soapsandsongs

My city is fading, slowly into the pulls of grey. A colour, ironically my favourite but an indication of impending gloom. Gloom. Not impending.

Shakti once told me that when you have jaundice, everything appears yellow. My city is a grey mess. My body, brain and heart, sunk in. This isn’t home. Grey is heavier than it seems, than it was ever before. 

Imagine a filter in real life fixed upon your eyes and adjusted to your consciousness. A film. Real life, real time, jumbo cataract. Your sun isn’t yellow. Your blue skies and green trees and red earth , even the colour of your walls are diffused. They’re tones of reality. This is reality. 

My city is grey. Its children are growing up in a grey world. Breathing in grey air. And they don’t know that this once was weightless. The weight is now natural. Not to me. Never to me. 

The sunlight in my room is an unnatural yellow. Or is it white? Like a bad job of watercolor. Opaque and disturbing. 

Fading? Faded. My city has faded into the pulls of grey. And nothing can be done about it. 

Hey Dum Dum, stop rubbing your eyes.

You’re not sleepy, no. You’re not asleep.

You move, like moving is a habit your body undertook to make sure the disconnect between your reality and imagination doesn’t become all too tangible. Together: bite and understand; observe, react to the metallic taste of warm blood spreading in your mouth. Slowly, over your teeth. Rolling, over your tongue and swallow.

Stop rubbing your eyes. Bite, taste, swallow and understand. Observe. Observe how your fidgety fingers suddenly still over the body of your being, you dig, dig, dig in and your back arched up to tunnel what escaped in a hush towards the point, towards the apex, tip o your tongue and you sigh as you still dig, dig, dig into your mind. Come, spread your folds and uncoil, bit by bit and understand, observe the stillness in your mind, all too easy, too bloody quiet.

You tongue old wounds in your mouth and the all too familiar taste spreads warm and fresh again. 

Stop rubbing your eyes, Dum Dum.

It’s stuck like a stickity, stackity, sticky stuck stuck sticking out your tongue.

Tease yourself, make faces.

Understand, observe, react.

Bite, taste, swallow.

I see that we are back to pretending.

Look at you, your smug face and self satisfied smile giving away more than you had ever thought they would.

You touched yourself today, didn’t you?

Your body writhed on the blue bathroom tiles while your fingers pulled at chord after delicious chord, amplifying your muffled moans, for your mother was at home today.

But you remain unfazed, don’t you?

With your slick body sweaty and dripping confessions of the sins committed behind locked doors, layering your screams of pleasure with brick and mortar.

Why, wasn’t it thrilling enough to undo yourself like the day you spent tracing your curves and planes, the crevice and the sharp turn of when breasts and breaths descended into sighs and your waist which widened into moans and your hips and then finally, screams and the object of your focus in the past few days.

Don’t pretend that you weren’t there a few minutes ago, pulsating like a drum being thrummed away in ecstasy.

Your muscle taut and sore and your head lost in a world absolutely and completely your own.

Youre glowing, love.

Look at you. Look at that face. Look at that condescending smile.

You’re a Goddess today, aren’t you?

I would love to slap it away.

Mercy, oh God. Mercy.

Bit by bit and then all at once

When my soul leaves the confines of me

And my last breath becomes a new one for you

I hope I evaporate and settle down

As the purest dew

Uncaptured, for you.

I’ll trouble you, like I always do

Always, in the air around you

In hopes that you would swallow me

And let me be a part of you.

I’ll trickle down a silver stream

And water the flowers that cover my grave

And I’ll rain down hard and gently slide

Down the window that you look out of.

I’ll be your afternoon’s steam and your evening’s cool

And when dawn breaks

And your dreams leave your beautiful mind

You’ll find me waiting

As the moisture on your pillow.

Glide a finger over

Your fogged up mirror

And draw my face

And as you trace my contours, to make me stay

I”ll silently fade away

Bit by bit and then all at once

Like the picture in your head that you draw from.

