Love: An Introduction

Her skin was aglow when she was excited. One evening, in her excitement she slit her skin somehow. Light particles poured all over the street. They gushed towards a direction the slope went.

People who slept in their bedrooms became conscious of this light. It was as if a million light bulbs rolled through the streets. They stepped out of their houses and danced in that light. Bathed in it. And they all gushed along with the light.

There was a blind man in the town, however, who unperturbed by the light went in the opposite direction, against the slope. He discovered the girl.

And as he waltzed with her in silence, he exclaimed – “I’ve seen many darknesses, none as colorful as yours.”

Love Tales

1.

He was watching her breathe, when she stopped suddenly and turned towards him. “In this breath, I hold a thought” she said, “I’ll set it free once you can guess it.”

And still when he sits before the sea, watching lovers cuddling, he thinks of that breath of hers.

2.

As she has been going down the stairs she finds that feeling returning – of becoming lighter than the air above her. And then, the fear of rising up in through the block of air and reaching the floor she had started from; of finding the door, she had closed before she left, ajar; of finding him sleeping in the green light of the night bulb. That color hurt her eyes.

3.

He dreamt of waking up.

4.

When did you fall asleep on the sand? Did the last sun hurt your eyes? Like it had burned me? And the pages on which I wrote these love tales? Will the sea water heal your hurt or my love tales? Must I hold my breath in anticipation too? Hope? Do you know to dream? Am I the one who’s asleep in it?

5.

Her blood went nowhere. It lingered a few feet away from the steps. Steps on which no one shall step in a few more hours to come. And no one shall see her blood catch the strangest of hue. Perhaps, it was the green light in her last thought. A green thought in the last light filled up her eyes. Filled up her heart. Filled up her belly. Filled up her breasts. Her fingernails.

It’s hard to tell whether she had felt dizzy or drowsy when she decided to take the easy way down the stairs.

6.

In the crowd that had gathered on the shore to watch her beautiful corpse, there were children. They understood this to be a forbidden pleasure. They all stood in the warmth of her death. But for her, it was disturbing. The shame of being watched dead. The shame of it. She wanted to crumble into herself. But death, among other things, robs you of movement.

And if he were there, he surely would have covered her naked demise with himself.

7.

When was the last time you died? Was it down the stairs? Was it on the shore? Was it elsewhere? Can you tell me the events in the order of their occurrence? How many times did you die in there? In my love tales? Does it hurt anymore? Didn’t I restore your lost immunity? Didn’t I trap all your deaths in these folded pages that the sun burnt? And yet, now, without your deaths do I have you at all? Wasn’t your life the longest dying? Broken down to smaller grains of death that flew hither and thither in the wind that blew?

When was the last time you died? When was the last time the last time?

8.

He dreamt of waking up in a dream. There was dew all over. The dew that went nowhere but was everywhere. And in every dewdrop he found her trapped. He tried to catch a dewdrop to set her free. But the dewdrop gently slipped down his palm. And as it did, it slowly transformed to a waterfall of dewdrops, turning to a green stream gushing in full force. And in that stream he found her being carried away, drowning. Desperately trying to save her he jumped into the stream and found the water to be salty.

Once in the stream, he found that there was not one but a multitude of her. And that she wasn’t drowning in the stream at all, but into herself, over and over again.

9.

And then there was a mirror in her room. One of her images was struck in it. When he stepped in her room, in the soft haze of the blue streetlight pouring in, he saw that it sat in a corner of the reflected room. One of its feet stretched towards the light. Trying to hide from the light.

When he pointed his torch towards it, it tried to crumble into itself. It was always difficult for the poor thing trying to look at the man behind the source of light. She wanted to run away from this playful rape by an unknown light. But a reflected world stretches only as far as the mirror-eyes wandered.

Slowly, the torchlight mixed with the blue light, creating the green hue. And an old, rusty feeling of discomfort returned. Somehow, she preferred this feeling of discomfort. Perhaps, it was acquaintance. Maybe, death again.

10.

When she stepped out on the road, in ignorance of a death she had descended from, she walked gracefully.

He’d be waiting at the place where the road bends.

11.

Am I just playing with you as if you stood in my palms? Is your imaginative future a piece of marble for me? Shall I carve it the way I wish? And again? And again? Don’t I know you’d never be breathing life into none of my sculptures? But? At the same time, don’t I sprinkle you in the eyes of an onlooker? Will you not live in there? Make a home? Another room? With a mirror?

