A New Story

Full moon. Warm and milky. Wheels crunching on gravel, doors opening and closing. Shadows from the flowerbed to the stairs. Cold and hazy.

- Well I'll be off then.

- Stay a while.

A telephone rings from somewhere within the house, a ringing that seems to have it's own time and space, it's own sense of lethargy, a ringing that seems aged and musty, felt and understood only after it stops, like an echo trapped within silence.

- You should go in and rest. And he's probably calling. He might get tensed. I mean, in your condition..

- Kiss me.

- No.

- Kiss me.

- Don't do this. I don't deserve this. You don't deserve this.

A teardrop glistens, the moon inside it. I was calling you a long time back, pushing startled shoppers with my heavy, strong hands, running and slipping and recovering on the carefully scrubbed floor, shouting your name, consciously enjoying the fact that every eye was on me, and following mine, every eye was on you. I couldnt suppress the laugh that came from nowhere I was aware of and could control, some never-to-grow-up part of my heart, and watching your face turn a comical shade of red as I came nearer and nearer only helped it grow. I laughed and laughed and fell on my knees and catching my breath, amidst dozens of baffled, amused, curious people, said I wanted to marry you.

- It's a strange world, isn't it? I still call you my bestfriend. I still call you my bestfriend and my husband buys it. He didn't even feel jealous for a moment. He thinks jealousy is a scar. He thinks jealousy is against his rules of integrity. He will not allow himself to feel jealous or angry or whatever that spoils his ideal of perfect love. I don't understand. I wanted to torment him, I wanted to make him beg for my love, for whatever he wanted. Why couldn't I make him need me? I've been there and he's been there and we've been together but why couldn't I fucking make him need me?

- Don't cry like that. Don't cry like that..

Words become needless entitities sometimes, not because gestures and unsayable emotions replace the necessity, but to make way for a greater want, the desire to hold close and smell every word that has been said before, every word that has led to the moment of realization. She gestured outside, and I followed her, not saying a word and feeling a million soft pinpricks on my forearm, till we hit sunshine and she stood on her toes and kissed me. Kissed me to tell me that all past and future had merged to a present, a wholesome, complete present where all expectations and plans were laid to rest, and all we had was us. Raw, stinking in bits, and happy.

Ten years can seem like a lifetime, but it's always that one moment, the intitial spark and clang and blow and fire that every day holds on to, every day building itself holding a mirror to that first upheaval, the grandest and scariest and fiercest of all. I imagined that she cried beyond exhaustion to satisfy my sense of justice when I left without a word, when her father refused to hear my well-constructed arguments, my insistent promises to keep her happy and prove myself and work harder. It all seems so stupid and adolescent now when I think of it, being a grown-up, practical man with the knowledge of the future in numbers and figures, not something as vague and misleading as words. I rationalize my present by thinking that I tried to toy with presets, I put my heart into changing what was always, and almost pitilessly, not in favour of change. I invested too many emotions into a present that never was, I thought, and I became a practical man, day by day, sleeping dreamless. But it all seems so wrong and meaningless now, her tears falling without a whit of self-restraint, asking me to kiss her. I leaned forward and put my lips against her warm forehead and let it remain there for a moment. Without thinking at all, I fell on my knees, and put my lips on her bulging, animated belly. Past the slightly stretched black cotton T-shirt, past the soft coverings that protect the life inside from the imperfection and the dust, from the absurd injustice destroying and ironically reinventing lives and consciences and priorities, I kissed it. Raw, pure and complete.

- You should go now. My car's getting lonely.

- Come back sometime.

- I'll try.

Bitter Night

Unwrap the silence and perish.

Your lips smooth
and lonely, piercing
with every word
unsaid.

Take into account
my sadness, my
withdrawn attempts to
salvage phantoms
of promise.

Scream.
I want to feel words
hurtled across my heart,
moments cold
like needles, the novelty
of your body now
a burden.

