A love letter from my bad habits

The pill says:

You pop me in and I pull you back from falling into the empty inside of you. A gulp sound and I quiet the creak of wood outside your window. I kill the dogs in the streets to stop their howling, so you sleep peacefully. This world is a noisy place and I’m glad to let it go silent for you.

The cigarette says:

You light a match and it’s not only me who’s on fire. We burn together, like two lovers sharing heat. Who knows it better to never be lonely and yet feeling alone? I come in packs of ten, wearing a warning label. Guess what I still have people to suck the cancer out of me. They say people die for me. You do too. But I never quit to burn in your love.

The alcohol says:

Dry days, Ten Pms, Out of Stock seem like nightmares and happy hours like lottery tickets to you. According to science, an adult human is 78% water. And there are days when you’re straight 78% me. I am glad you choose to get drunk. Because I sit here in fancy bottles, totally drunk in your love. And I find no other thing to sober me up.

                 

The heart says:

Apart from pumping blood, 26 is the number of times I’ve already been hit by the Cupid’s arrow this year. And it’s not even May. I think you treat me like the heart of a butterfly which lives for 14 days and then dies. I would love you more if you try to make it live longer.

The hope says:

I’ve noticed you do two things every now and then: Throw a fist in the air and chuck me out in the ocean like a silent prayer. I may be a hopeless romantic but my love for you is not wrong in all the good ways. I swear I’ll be the raft that saves you whenever the ship will get busy sinking.

The tears say:

As if everything sad has gravity in it. Each time they make me roll down your cheek, I helplessly fall in love with you. Don’t be afraid of me. Go ahead and cry. This will only boost our love and you will feel better. More love means more tears mean more salt. And salt is the reason that everything can float so well in the Dead Sea.

Forever says:

I have seen you staring into horizons and night skies to meet me. You love to get away with it. You take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on, since forever. You should learn to make your choices quick because time is running out and so is my love. A slow marathon.

The paper says:

I am crumpled at my edges and your lack of love is like scissors for me. I am the lover you should be scared of the most. Like I am scared of you that one day you’ll open your mouth to cry to somebody and that nothing will come out. Because I think you’d have given me all of you by then.

Truly, madly, deeply
Yours.

Unlearn to go back

Yesterday, at an ungodly hour

The short man’s daughter appeared at the door

Carrying the gifts of her husband’s lovely touch again,

blue eyes and cracked self-esteem,
hair messed up and her life as well.

She came with his pieces sticking to her,
those hands that she seemed to have enjoyed

even if  they were fists, fists, fists.

My grandmother held her,

Fed her Danish biscuits with seven cups of tea

And a few points

      1)   Don’t become an expert at applying concealer

      2)   Pick yourself up

      3)   Don’t make excuses, just leave

      4)   You could still be, what you want to be

      5)   That’s all there is to it

Today, she left.

She thought she is leaving,

But I know she isn’t going to go anywhere.

Lost and Found

I’ve been having an argument with myself about life.

I’ve been looking for life’s lost and found.

I’ve been looking for what I do own and I don’t.

Everyone owns a name, right.

No I haven’t found what’s there in the name

But some names that always cause

something to fall inside of me.

There are some vital organs of mine

made of paper and I’ve found that

a lot of people like to light matches for fun.

I’ve found out that how home is not a place

But a feeling you get to see certain people.

I don’t have butterflies in my stomach then.

I have skydivers and they all forget their parachutes.

My workplace sits around 70% woods and I wish I had wings.

Every evening at five, a zillion birds socialise at a high pitch.

I've found out that even they rant about not being free,

They’re also pissed for being chained to the sky.

While I write this, I've found out

I cannot tell and you cannot listen about the loss, 

but only feel. 

A warm memory

The winter wind stopped howling

When you looked in the other direction

And turned only to give me

A sight I can compare to nothing

Your knees to your chest

Your hands wrapped around them

Your head buried in then

As if gazing at the entire solar system

Your heart filled with warm stories

Your eyes with dew drops

And for more than a moment

The room flooded with all

My voice slipped away from me

Even though I wanted to tell you

How beautifully insane it is.