Will I close my palm when I find the answers?

12.

There was also a mother, lost in one of these tales. She had abandoned the mirror. And therefore, I guess, the author abandoned her too. But there she is, clinging onto the space above her head. Frightened it’d disappear soon, one of these days. As would her memories. And her hands.

“She danced so well”, she tells the boy “she danced.”

13.

He dreamt of waking up in a dream. They sat on a shore when she pointed with her fingers towards something that moved in the grass. It was a beautiful insect. She took it on her palm. It was then that he realized that there were more of the insects all over the place. And they crawled all over her body.

She whispered in his ear – “They’re eating through me.”

That’s when he noticed, lots of her was missing. And bleeding. Like the second last finger of her left hand. The part of her forehead where the sweet wrinkle appeared when she was in doubt. Her right foot. Bits and parts of her lips. The left corner of her last thoughts.

And yet she went on playing with the insects. She went on.

14.

The white cloth.

15.

She never understood what darkness meant. A creature of light, she loved wearing white. He called her Sanctity. When he held her hand, his hands would invariably seem dirty.

Once upon a time, there was to be a year that’d teach her the inviolability of darkness. That’d be the year of him. And violins. She’d learn a movement guided by instincts. The completed chapter of dance. Of waltzing with the winds. Of the less enchanted children.

There was to be a year.

17.

Dear girl,

I lost a very important chapter of our tale. It was almost like losing the sweetest year of all lives. And long after I’ve closed this tale with this letter, a reader will stumble onto a chapter lying somewhere on the sands. The staircase. The place where the road bends. In a dream. Trapped in a palm.

Maybe, the mirror was just another river in which you drowned amidst yourselves. Maybe, your mother caught a glimpse of you drowning in the mirror. Maybe, she’ll keep herself in the space above her head. Maybe, I’ll keep the sea. Maybe, you’ll know your last thought. Maybe, we’ll all become insects and eat through each other.

Dear girl, will a publisher buy you?

Kisses.
Him.

Future: An Introduction

“I can listen to the echoes from the past” she said.

“I’m thinking about you now” he confessed.

And went away.

Insomnia

The first raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The second raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The third raindrop fell in his eyes as he lay awake in the field.

The fourth raindrop fell…

 

And later, when it was quite late, the fountains rolled down his cheek. His tears lingered in the rain; his corpse about to catch cold.

The Poetess & A Fool

She said she loved him because he was symbolical to a line that stretched to infinity from both sides of her life.

“A line does always start from a point”, she said. “… And then, it rolls on to places unknown on the opposite directions – to an ultimate unending. You’re just like that.”

“Well, that’s fine”, he replied “but I still don’t get why you love me. I mean, shouldn’t you rather fall in love with a line?”

“Actually, I had. There was a time when I loved the line passionately. But then, I came to realize that what I was really looking for in the line was some property in a man I could possibly fall in love with. And I kept searching until I found you.”

“So, you wouldn’t have loved me if I wasn’t … ummm… like a line?”

“O, what a foolish question. You couldn’t have been anything but a replica of the line. It’s your essence. I’d always love you.”

And for the first time, he felt sad that she loved him.

Borges

One evening, when he sat by the porch thinking about her, he woke up.

He couldn’t recall when he had fell asleep. But now his eyes seemed torn apart by life. he could suddenly see to all the different direction in one indivisible fragment of moment. And from two of those uncertain directions he saw her twin selves walking towards him. He had to quickly decide which of her he had been betraying. It was difficult. And as his heartbeat paced and the two of her walked closer, he woke up once again.

Since then, whenever he had tried to hold her close to himself he just woke up over and over again from one of his preceding awakening.

The Roof

He seconds none in counting the minutes. Like glory passed away in some undiluted rhythm. He tells there’s a season of pearls… when the sea won’t leave you bereft.

His second wound was minute. Inside, he had found his cozy abode. Outside, where the burn remained, he applied ointment. He tells there’s a reason for girls… when they find him to be too stubborn.

After his wounds healed, he kept living under the extension of skin. His cozy abode.

Breaking the Spell

Although she tried, the water slipped down her palms and she could never wake him up from his sub-conscious state. Inside, deep down, in the core of his sub-conscious, she lived. She tried. The water kept slipping. Everytime.

She would never leave him alone.

