Memories

Sometimes a location is merely that,
A red balloon on the map.
A GPS coordinate.
A spot with a distinct name.
A postal address.

You can visit a place a hundred times in mundane habit and remain disassociated.
Or you can visit a place once in chanceful coincidence and your mind makes a million more unconscious trips transforming the location into a memory.

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.... and at the back of the house, we’ll have a huge maize field where we can watch the sunset together. The eastern girl chirped in joy.
The backyard, the western boy requested, can we have a cornfield in the backyard instead.
I can show to the world that I’ve admonished the caste system and allowed love to triumph when I fell for you, she said confused.
I’ve believed that love is beyond race and aspired to be someone who practices that, he said hesitantly.
There will be a golden retriever. And also kids, two of them, they can choose to believe in the Tridevas if they like but we’ll lay emphasis on ahimsa and karuna, she was now nervous.
A Labrador. Two kids and they can learn about the Holy Trinity if they please but grace can be received through nonviolence and compassion, he concluded.
The eastern girl and the western boy, they parted ways. We want different things, the both of us can never be one, they had decided.

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The ones that did...

The one that persuaded you into believing you’re not beautiful or worthy.
The one that manipulated you to stay when you knew you wanted out.
The one that refused to understand the concept of consent.
The one that convinced you that physical violence is a form of love.
The one that shamed you because you were a decade older than them.
The one that normalized flirting by calling it friendship.
The one that gaslighted you into questioning your reality.
The one that minimized your successful career because of their insecurity.
The one that belittled you because you weren’t born into their religion.

They did that because they can.
They can get away with it.

Not because of you.
Not because you allowed them to.

- the burden of difference

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Advice-
Why are you so effortless about giving but so difficult to receive.

Love-
Why are you so certain about receiving but so hesitant to give.

Does the answer lie in advising love or loving advice?

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There’s a storm raging internally.

Between hope that resembles the promising pure white snow.
And gloom that duplicates the dreary dead brown trees.

The two, they coexist, competitively.
Which one will you allow to radiate from within?

- snow storm

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I prided myself on being the expert who could always love sincerely.
I basked in the glory of my ability to survive recurring heartbreaks.

Then, from you I learnt,
How to truly give love,
And what a heartbreak really is.

Out of the two poignant lessons you taught me,
Will you ever learn of which one I can now never unlearn?
To love you shamelessly, or
To suffer, because of you, silently.

- two lessons

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First came the severe fatigue and nausea,
The horrendously painful mouth sores came next,
Then it was the low blood cells count,
Followed by muscle aches and constipation,
The loss of appetite and fever ensued,
The hair loss, oh! That one came last.
After he had had his third chemo and something, someone, somewhere willed that it be his final one,
But before something, someone, somewhere shot me with the void of his loss, against my will.

I had wished, desperately, to take all his pain away, to suffer in his stead. I was willing to.

But all I could helplessly do was walk into the hair salon, ask my stylist to cut 20 inches of my hair and donate it to charity, for cancer.

And again, three years later, donate yet another 12 inches, succumbing to an irrevocable cycle of hopeless solace.

- powerless

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I gave you one hundred and ten reasons.
For why you and I wouldn’t work.
We are incompatible, very different people, polar opposites. I said.

You gave me one reason.
For why you and I are meant to be.
Our love. For each other. I heard you say.

Why did I grow up so quickly?
When did I shed my innocence and don cynicism?
How did I lose my faith in love? Our love!?

- doubtful

-

The first one, you feel like you’re in love.
The second one, you think that you’re in love.
The third one, you know you are!

- Three Loves

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I have regime-
Every morning,
I apply my matte moisturizer, top it off with my foundation powder, darken the borders of my eyes with kohl and define my lashes with mascara.
And then,
I look into to the mirror and wear my smile.
Poised. Confident. Hopeful. Real.

As the day goes by, the only dab of make up I reapply is my smile.
Consciously.
Every time I look into a mirror, I remind myself, to wear that smile of normalcy.

Until I met you.
Now every time I look into a mirror to remind myself, to wear that smile, I realize I am already smiling.
Perhaps reflecting back on our last conversation, your last text message, our last rendezvous, our meaningless time spent together.

How is it possible?
That you haven’t touched my lips at all, but managed to stay upon them, constantly.

-smile

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