My Grey Fairy-tale.

"...and all the sunsets that we miss, I'll wrap them all up in a kiss."- Train


You make me smile.
From that early morning message,
to that silly joke.
From that giggly nudge,
to that sudden kiss.
You make me smile on the inside.


We sit and dream together.
Intoxicated, we laugh at the castles we built on clouds,
some blue, some pink.
And then happily go and jump on the clouds,
until they come crashing down.
And then it rains, and rains, and rains non-stop.
And we drink and dance in it.
And we don't seem to need anybody else.
Anything else.
Perfectly content.
It's how I feel when the glitter floats up in the glass dome,
and falls back down, revealing the palace.


And we smile,
and leave our footprints to be washed.


We watch a scary movie,
only so we can kiss in the dark.
And then we look into each others eyes and burst out laughing.
Because the seriousness is funny.


I'd peck you on the nose, 
while looking into your grey-green eyes.
Then suddenly feel like melting into you.


Because when I flicker back at 4 am,
I like you there.
Tangled up in me,
while the sun streamed down through water droplets like crystals.
Such that we glowed.
Shiny, happy people.


We imagine and build.
And recreate what we must.
If I imagined the sea,
you'd imagine applause.
And then we'd spot those horses on the road.
Brown and white.
Figments of our imagination.
Hints of black.
Just like us.


White froth crashing against the sea rocks,
under a blue sky I can't name.
You take in my scent,
and try to be discreet.
Might as well have inhaled me.


I want to wear a tiara,
I want to paint unicorns,
but purple.
I want to lay back and watch the parakeets gliding,
and maybe hold your hand.
While yellow nail paint is spilling over in the background.
And some wordless tunes play overhead.
So I throw in some words.


Jukeboxes and chilled beers.
Take me away.
Someplace we can do all of it and not be watched.
We drive and we drive and we never stop.
My hair's wet again.
And I don't wanna stop feeling it, thinking it, or saying it.


I have a feeling I make you smile.
  

Lost In Between.

It's not the same anymore.
I'm not who I was anymore.
They stayed where they were.
I moved onto worlds that were sure.


One said he didn't want this right now.
The other wanted it.
Needed it and how.
I turned my face away.
My body and soul the other way.


You hold me, but not to fling me away.
You look at me, but don't keep your eyes there.
You say everything you mean.
But you don't tell me you love me.
The sheen on my forehead doesn't wrinkle.
But my eyes don't focus.


I don't know what I want.
I want you now.
Be with me.
You might not have to stay.

Sorry

Heartbreak.
Heartbreak.
Heartbreak.
Repair.
Reuse.
Break.


Dear J,


Today after 4 months, 18 days, 22 hours, and 46 minutes, I feel upset. There's some stinging in my eyes. But they're probably yours. The tears. I want to cry for you. It's the least I can do. I do love you. Don't hate me for falling. Falling every way. In and out of love. Failing. Around attraction. Around confusion. I keep slipping because it's slippery. But you were a dry plank that kept its place for as long as it could. Stay, wont you? Don't make me hate this. Hate me. 
Because no matter what. I know the pretty stretch will always exist. Those letters will exist. The CD's will. The clothes will. The faint cologne will. The photographs will. 
But most of all.
The feeling will.
And you and I will.


Forgive me J.

Surreal Sacrifice

She watched as he walked away.
With tears stinging her eyes,
she watched her life shatter into a million glass pieces,
dissolve in thick red and choke.
She watched him walk away.
Paralyzed.

She was in a different place in an instant.
Beauty that was too refined for permanence.
It was like watching the rainfall from a distance.
Through a rose-tinted screen.
The sun diamonds retired at a dramatic moment,
when a thousand rainbows were sketched into quasi-life.
Hazed.

The stream wove its way around the buzzing turquoise,
at the precise moment when his fingers, and his soul, 
wove themselves out of hers. 
But when her 'I love you' got a heartless response.
She was chilled.
Calmly frantic.
Helpless.