The broken don’t appear to be broken.

They’re a race silently whiling away their lives, un-breaking the broken things around them.

Broken things are beautiful, broken people aren’t.

If ever you’re allowed to look deep enough, you’ll see your reflection.

How broken is it going to be?

How broken do you have to be in order to recognize one of your own kind?

The broken don’t appear to be broken.

They’re a race, silently wishing to be unbroken.

If ever you’re allowed to look deep enough, you’ll be blinded

By all the pieces, where nothing matches another.

Where the matter doesn’t match the mould.

How willing are you to shape nothingness into nothingness?

The broken don’t appear to be broken.

They break the unbroken.

They’re a race silently breaking those around them, without even realizing it.

How willing are you to break for them?

For broken pieces un-break a whole.

Broken lovers un-break a heart.

Broken wings un-break a flight.

And broken silences un-break the night.

She was fire trapped in a body merely 4’11” tall. Her pudgy nose and tiny, restless eyes refuse to leave the confines of my mind. Her skin full of pimple scars from her childhood flashes before me and reminds me of a honeycomb that was plucked too soon. She had a broken finger on her left hand. Her pinkie. Same as me.

She solved complex math problems for me. She was quick with multiplication and division. She ran like the wind and she sang softly; so softly that you had to listen hard to fully imbibe the beauty of her voice. It was beautiful.

I remember telling her about my first love. I was a kid of 12, excited beyond the point of return and hopelessly in love with a senior. I remember hatching plans with her on how to stalk him in school. She was a bloody genius.

She introduced me to sex. We used to watch movies together. The censor board wasn’t very active back then. How many times did we watch ‘Julie’?

I remember her slapping me hard. I remember her feeding me. She brought me up and is responsible for half the woman I am today. She engraved the concept of freedom in me and then flew away without a word.

Oh, you flew away too soon, Shanti. Shani. Shati. Didi. I know about your insecurities. I know how you cried sometimes. How you sneezed loudly and farted even more loudly. I remember our games and how you were a pro at UNO. I miss your cooking. I miss your stories. I miss you. Everyday. Right now. Always.

Turbulent head, rest a while.

Treacherous head, keep shut, will you?

Torturous head, don’t make me scream.

Tactical head, yes, I hear you.

Tentative head, you may speak now.

Taciturn head, you’re bleeding.

Tenacious head, loosen up.

Truthful head, you’re being ignored.

Truthful head, you were right.

Truthful head, you heard my screams.

Truthful head, you heard me scream.

Truthful head, you heard me then.

Truthful head, you hear me now.

Truthful head, be true once more.

Truthful head, just once, no more.

And every night before the next morning dawns

Before I transcend into a state of bought unconsciousness,

I am awoken from a lulled reality

Into the 25th hour.

I set aside the remnants of myself

and I escape, far out of the reach of what captivates me.

Far out of the reach of what eventually pulls me back.

This hour brings paradise for a few bought moments only.

I merge with the wind and I dance

With the flaming fury

Within myself and we dance together.

Until all is charred and scalded red,

Until the storm is consumed within itself.

And this hour knows no sorrow.

It ticks its way through the thin line

That separates the glow of

A solitary product of chance,

Dominating the sky in all it’s borrowed glory

From the lender who always pulls it back,

Owing the act to nothing but avarice.

The hour is snatched away.

It was like a dark dance. Wild and full of an other-worldly poison. Passion.

Possession lingered in the air.

The smoke in her eyes took control over him.

Reigns taut; the fury behind them terrified him.

She’s a mad woman. She’s a mad woman.

So mad he must be too.

It was a dark dance. Lush and loud with other-worldly satisfaction.

He bowed down to her and she, took flight again.

Borrowing her wings from the mad man

Who lent her his voice of reason a long, long time ago.

It lay crumpled on the floor.

They lay crumpled on the floor.