Scream, for I have
forgotten how to
speak.

I cannot leave
till you hate me, words
like scissors cutting
illusions that might
gleam.

Your lips smooth
and lonely, piercing
with every word
unsaid.

Book In Hand, Late

There are lights beyond, I dream.

Someone faintly ascends
wooden steps, creaking like old
age, and steals the amber drizzling
across half-open books, ageless.
Hey, come back, the words
softly crackle on my tongue.

Sleep, a word slips gently
into sleep, where the lights
flow once more, like a river.

..

What is beautiful? Robert Frost and the smell of winter. Sleepy mornings and green jackets. Ice cubes and long walks. Heartbeats and mountains. Brittle leaves and the lone bird at 3 AM. You in my head. Music flowing in a mist. Wet palms and flickering streetlamps. White moon in a black sky. Crumpled paper and silent puddles. Mangoes and Norah Jones. Random words in last day's newspaper. Everytime I decide to say Baby and stop. Shoulder taps that mean nothing. The promise of change. Images that make me feel I'm dreaming. The word butterfly and not the insect. Everytime someone says Hello when I thought someone never would.  Littleness and strangeness and pretty pretty vagueness. Plumcakes and blue cars. The feeling that there's more to what is left. Songs I want to hear a million times. Idle afternoons and laidback future plans. Flamboyant football and laughter. Moments and moments and moments. And yes. 

Possession

Cut-out photos, your nose 

glued on my dusty green

schoolbag, the one left

in the cupboard to

rest. ( There was a torn 

letter in the upper chain, 

words glimmer still, or

so I dream, still heady, half-

curious .) 

Eyes encircled using black

dot pens, perforated balls : 

model of an ant's craftmanship- 

scattered in square little 

boxes on a floor smelling

of late summer love. 

Give it to me, I said,

and the face came apart, 

like weak clouds, or weak 

names, or weak sticks 

supporting a painting. Given,

I trembled to hold. Maybe there

was a breeze that evening, shadow

of a howling storm.  

Lips pasted on the other

side of an unread maga-

zine, the only promise

can be your kiss. ( Or, that is

what my interested friend

tells me. You're dead, I

gesture, a lefthand swipe. 

He likes it. The thought of other-sided-

ness, love and darkness, candles

and ghosts, almost arouses

his imagination.) 

And When We Meet Again

M : Do you remember the days when I stared at you, from a distance, like there could not be anything more interesting and different than your face, your strange blue eyes and the
soft laughter waiting behind your lips to fall like a fountain of tulips? 

W : I saw a different man, a different nose and eyebrows too thick for my liking, a sadness beneath a battered smile, a slow blinking as if time held no meaning anymore, a grave shake of the head as if the world had been conquered and spat out and nothing remained to be achieved, to be played and forsaken and loved. 

M : Do you know that the evening mist was just an idea, like your footsteps tinkling like fragile winter bells was an idea, like the magic in your words was an idea, or maybe a dream, or a thought that made my heart feel significant?  

W : I saw him put out his hand, dirty and crumpled like a wasted oil painting of a promising landscape, I felt him press my hand like a tired man, dead passion resounding in a soft squish, I felt him say Hello like it was being repeated in an eternal phone conversation, I felt him like he was not there, I felt him like a stranger for the first time since I lost him. 

M : Do you know I told you love was what departure means, what the beginning of absence made you feel, and you shook your head and took my hand and felt it against your ears as if I was the only sound you wanted? 

W : I saw what I would not have wanted to see, what was worse than absence, than a memory which felt like needles and numbness, I saw a memory extinguish itself and become nothing. 

M : Do you know? 

Remains

You told me happiness was not far away,

that a broken cause is actually the

strongest there can be, that laughter was

the first word, you told me to wipe

the frown off and laugh, and so



I'm angry, I'm angry

that you didn't tell me

that your words

would not die

with you.