You lied.
This way I wont have to. Ever again.
You made me fall in love with you.
You wouldn't have it any other way. You were always stubborn.
He smiled.
Bile rose up to her throat.
She stood up and walked away. 
Her mind a dangerous picture of the tangential confidence,
that she abstractly painted.  
She floated through the wild white.
Almost as a glowing aura.
Soulless.

She collapsed right where she was.
In reality.
Her mind was now living a different dream,
and coercing her body to join it.
It was impossible to function now.
Without mist around the edges.
Without bleeding hands, and scars in the shape of tiny hearts.
Without tears and passion.
Without loud, loud laughter and wet, mud stains.
Without extremes.
Without emotions.
Human.

She wept over his lifeless body.
And over the smooth ink on paper.
Smudged clouds poured over her in midnight blue.
She sat in the middle of it all,
with red swans.
And red tears.
Sucked of every joy.
Paralyzed. Hazed. Helpless. Soulless. Only Human. 

The Beautiful One.

Dear Sculptor,

I never knew what to write for you or about you when you asked me to. I mean I know it was a passing comment, but it stuck on with me and it was really frustrating to not be able to write something to do with the most important aspect of my life! I mean it's not that I couldn't write about you. I would've just jotted away pages within minutes if you'd given me an ultimatum. But the truth is. I would've never been able to do justice to it that way. I wanted to get it just right. I wanted it to be more from the heart than the mind. I wanted it to capture the essence of you. Not who you really, probably are. But what you are for me. To me. Because I don't think you know that well enough.

As a child I wasn't much of an extrovert (I know it's hard to believe NOW. Like really. But it's true. I wasn't). I'd keep to myself in school. I wouldn't talk much to my classmates. Nor to the teachers. I did my work and looked forward to going home. Back home to my parents. Boy would they like me getting back to that stage again, but back then, they were worried about me. They wanted me to make friends, to be wanted in the social circles of nine year olds. And it wasn't because they were psychotic and obsessed social-climbers-through-their-daughter parents. No. They wanted it for me. They saw how unhappy I was. How I hated going to school a little more than the rest of the children my age. And there was a day when I even cried to them about it. Nothing much changed. But I felt a lot better. They were a source of comfort. Parents always are. You feel like the world is falling apart and bursting at the seams. As if there's nothing you'd rather do at the time but close your eyes and submerge yourself in something, anything that keeps those bad things away from you. That get your stomach in a knot. That dreaded dull feeling that's worse than anything you've ever known. And that's when they're there for you. Those few people in your life. Parents. Guardians. Sometimes just one person. To call whom even just a source of comfort would be an understatement.

Thank you. For being my uncertified guardian. I never quite understood the concept of a cloud with a silver lining. A ray of hope. For me, when something goes wrong, it consumes me. It blurs my vision. I may have changed on the surface over the past few years. But I'm still the same person. I still have most of my old insecurities, fears. You know what's the most evident proof of that? When we're holding hands. My hands shake. They're unstable. But when I slip them into yours. Somehow they stop. It's like they've found a place where they belong. And I'm not just saying this to make this post seem a little more "touchy", but it's true. It's never felt like this before. And then I look at your hands. So sure and firm. So comfortable with what is and not worried about what will become. I think that pretty much defines us. Not so much as individuals. But more of our places in the relationship we share. You're keeping me together. Placing every little part where it's supposed to be and making sure nothing falls out of place. That I don't fall out of place. Like a sculptor possessive about his sculpture. The crooked, ugly, dejected sculpture that he found abandoned, but now makes it beautiful. And he even thinks that the beauty lay within the sculpture. The sculpture would beg to differ :).

