To Blue Eyes and Toothless Smiles

I slip into slumber
Before I am awake
As my very existence
Is a constant reminder of you
And your aching absence
I want to rid you off my mind,
Let go of the things that are there no more
But I cannot
You seem to have become a part of it
And you will slowly devour it

Captive

Your shackles that tether me
To the corner of this room
Shadow me
And compel me to
Give in to the darkness
Forcing me to shell into myself

I am a free bird
With a heart that goes berserk
On seeing
This endless ocean
Stretched far in front of me
The places I haven't been
And the memories I haven't made
Make me go weak on my knees
For there is a hunger
Raging ablaze inside of me
That aches
To explore
And wander
And never look back

These redundant regulations
That you suffocate me with
Are a waste of your time
And mine
Let me be
Let me learn as I fall
And learn as I fail

I desire
Adventures
Experiences
And knowledge
And your grounding obligations
Take this life away from me
I can foresee
This will end badly for me
And tragically for you
Because once I leave
I shall never come back
And you can watch your precious
Fade away into the distance 
Taking all the sunshine
And happy days
Along with her

Don't cage me up
Let me break
Set me free

Verboten

Today I found out what destruction in love really means. 

I remember when I was a kid, I had a stuffed monkey that I always used to carry around with me. Mr. Brown was the only true friend I ever had. He accompanied me to the tea parties where no ones else ever showed up and helped me fight the monsters under my bed and slip into deep slumber. And then came that horrific asthma attack tat took all my stuffed toys away from me including Mr. Brown. I would cry for days reminiscing about all the good memories we spent together and how my Dad forbade me from using anything that could trigger another attack. 

The lesser known truth is that I sometimes used to take him out of that steel metal storage trunk where he was kept hostage and hug him tightly, take his smell in and try to remember it for as long as I could, for I did not know how long it would be till I got to see him again.

Love.

Irrevocable.

It will all be fun till it'll be time to bid goodbye until next time. And the uncertainty of that next time will haunt you. It could be a day or a week or a few weeks, you would never know. 

Loving the forbidden will be the toughest and all consuming. It will take the life out of you. Those moments of loneliness when you need them so much and yet they sit out of reach will be savaging. The helplessness you will feel when they're in need and you sit with your hands tied and can find no way to break through that rope that binds you will be ravaging. 

The fruit of the wait will always be 'worth it' but the excruciating pain during that wait will damages you. It will  make you cry yourself to sleep every night and that hollow pain in your torso will  became so familiar that it will only be noticeable when it decides to fade away momentarily. Most of your time will be spent in trying to remember their smell and in trying to feel every touch that made your body left tingling. But the tryst. Oh, the tryst! 

Get lost in their eyes and memorize how they light up every time they talk about their favourite sport. Or how their eyelashes flutter and shut close when you lean in to kiss them. Memorize how their fingers get intertwined in yours and how that dimple on their cheek makes you want to look at them forever. Remember every contour of their body and how well it fits and shapes with yours. Let yourself be the happiest person in that moment because God knows how long it will last and God knows how long you will have to wait to feel all of that again. Let your pain fade away as you snuggle close to them and let your heart beat fast every time they hold you by your waist and brush a strand of hair off your face. Let yourself be because everything is so much more fun when you are forbidden from doing it.

Joy.

Until next time.

Unveiled

You made me feel so vulnerable
All my emotions-
Blithe or bereaved
In your ascendancy
Ever since I met you
I have you
In the space of my mind
That once used to be empty and lifeless
You gave me a person to think of
All the time
You gave me moments to cherish
And long for your touch
You gave me a person to crave
And a meeting to always look forward to
You made me expect affection
You made me desire someone
With every breath I took
You gave me wild butterflies
In the pit of my stomach
Every time we touched
And you made me want more
You made me long for you
Every time we kissed goodbye
You made me need you
Like my existence depended on you
You made me want to share
All my secrets
And made me trust you
So facilely 
You made an open book of me
You helped me up from my dark corner,
Dusted me off
And put me under the spotlight
You made me feel like I was needed
Like your existence depended on me
You made all of my doubts go away
And all my pieces fit in
Like a jigsaw in place
Like a treasure map
And you proved me wrong
When I thought you to be
Another demon who would play with my mind
And stayed,
Waiting patiently,
Letting me take my own sweet time
Even when I tried to care less
About everything you did
To maintain my guarded self
And you still stayed
Even when it took you 
Tiring days and long nights
To bring down the wall I had built around me
You still stayed
And waited patiently
You made me adore you
And that is why I abhor you

One Year Anniversary

Does your past ever haunt you

Flashing back

Right in front of your eyes

With those horrid memories

That kept you in the dark

For days at a stretch

When you didn’t eat

Or sleep

Or breathe

And ceased to exist?

Do you ever feel fatigued

And so worn out

So drained

That your humanness

Dries up

And all that is left of you

Is a spiritless body

Forcing itself

To function

But cannot?

Do you ever feel

Your sunny day

Overcast by dark skies

Takes away the laughter

From your being

When you suddenly hark back
And that stabbing pain

In the torso

Returns with gloom

And sorrow

Remorse

Chagrin?