Never mind that we’re not seeing each other,

Maybe can’t even touch right now

But I know that you know

Our phantom hands are holding each other

In the dark behind our backs.

Time doesn't exist, clocks do.

And the clocks are everything because of their hands.

From a time long ago, they haven’t been able to tie its laces.

This time when time tried to change, I changed myself.

I turned over and shake some strength, off my skin.

I figured how it had become weak and brittle

by getting over obsessions for certain people.

And it said it was always a matter of timing.

Certain people are a matter of timing.

Certain time is a matter of timing.

No matter you want them or not.

00:00 Hours

And the question is whether 0000 hours an emotion?

The world is getting drunk and sick about it.

Don’t worry; I’d been just drinking about you.

The arrow belonged to the heart,

So it came flying.

The apple belonged to Eve,

It went off chasing its chemical pleasures.

Chaos belonged to me,

So it dangled from my eyelids.

I wonder why you said

stars are born out of chaos.  

2014, Oh I never saw you coming.

I often forget the new ones coming in.

I'd still be sleepwalking in the city.

As the Earth goes back

to where it was a year ago,

I'd still try and keep not settling in.

The Earth begins with its new revolution

And me with a new resolution-

Mainly, to stick one thing in my brain

And write 2014 instead of 2013.

Anyway, Happy New Year ladies and gentlemen.

Time to hang this one up behind the door.

Together Apart

It was a man’s ego.

It was a woman’s heart.

They were all fragile.

It was his heart.

It was her ego.

They were all stiff.

It was his no.

It was her yes.

They were all aloud.

It was his yes.

It was her no.

They were all hushed up.

Apparently, the word woman

Has man in it but

the latter is completely

Devoid of the former.

Paradoxical Wreck

I stayed under the moon too long.

I am silvered from

Collecting the names of the lovers

Who treated me like flowers

In those two arms

And threw sorry along with me.

Both crushed into a pile of memories

Of little and little more of their lives.

It’s a fact all that is silver

Doesn’t have a lining.

Not all those who are crushed,

Fade.

Sometimes you don’t need a line

But a fork to pick yourself up.

Especially, when that building came down

Before you could find a way out.

So, I cross my heart and

Find my place in a corner of

The elevator shaft.

These cold days of December

Burn brighter than the sun.

As I watch the elevator

Coming down, I realise

Why was time invented.

Slow and steady is the promise

While time unceasingly moves

In one direction

And usually heals if you let it.

Screw that, it’s paradoxical

That I break myself, to remake myself.

Like every other brilliant process

It takes time.

Worse things in life come free

The damp white walls smelt of various pungent antibiotics. While I kept my eyes stuck to the ground, there was just the white noise in my ears. My inner self walked at a distance of two feet, in extreme horror. The white sheets of the hospital bed were still holding that specific fold around Meghan at the foot of the bed.

It seemed she hadn’t moved ever since the nurses had placed her in there and made the bed around her. Most of Meghan’s head was wrapped in bandages and gauze. Her thin arms were covered with scratches and one was in a sling. Her left eye was ruptured. Her left side jaw looked like a bruised island and her lips like a sunken ship. She didn’t have the being left in her. I could see it. I could see it through the little round viewing glass on the door.

Two days earlier, I had met Meghan in a restaurant after a long time. We were in the same course pursuing Psychology. We became friends when we attended the poetry club after college. A young, talented cheerful woman; with a curious kind of mystery beneath her ribcage. That evening she was dressed in an emerald green striped shirt and floral printed skirt that she told me was one of the gifts on her last birthday. It was about two months ago. She looked unusually pretty with a falling braid on her left shoulder and her nose dipped in a poetry book; sitting cross legged in a corner of the restaurant. When I reached near her, she didn’t look up instead her eyes were moving quickly across the words in the book and her face twisted in a smile. Her skin shone white like a blank page against the bright light of the CFL bulb.

It was an evening of celebration. She had finally managed her visa and tickets to London. She had been invited to participate in a slam poetry contest there. She'd been able to pull off this absolute opportunity, all by herself. I was one of the few and unfortunately the last one with whom she shared this lovely information. I was very happy for her. However, she seemed to be upset about something. Perhaps, because I didn’t tell her about my new number.