It's you. The one with the magic. It's always been you. You've always managed to capture the beauty in everything that you see. That surrounds you. No matter how asymmetrical, unfit, and shabby it is. So what if it's even through a lens. You have a beautiful heart. One that turns everything half as beautiful as itself, once it makes place for it inside itself. I'm probably one of those mildly "made beautiful" things by you. I never knew or thought I was anything worth a second look until you told me so many times that I finally looked at my reflection in the mirror for a second longer and almost believed you.

It's like I've transformed slowly since I've known you. I've learnt to be more of me than what somebody else wants me to be. I'd gladly be whatever you wanted me to be but I stopped trying the day I realized that all you really wanted was me. Just as I was. It was oddly unsettling at first. But I came into my own soon enough. And now I can just prop up my legs in an unlady-like way, or eat like a person who hasn't seen food in days. Or pull my hair back and wear clothes that do anything but flatter me and still know that you'll want me the same amount. That you'll still be the happiest to say that I was yours. And yet it doesn't make me want to stop trying for you. It makes me want to tell you every second of every minute of every hour of every day, that I love you. I love you for being so selfless when it came to me. So much so that I started this post by comparing you to the most selfless relationship there is in the world. To my parents.

We never really grow out of being nine year olds. Throughout our lives, somewhere or the other, we're always haunted by the fear of being unwanted. Of being lonely. Of things not going your way. It's only the scales that change. The emotions remain. But I know I can move on and face all of it now because you give me the strength to. You make your presence felt. It's like I can shut my eyes and be assured that everything is right because even if it's really not, you're there. When you tell me something's going to be right. It really is.

I'm so accustomed to knowing you'll be there that it's scary now. What if someday you're not? Funnily that's something you haven't taught me to deal with yet.

You know that patch of shimmering water and the skyline that we see almost everyday? Can you imagine the water without the ever-changing-yet-constant horizon? It would be almost soulless. The sea itself wouldn't know where it should end. Where it's needed for it to stop. Where it would destroy itself. Or even the sky without the sea. A deep, hollow pit. Where you couldn't find anything. Not even yourself. That's how inseparable you are to my existence now. I just thought you should know. The most comforting and wondrous place I have ever known, is in your arms. And it hurts to turn over on my side, in the middle of the night, and not find you there.

I know, I know, this is probably the worst way you've ever seen anybody express themselves. But it's all that came to my mind. And for what it's worth, I really tried my best :).

I love you IJ. And I always will.

-Your most grateful sculpture.

Why? Because I Love You.

He probed.

She was unsure.

But eventually yielded.

"I love you. You're beautiful."

She wont say it back.

No, scratch that. She can't say it back.

Carefully, very carefully, he tries all he can.

Take two.

One small push and she's all his.

Moving in perfect synchronization of body, of life.

How does she say it? 

Without him getting scared and backing off?

Her mind screams, "I love you! I fucking love you! And I've loved you all this while."

But her mouth stays locked in his.

The words lost in the heat of the moment. Drowned in passion.

"Relax," he says, sensing the urgency and the tenseness in her back.

She lets out a soft moan, as his hands move down, easing out all her apprehensions. 

They shift.

The kisses are different.

His more tearing. Hers, softer. Her hand caressing his face. Obvious love.

"It's funny how it never felt like this when we were together."

"Because when we were together, I was playing my part. The caring boyfriend one."

Muffled gasps. Sharp pain.

"So that was all an act?"

Long drawn sigh.

"Not really. I meant it when I was in it. It's just too taxing for a guy like me."

Unshed tears, distracted by tethering his body, embedding her nails in his arched back. 

Teeth gnawing supple skin.

Red. Color of hurt. Color of passion. Of love.

She strokes his forehead as he slowly moves her hair out of her face to get a closer look.

He doesn't call her beautiful. Something stops him. At the very edge.

But she wants to know. 

Lazy exhaustion. Slower kisses. Wild submission. Acceptance. Denial. Tired.

"Men don't understand, but this is the best part." Contentment.

Really? She wants to ask. Then how do you? Is it just me? Tell me! Talk out loud! 