It’s been ages

Since it ever happened

Your past way behind you

But suddenly it comes back

And you remember how you felt

And you don’t want to feel that way anymore

But yet you do

Of Broken Strings and Nostalgic Contemplations

I remember how we laughed

At the ‘best friends’ that broke apart

I remember how we laughed

When ‘true’ friendships that collapsed

But look at where we are

Yet another pair of ‘best friends’

That broke apart

And yet another ‘true’ friendship

That collapsed

I remember how we promised

To let nothing take us away

I remember how we promised

To stand beside each other

Till death did us apart

But now how it deteriorates

The relationship we once shared

All that is left of it now

Are the broken fragments

Of the strings that once held us together

The memories

Good and bad

Shall last for ever

But what lasts of us now

Are two people

Who acted like lovers

But do not look each other’s way anymore

Addled

A room lit
With only a bulb of yellow glow
A pen in hand
Trying to bleed the words
That hold her breath
But not a single word can she scrawl
Not a thought can she enunciate
Onto the white sheet
That stares back at her

Where her artistry went
She knows not
Where her afflatus wandered away
She cannot reach
The ache to delineate
The stories she keeps inside
Suffocate her
And claw her soul

She tries some more
To spew out the words 
That she holds within
Her heaving heart sinking
Into a crippling need
To do what she does best
_________

That night 
She sleeps 
With a cumbersome torso 
For she could not be liberated 
From the fervour 
That binds her self together 
And swells her hefty heart

Mettle

Armed with the INSAS

He sits 18000 ft above

Where no layman can reach

Or think of visiting

The need to protect

And to serve

The 1.2 billion

Sitting far, far away

Keeps him going

In the biting cold

In the scorching June

A bit of whiskey

To warm his soul

And to fill the aching space
In his heart

That longs for his family

Is enough today

To keep him going

Until he breathes his last

Accessory

Since their early childhoods

They saw each other grow up

Into the persons they are today

And ever since she knew him

She besotted him

Clandestinely

For nor he ever did

Neither shall he ever know

Philandered with other damsels he

And sought succour in her 
If one ever disparaged him

Never could he have conjectured

That she who stood by him

Got her heart slivered

Each time he admired someone else.

And ever since she knew him

She besotted him

Clandestinely

For nor he ever did

Neither shall he ever know

Their good and bad

Well versed to both

Their battles

Familiar to both

But he always adored someone else

And ever since she knew him

She besotted him

Clandestinely

For nor he ever did

Neither shall he ever know

Someday

She too shall learn

To be smitten by someone else

And love him more than anything

But that lad

Who she grew up with

Shall monopolize a personal space

Eternally in her essence

And ever since she knew him

She besotted him

Clandestinely

For nor he ever did

Neither shall he ever know

Judas Kiss

They seduced her weaknesses,
Plunged into them
Incited her to the limit
Where she would cannonade with
The tremors she kept inside
But she stood there all by herself,
Eclipsed by their stalwartness
Drowning in their insolence
And she stood there all by herself
Trying to maintain her dignity
Her humility
Her heart burning for
A bastion
But they stopped and stared,
Crowed and continued
And all the covenants of aegis till ‘eternity’
By her ‘allies’
Seemed all like a delusion to her now
But they just stopped and stared,
Crowed and continued.

Bad Girl Going Good

You've been a bad kid. You've made your parents unhappy. You can see that, and yet you repeat yourself. What high you get out of it, you don't know. You have done things that are undo-able, unforgivable, and yet they forgive you, you don't know why. You used to be a good kid. Other Moms used to tell their kids to be like you.  Your friends used to look up to you. Where you wavered, you don't know. Your grades fell, and they still forgive you. Everything you did, every secret you kept, they forgave you for all of it. You never told your mom about your misdeeds. She came to know about them from other sources. She was shattered. She confronted you. You lied even further. When you ran out of lies, you just kept mum till she knew that you had confessed. She scolded you, she tried to help you out. You cried, and again you repeated yourself. What high you got, you don't know.

Now she tells you to be like that friend of yours. You realize that stones have turned, it's not how it used to be. It's the complete opposite now. You took everything they gave you for granted, and now karma is getting back at you. But still you barely listen to them and do things that hurt them. Hurt them to such an extent that your mom breaks down and your dad feels helpless. But you remain adamant, and yet they loved you, you don't know why. You never understood why they felt what they felt, why you never listened to them, why you got detached, why you became the good girl gone bad, why you staggered in front of your own parents, why you broke their trust, why you took their irrevocable and unconditional love for granted, why you did what you knew was incorrect, why you troubled them to such an extent that their trust in you dwindled. 

But today, that's all going to change. You're going to regain that trust of theirs before it diminishes completely. You're going to listen to her. You're going to watch yourself and try not to hurt them because they're the only people who're going to love you till their last breath, and you need to understand that, respect that.

Mental note to self: Remember that you need to regain their trust. Stop taking them for granted. Try to be at your best always. Talk to them, interact with them. Listen to them. Don't turn a deaf ear.

REMEMBER THIS.