave enough to hold it but really, it’s the sight of uncountable blisters already on my skin that quiet it.

Before me lie fields and fields of night.

I can’t make sense of it, but sometimes I run, telling myself it’s still some direction even if I don’t know it. Alas, I find myself back where I started, my struggle wasted on dark space, and my already tired limbs.

of invisible second chances

I could have given a better answer,  I thought to myself just a while  (longer than a moment,  shorter than minutes)  after having exited his room.  I could have given a better answer.  How many times we find ourselves thinking, feeling, living this — I could have given a better answer. Could – but didn’t.  And to learn to live with this little regret – one that amounts to literally NOTHING in the Grand Scheme of Things;  to painfully watch how it unfurls inside of you,  then finds a way out,  crawls on your skin until you are covered,  completely,  in its inglorious cobweb-y silver thread. You are itching. Continually.  I could have given a better answer, and I must stop thinking about it.

(s m a l l)

Sometimes you feel like pouring a bucketful of ice on your head or shrink  to the size of your toenail or drop pills into your mouth—whether to numb or to feel you cannot tell. And one day, one after the other, you want to do all three.

Words take their route from the heart to the fingers onto the screen, unsympathetic, only covering space.

What a funny way to fight.

all our issues and one

Sometimes,
When I should be elsewhere
Inside Dreams,
I lay awake instead, and
Assemble a questionnaire in my mind:
Everything that I have now yearned too long to ask you, I would;
“This is going to be a very, very honest conversation,” I will say.
It’s our final friendly law.
A sudden surge of happiness like a reflection of seven colors on my sooted heart—
If you call me again I might at least find my name
And as we’re talking, I will ask— no harsh feelings, hey!— but why did you think it was okay to do what you did?
How many others have you scarred the same way?
Alas! In the back of my mind the colors shift
A curtain closes
Rubbing the drama away in one swift move:
How will I know if you won’t still be lying?

Long Time

Just Another Night – not.

I close my eyes and consciously direct my mind to rest. Settle, nerves. Breathe. It’s okay. And while they are closed, I let them see just black. Black that is absence but black that is peaceful right now. Breathe. There’s nothing to worry about, you know that. You are used to this.

The air is actually fresh and not bitter. There’s no weight on my chest, or maybe just a bit. Isn’t it funny how you have started to visualise him when he’s not actually here? Is it? However, this is just a phase and phases change. Like people change and well, they don’t come back like that. You will learn it with time. It’s been a lot but just some more.

Sigh.

Open now.

 

“You—you stayed?”

strang(l)e

A heavy mess you can’t vomit out.
A tight knot in your stomach that limits the entire storm starting from the hollow, constricting feeling in your chest, into this one body. And just inside, so only you can know its intensity and nobody else. Of course we can have universes inside us, sometimes it’s just a black hole.
Why is the air here not enough?
You created art and destroyed it just as soon, thinking, “Now it makes sense.” But what makes sense? — you won’t even ask that twice. (Hidden) 

kāˌäs

The  solid  mass  that  a  jungle  of  scribbled  lines  create.   That  shapeless  bunch  of  black  with  white  gaps,  that  disorderly  pen  creation.   That  is  what  anxiety  forms in heart.   Just puts it there on the floor—the weighty bundle of chaos. I  was  wondering  if  I  could  put this emotion  into  words  while  I  felt  it.  And  if  it  would,  in  any  way,  lessen  it.   Guess  it  didn’t~

harmonize

of blue birds

the storm passes but the air doesn’t clear— the storm passes but the wings of the little blue bird have severed— the storm passes but the aftereffects are larger than the storm— the storm was grey and it leaves the whole world washed in that one color and it’s no more nothing else.

The sea calls

The waves were full of voice unlike the world around them. Everywhere was silent, and the only other sounds were so soft you wouldn’t mind them. Like: the stars’ gentle sparkle, off on, off on, creating silver splashes in the vast water; the moon’s direct beams falling on its rubber surface like a spear cutting right through; my own breathing in harmony with each swift move of the said sea. It was only a matter of present, the moments synced to the space, emitting the same power: of might, of being the only thing that mattered.

Life is not a bed of roses. You say that like it’s a good thing. If I am not happy slash I feel really bad about something, there must be a way to make it right. You can’t shirk that responsibility and simply put it on those look-good quotes. Because first of all, I never asked for a bed of roses. And if that’s what you want to bring up, tell me why it becomes important only when I most need a rose? Life’s not fair, life’s a test, life’s a this, life’s crap. I don’t care about that, I care about now.

I walk further into the benevolent stretch and find the waves welcoming me. Singing more joyfully, as if meeting friends was a custom for them too. I look down and smile, and then half sit. My hand meets water and a shiver runs through me.

Why am I still scared? How could someone be aware of something and still be unable to get out of it? How can you not be your own magician, tricking life to set on the right zone again?

There’s no direction when you are standing between waves. There is just immensity. A compass self-connects to the tick tock of the heart, and there the music stays, for as long as the heart lives…

Stoning me?

When in my silent mode, I tend to hear myself.
Only that I fail each time I try.

There is this catastrophe inside, this outburst, this
Storm. Too many sounds, too much noise and yet,
too much of Silence.

There is this empty feeling not empty at all,
These pangs, these shivers, these sharp edges
which I fail to bend, that I fail to curve.

Feels like you are projecting continuously, some
Stones on my heart’s wall. Do you know not
It hurts?

How does a mirror feel? When it bears cracks?
Or how does a finger feel when you pierce – ouch
When you pierce forcefully, some thorns?
Or perhaps a chunk of that broken mirror,
How does it feel?

Ask me. Only that I know not
What to answer and how.

Get Fresh!

Sometimes, even the finest, and the most colorful pictures don’t bring life into you. They sadden you more. And this happens only when you get tired of pretending happiness. (-Maria)

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Sadness Tracks Happiness: Emotions.

Sadness tracks Happiness.

PROVED.

I came home today, and I was pretty excited for no reason…I laughed, and played, and shouted, and enjoyed. Later, I was trapped in that depressive mode of mine:

And I began humming sad tunes.

Sketching.

Sitting.

And pondering.

Why does that always happen? Why does sadness track happiness? Why is sadness powerful?

 

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