Formula

She wanted him to be precise. But for the moments that went unnoticed, he often rounded-off her memories.

Click

She was photographing her shadow in the neon lights. Her shadow posed for her on the wall.

“My shadow’s such a proffesional bitch. She lures you with her lusty frame.”

She was jealous. But her camera won’t listen to her. It kept clicking. Click – clickety – click. When she was checking out the photographs of her shadow, later, she found on the wall her shadow checking out a few photographs too, in each of which she was seen photographing a shadow, holding my hand all the while.

“You belong to the wall”, she whispered into my ear.

Push

She was stuck inside her fall. So, I decided to give her a push. But the constituents that made up her body had changed. She belonged to the anti-gravity now. When I pushed her she fell back higher and higher. And the top has no bottom.

I brought down a dictionary from my book-shelves and started browsing through it. S, t, u, v. Ve. vel, ven, ver. Vertigo.

Meta-

I’ve been singing into the depths of the night. Seeing them banging their heads into the blue. Until drops of blood would splash onto the bluish blue – making it turn purple. Purple. Perplexing. Dissimilar selves walking in and out of themselves. Trying to catch hold of the tears flowing from their bosoms. An investigation called past clinging onto the back of their tongue. Resisting their flow into the lungs and kidneys of being. The eternal darkness of metabolisms and metamorphosis.

I’ve been singing the songs of light into the depths of the knight.

Listen

Dear girl,

I met your mother today. She lives her days dreaming of death. When she wakes up she says the nightmare has taken her back. She asked me about some of your letters but I’ve already left them to the rivers. How she longs for you to lay down with your head in her lap, once again as you recollected the day you just lived.

Lived.

After the tide, they said the river is flowing in the opposite direction. I hope to sit beside its bank someday waiting for the letters I had left in its arms.

The river is flowing in the opposite direction, with me.

I’ll meet you on the way.

Kisses
The Clown

Anomaly is a Decision!

He had loved her as the last manifestations of innocence in a world of depreciating preservatives. The smell of a few rotten nostalgias. Mutilating. Bacteria. She blinked her eyes like a child when she didn’t understand a thing. And oh! For the beauty of it he’d wish she’d understand nothing he ever told or did.

When the wars called him again, all he wished to take from the town was one blink of her eyes. Carefully concealed. But this time she understood. She won’t blink again like darkness would for him, evermore.

…And They Lived Happily Ever After

When she walked out of his heart, she forgot to tell him where she kept the key to their cupboard. They had designed their cupboard to be airtight. To keep their memories safe from the fungus and bacteria. It was an alternative to their own hearts.

She had taken his alternative away, forever – he thought.

This morning, she had stepped down his heart and walked into the alternative. Their cupboard.

I’ll Limp A World For You

He still fumbles with his hallucinations. Even when she walks down to him, he couldn’t ask her to the dance.

Memory Game

When they were shifting places, she had been carrying some of his words. Accidentally, that day, some of those slipped and shattered on the floor.

They couldn’t talk of their past ever again.

The Seed in Her Womb

When the ship took him away her heart was broken. In a year, he promised to return.

“You could long for him,” her friends said “Pain seldom is this sweet.”

She didn’t understand but right when the words were being spoken she found herself craving for chocolate-coated tears.

Destiny’s Thread

I used to live by the darkened road that led to the enchanted destinies of a fellow who was lost like a long awaited letter from my lover melting into the storm cutting its way into an alien land where the people who used to stay feeling afraid of the gathering storm and reading the first signs of their doom had decided to flee on the first car they could remember seeing which was actually a mailman’s van from which they emptied all their letters to find enough leg-space for making their longest journey comfortable never thinking for once how lost the mailman would feel when he wouldn’t be able to deliver their loved ones’ words to the people who waited like the man who stayed on the darkened road whose curse it was addressed to those who were responsible for his lover’s letter not reaching him that would ensure that their doom become inescapable on the very day they were fleeing from the storm…..

Light

A few colorful lights were stuck in his eyes. He splashes a few wet tears in there. Lights linger. Their color disseminate from the edges. A transmutation of the glowing haze. But the sun never set on the electric light.

He walks in through the snowballs, the sledges and the dances. Walks on to the corner where she sat. Blind as ever, beautiful evermore. She smiles. She knows his presence. And as they waltz through a frenzied crowd she whispers in his ears -

“You know, last night, in one of my dreams, the darkness blinked.”

She was expecting.