Addicted to You

VI

Life is dull right now. As if there's nothing else left to look forward to. Much like a record player that's stuck playing the same tune over and over again. There was a time when he liked music. Now everything seems to be getting exasperating. Keeps getting on his nerves. He feels jaded- agitated. And boredom, with its smug face was dancing around him in circles.

Logic was seated inside his brain, serenading. Telling him it's just a phase. Momentary and transient. He believes it. Things will change. But how though?

He keeps stumbling over the lassitudinous limbs of boredom. He finds it everywhere. On his breakfast plate, in the cluttering of cutlery, between the pages of his books, inside his wardrobe, in the very air that he breathed. He wondered if he was the only one who felt this way. He might be the only one who was confined to a cage. Usually he didn't mind staying indoors, but what's the thing about a rebellious zeal for doing the thing that you were not supposed to? How does one cope with that feeling?

He stood in front of the closed window, looking out through the glass, unaware of the falling rain. His eyes wander and then become fixated on the drops of water rolling down the edge of a line. He notices the tiny drops- coasting along wires or branches of trees or the tip of the leaves- one following the other after a heavy downpour. Then dropping into oblivion. He guessed that was his life now- as bleak as those drops. As dull and prosaic. He was just going with the flow. Giving into gravity. Giving into destiny. Not knowing where he will be led. Unsure of the road ahead. And boredom still prevailed.

But maybe one of those drops would find their way into the hands of soft green grass, or into the lap of a pretty flower. And from there evaporate and escape into the air. Find a new form, a new meaning. Not caged, not shrunk. Free to go anywhere. Be anything. Fly high up into the clouds. Not to become rain again, but maybe this time, precipitate into snow. Or just roam around and merge with the winds that blew. Maybe visit the sea. See the things he had always wanted to see.

Yes, one day life will be free. Free from this humdrum routine. Till then, he continued to stare at these drops. And boredom continued spinning in perfect pirouettes.

He had had enough of this sickness, making him believe that there was a cure. Trying to hide inside his skin as it slowly devoured him from within. He had searched for a cure that would last forever, but every time he thought he had it, it slipped, moving away from reach.

He had enough of this sickness, making him believe in a false hope. He'd had enough of this, making his heart bleed and leaving him astray in a valley of forgotten memories. He had had enough of this sickness called love making him vulnerable as it seeped its poison inside him, chaos lingering in his thoughts of what could be and what could have been, only to realize it was never the cure but this sickness that's keeping him sane.

Guilt ascends from the depths of his skin, devouring his torso like a cannibal on the loose. The smell of raw flesh and alcohol fills the air. Agony was his guest of honour these days. When the ghosts of his past squeeze his soul, he danced to the rhythm of his sobbing heart. And gulp in a hurry, yet another glass of grief.

It's 3 in the darkness and his sight goes blurry. Too tired to die and too ached to live. He reaches out to her memory and dig his nails into them. She merely brushes against his canvas of old rotten glee. Leaving an aftertaste that burns souls to ashes. But grief was to him what water was to the ocean.

He looks at the marks she left behind every night, while she split him open and let shame pour out. Every morning he washed himself with a bucket full of sorrow, hiding the nights of sins. For little does the world know, of all the sins he had committed. Drunk in grief and lost in its sharp embrace. Little did they know that he made love to needles every night...