Meghan told me she had been trying to reach me. And finally she had thought of sending me an email. A long one with precisely six words and a few digits.

“Date: October 20, 2013
Venue: Life cafe
Time: 6:30 pm.”

She did not have to ask for it but I apologized and slipped a vague reason for not sharing my number with anyone. “Lately, I have been trying to keep myself unplugged,” I said while flipping the pages of her book.

Meghan said, “Sometimes our life turns awfully unclear and sure we need time to understand it. You better just walk out of your heart and the dark corners of your brain. Unplugging helps.”

She has always been a free spirit. She never showed any kind of possessiveness towards people, even for her closed ones. And neither did she expect it from others. She was a personality Created by her own limits.

It made my heart shrink when she said she respects individuality. Life is no competition. Everyone needs to find their own happiness and stay there. I said, “Thank you. You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful in a way that art is beautiful and intense at the same time.” She said nothing but flashed a Mona Lisa’s smile.

We talked about random ideas and she made me promise to see her again before she left for London. We drank pints of cider and had an exotic Italian platter. We shared a common love for Italian cuisine. Besides, she cooked it pretty well. She insisted on paying the bill, while something not very specified made me scribble my number on a piece of tissue paper. Before she left in a cab I inserted it in her bag. We hugged good bye to each other. We were unlikely to meet soon.. At least I thought so.

Early next morning I got the call from the police, that she’d been found in the driveway of a wrecking yard with her head badly beaten and her clothes missing. They had used iron and wood rods to beat her resulting in numerous injuries. It was a loss that was irreparable.

I could imagine how that parking lot was dark for one reason and one reason only. That night couldn’t have been worse for her and the morning couldn’t have been more terrifying for the people who saw her. I was told the people who found her could find nothing to identify her with, only my number on a piece of paper and some coffee coupons were found near her. Both her earlobes were torn. The animal son-of-a-bitch that had done this to her had left nothing on her. They had even torn her earrings off her. I suspect in that uncertain moment of darkness Meghan looked back for me. But it was too late.

I left for the hospital in unsteady and watery eyes and a hollow state of mind. By hollow I mean not empty but filled with nothing. I heard people saying that anybody who’d see her would be traumatized for life by this dead girl. At the least, Meghan will not remember about her own death.

I lied to the detective and surgeon and made out that I had been just an acquaintance and we met that evening for some time at that restaurant and we happened to exchange numbers. Right then, a bunch of words caught up in my throat. They made a home there which was set on fire. I couldn’t stand the thought of what she’d been through. I ended up puking, and feeling remorse because of the fact that she deserved someone better at her side. She definitely did.

I did not have the heart to see her. So I just managed to peek through the window on the door. That animal had broken her like a bag of bone china plates and I could hear the depth of the darkness she had fallen into. I could hear her trying to get through the battle at the edge of her flattened breaths. I could feel her bones cracking, echoing like a poem in my heart valves. Cowardly for about a minute, I stood there until my legs started to tremble and my eyes began to infuse with darkness and numbness.

It had got insanely all over my system. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d have offered to accompany her. It wasn’t a big deal. But whatever had happened that night now has become a terrible fact to encounter. I returned home in my guilty sac of flesh, stood like a fire under the fan, holding my breath. A coppery taste of blood flushed in my mouth. I’d reached a point where I just wanted to sleep deep within myself.

MIND IT

A loaded gun in your own hand may not kill you

but your mind loaded with the thoughts

of your lately wrecked relationship

can destroy the shit out you.

Even if it wasn’t a relationship.

Your own flesh tires you up.

Diligently questioning about

letting it revel in his

and for making a home in it.

Your own heartbeat stares you

outside of yourself, panting and

waiting for some clichéd answers

to calm it down.

Underneath your every breath,

You hear some soft lines

Of the poem he left 

In the corners of your mouth

while kissing the last time.

Your eyes forget to function

And take up different climates

From torrential downpour

To the dessert like dryness. 

 But they never forget to open up.

Every organ turns into

An explosive device

And that’s… that’s what it does to you.

 Every passing day you just

end up surviving the series of blasts.