The Love That I Will Choose To Keep

Where desires will be throttled, and hearts shall weep,
that is the love I will choose to keep.
When the nights are quiet and the moon hangs low in the sky,
when it's dark enough for the stars to cry,
I imagine I will stand in curious wonder
and give myself in wonderous surrender.

Here, There and Everywhere

It was high school. I was ugly. I saw it every day in the mirror before leaving for school. I remember walking down the longest corridor, with sweaty hands clutching a binder tightly to the chest as I tried my best to slink past the group of senior boys without getting noticed. Of course, it was not to be. I was the weird Indian girl, the one who read all the time curled up in secluded corners and ate her lunches alone because she was told Indian food smelled. One of them winked as I walked past and my stomach lurched. It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears right there and then. I hated them. I guess they didn't like me very much either. It would have been the uncool thing to do.

I began to dread opening my locker. On Valentine's Day everyone had a red carnation sent to them by someone or the other (school initiave) inside their locker. I opened mine to find a bunch of smelly socks and a note which said : you won't notice the smell anyway.
I think I still carry that rage somewhere.

A year later. I had another note. It said: "You're beautiful". I mistrusted it instantly. I imagined a bunch of people were standing around waiting for me to smile before they started jeering. I threw it in the trash. The next day there was a red rose inside. I went to the school counselor to ask her for a lock for my locker becaues someone seemed to know my code. I cried at night. I couldn't understand why someone would mock me so.

What happened afterwards is a blur. I was in love... with the way he felt. I was everything I wanted to be because he could see me that way.
Seven months later.. there was another note: "I don't think you're pretty enough to be mine".
This time I smiled. It was the longest prank anyone had played. You had to give some credit.

I came back to India. Outside my car window a small child held up a rose and grinned. "Aap bahut sundar ho didi". I smiled. I loved my country instantly.

Full Circle

Complacency with lack of...and high horses and defensive yelling.. all seem to have such a simple explanation.
I was right about certain things in life being pointless. There are too many people on this planet. Not to mention in this country alone. You can sit in your room and have endless phone conversations with someone and be blissfully unaware that there is someone out there who got in between.. or maybe got there first.
It happens to people. In fact it happens to them right under their nose and they're busy worrying about stupid things like lies and hurt and doing the right thing.

Faces aren't easy to read. Not even when they're close enough for noses to bump. You can look into someone's eyes and see your own longing reflected back and happily accept. Even though there will always be visions of midnight kisses with others and perhaps more...

Choke

"You leave me with a foul taste in my mouth."

I begin to plead silently for little parts of me to erode away into dignified oblivion somewhere..
By the end of it everyone is a stranger.
The space fills quickly with reverberating echoes of rancor and hate.

Rime

When they were newly married, they'd sleep in positions which ensured physical contact throughout the night. Sometimes, they'd be face to face so that their foreheads would touch, sometimes, he'd put his arm around her waist and draw her close. She would always end up saying his name out loud in deep sleep.

One morning, she awoke to find him looking her and was thrilled that he'd been watching her sleep. He kissed her on the nose and then lay back looking forlorn.
"What is it my love?" she asked.
"Why do you say his name every night, night after night?" he whispered sadly.
________________________________________________________

I hold his hand for lack of something better to do. The distance between where we are and where we should be is immense. The restlessness, anguish and pain of both our beating hearts creates a cocoon inside which we exist in each other's solitude.

If I find what I am looking for, I fear it may be something that will be the manifestation of my vilest most horrid beliefs.
His rancor, through which I have discovered a void within myself where I wish to be buried alive, has made my soul splinter into little pieces which do not feel complete anymore.

They say live... with it.... and without it...

I wish they'd tell me how.

Night and Day

There were hours of sunshine and minutes of pain.
Seconds of ecstasy existed in both. My knowledge of the dozen rotations upon an axis was limited.
Once night fell, the recollection of golden moments eluded me and one by one the instances of hurt came and fenced my bed. The length of the ordeal could not be measured and the expanse which it covered was shadowed in moon light.

There, perched upon a gleaming bough sang a lark. Further below at a window sill, a sparrow morosely pecked at bread crumbs. The lark had perhaps forgotten the five dozen seconds of ecstasy, the sparrow had perhaps never been in the sun.

Sleep Slow

Kiss on the lips and my tears too,
Draw the blinds and lie with me,
Cover me with a blanket of darkness
And tap the wood for good measure.
Green and red,
and lavender,
plunge into the vortex with me.