"You have weird perceptions and estimations about yourself, you know..."

"Like what?"

He snuggles closer. His hand always in motion against her back. He kisses her head discreetly, thinking she can't tell. She can. She can always tell.

"Like this. You think you want this. You're a really good boyfriend for as long as you don't start thinking about it."

"Hmm..." he mutters with his eyes shut. Still holding her close. She doesn't think he realizes that this is the closest they've gotten in a long time. And it's the closest they will be, all bared, in a very, very long time to come.

"You wanna get a smoke?" 

This is it. She doesn't want to let go. She's finally found something comfortable. Comforting. Something that doesn't make her squirm, or jump back in disapproval and skepticism. She was scared she'd find out how irrevocable her feelings were where he was concerned if she ever landed up in something like this. And there you go. She found out. And it hit her so hard, that she doesn't mind not being carefully handled, or not called beautiful, or looked at with a certain kind of deep love only some pair of eyes can show her. For all she cares. Ravage my body. Be harsh yet truthful. Be the asshole my friends have been warning me about. Do exactly this to me, again and again and fucking again. But be mine. In whatever limited and warped form that may be possible.

She studies the marks he gave her on her upper torso, the moment she gets home, and stands in front of the mirror, running her hands smoothly over each one of them. And then slowly turns around to see a slightly different, lonely one at the nape of her neck. She doesn't touch it, but quickly looks away. Thinking of the marks on his body, there's some consolation that he can't do away with them any time soon. She smiles a soulless smile. This is not me. It's not who I am. What am I doing? 

Giving in because you're tired. Somebody answers. Consumed.

Coastline.

It's been a while since I spoke to you.
Say things I've wanted to.
Listen to what you have to say.
Chances are I wouldn't tell you anything out of the ordinary.
Neither would you come up with something I didn't already know.
We know each other too well for that.
Like the waves in the ocean, skimming the surface, not quite interacting with the dark waters, right at the bottom.
Yet somehow, fully versed with what every little, magnificent drop has to offer.
It's beautiful no?
Our relationship?


I'm aware of what reaction every little action would illicit from you.
There's something comforting in the knowledge that I can gauge, time and eventually smile an understanding smile.
The power that some invisible force of nature rendered to you, which enables you to reach out to me, before you really even do, is fascinating. 
I'm struck with wonder at the enormity of our emotions.
Strangely enough, we don't feel the same things.
If I tasted sour, you tasted sweet.
If I leaned in, you stood strong, ready to embrace me.
If I danced to self-composed tunes, you projected two left feet.
If you said North, I'd run South.
And such was how we lay perfect in our imperfections.


You were the white light passing through a prism, forced to burst into a spectacular array of shining colors. That was me.
Blinding all, with the brilliance of my joy. Happiness that was tangible.
We lent this inconceivable energy to the air around us, and forgot all about the prism.
Naturally it's lost now.
Allowing you to remain the seamless white light you always were, originating from nothingness. 
And me? Forget colors, grey or even white. I'm nothing.
Not a form of energy. Not of matter.


But let bygones be bygones. 
Today, as I watch you sitting diagonally across me, I wonder in amazement, how things change.
I don't feel hollow anymore. 
Something feels like it's been healed. And that's what's odd.
I didn't know what broke in the first place.
Of course, even now I can't jerk the wound. It needs its time.


I still look at you with affection, and know it's not love, but to me you're still a child that needs to be protected.
I know that that too will eventually change, and it has to, but I'm happy now, and I'm not thinking. Because I'm ready for whatever is next.
With you, or without you, I guess it'll have to do.
I have finally learnt that when there's somebody else looking out for it and relying on it, that is reason enough to smile.


Until then, I'll keep washing the shores, while you kiss the sea-bed, and when on a nostalgic night, the moon decides to boast, the tides will change, a storm will ensue, and who knows? We may just meet. Even if it's amidst the roiling waters...