Laugh a little bit softer and then let me sleep.

For once..

For once I would like to experience basic peace. Not the complicated, obscure shit people keep talking about but the normal kind. The one in my head. I want to see what that is like. I imagine it would be sheer bliss to stop living keeping others in mind..

Wishing Lemons

With her glasses perched at the tip of her nose she breathed patches of steam on the tram window. She felt very conscious of the fact that this was the night she was running away. She had passed a frozen river on the way. Had contemplated jumping in, but realised just in time that she couldn't swim. Just in times weren't supposed to save her. It always was for others.

She thought about the man with the wishing lemons. Rows and rows of lemon trees in that beautiful orchard. A beautiful sunset in the background and a summer dress blowing around her knees. She had wondered if her legs looked as nice as people said they did and was glad it was warm enough.

All those lemons - all those wishes. Of course there was the possibility that the mass conversion of all those fruits into jams, marmalade, lemonade, pudding, cake, pies etc. would leave a person feeling quite wretched. A wish would cancel out another just as the taste of one lemon dish would cancel out the taste of another. The lemons left on the trees (those that were meant for others) rotted and fell onto the ground and were a pulpy mass squelching under her feet. They were trees of endless possibilities. It was wishes growing in abundance. A lemon in itself was no good. She thought that man was stupid. He was stupid enough to want to look after an orchard like that all by himself. It was stupid how all his wishes failed to take account of others before them. It was stupid how he didn't try making money off of that never ending source of happiness. When she had told him that he had laughed and kissed her for her stupidity. He told her he'd make her a wish dish. Whatever she liked. He couldn't let her do it for herself. There was always the possibility of her stupidity leading to her wishing the orchard away from him. Even in terms of wish dishing, or dish wishing no one knew what they wanted. If they ever did realise it in their dreams (they equated these with wishes sometimes), it was elusive after they woke up.

So, I'm going home. I think I am. She felt very old. Extremely young and very old at the same time. I think it was the coat. The long black coat, boots, the cold outside with the steam patches on the windows and those eyes with the glasses perched on the nose. She adjusted them and everything fell into focus. My wish dishes would be made of rotten lemons.

Saturday

So, Shani must have been really pissed off yesterday. It must have sat in one of those diamond shaped boxes on my astrological chart and decided to see how far it could jump to wreck as much as possible in as little time as possible. Not it's fault. I'd probably feel that way too if I had to be part of my chart.

I'm waiting for all of it to hit me. I'm waiting for my little fuzzy wisps of happiness to be whisked away by the looming reality of something that I can't see right now.

I would if I could, I shouldn't and I probably won't be able to even if I tried...

Laboured Dreams

Is it necessary for a person to have dreams? Is it so vital to our existence that we must hold onto something intangible to be able to achieve the zenith of the heights that we create for ourselves? What if someone had kept telling us from the moment we could make coherent sense out of language that dreams are just futile thoughts whose base is desire that will eventually bog us down into mediocrity?

Is it so necessary to know what to want and how to go about getting it? Why can't I be told that even if I don't begin to worship a thought or a castle in the air I will still be able to attain what I imagine I deserve?

It's difficult living up to expectations that you never got a chance to create. It's like you came into this world and forces were ready to mould your thoughts and beliefs towards a set direction. Without a dream you were supposed to feel like a fallen leaf from a tree in autumn whose fate hinges upon whimsical gusts of wind.

Why isn't it ok to be clueless and unsure? I feel stifled and foolish. I can't explain the wind's path and yet if I can't seem to be able to predict it then I am nothing but a useless leaf fallen from a tree simply because that's the natural order of things. I wish dreams were the stuff that guts are made of. Not like silly wisps of smoke that vanish the moment it's time to battle with the demons of reality.

Wishes

I wonder if everyone spends everyday of their life wishing for something. I can't imagine or remember a single day going by without me wishing for something. On my way for college, free time, in class, silent prayers keep working their way around other thoughts. There is one thing I am very consistent in wishing for and the others just seem to come as afterthoughts. Perhaps the superior power im praying to doesn't bother about them because they seem unimportant. But then if I've wished them in the first place they've got to be important isn't it?

I wonder if other people's wishes are influenced by what they see around them as mine so often are. If you really want something can you attract it to yourself simply by intense wishing? I want that to happen sometime. I want to know that something happened because I wished on it with all my might. I wish it would all turn out magnificently.