Namya

But, what you wouldn't remember was the afternoons you were sprawled with him in the greenest of grasses, and it tickled your skin like feathers do, and the clouds raced along in the vast August sky. You would have forgotten by then, what was it like, to be engulfed in an arena full of the loudest cheers and the shrillest of screams singing your favourite song, and he's looking at you, with amazement all over his coffee eyes. You'll forget the trepidation before your skin connected with his against the backdrop of your birthday, by your bedroom window, for the first time ever, and it felt better than fireworks on NYE. But you need to remember. You need to write it down and remind yourself, that the exhilaration is worth the pain. Because, even on the days you felt like despair would take you whole, and there would only be a gaping void left in its wake, even in moments the burn beneath your chest could be felt better than the prickle in your eyes as you let yourself cry for the umpteenth time, you had felt something epic. Something more than average. 
          A kind of raging maniac happy and tumultuous wave of sadness all because of one person, one thing. And that alone was worth it. Because to have felt something, is better than having felt nothing at all. (2)

You're trying to forget all of it. But you'll forget the ugly parts first, and then the good ones. And then you'll remember nothing but the skies on nights that there weren't any stars out twinkling. You'll only remember crashing and falling and crying on the tiles in your bathroom floor, rested against the bathtub as cold water pools around your thighs, you don't give a shit if you'll be sick the next day, because you're almost sure there wouldn't be a next day. You'll remember the days that you couldn't make it to school because the sunlight that barely got a chance to filter in through the blinds that you shut tight were too much; you didn't want to feel alive, you didn't want to see the fucking blue sky when you're entire world was upturned by the stormiest of storms. You'll remember how you looked in the mirror, counted the scars on your arms, held the skin beneath your stomach and asked yourself if that was why you weren't worthy of love. The answer was always a vehement no, but you wondered if it would have been easier if it was a yes. (1)

I've got a rock for a heart, and it has fissures running the lengths of time and space. People delude themselves into thinking they can hold my beating, pumping machine in their fists and clutch them so tight they'll never have to let me go. Well, guess the catch.  There are no delicate muscles swooning in love, aching to connect with your deepest chords- only rocks; rocks that bear indentations of all my lovers, but only that, nothing more. These are battle scars of all the times you, or him, or her, or her, or another him tried to prod their way in, but couldn't. You never can. I'm not a machine, I'm not a goddamn robot, these fissures in the surface are all the times I cracked enough to be only human, but god knows fuck-ups only need cover-ups and then the circle repeats itself, until it becomes a formula with a couple of hundred fallacies that you learn to live with. My formula to not break is a recipe to run, because we are vagabonds that don't have homes in hearts and hearts in chests. We are nomads running through forests and concrete jungles looking for a fix for a night or two, and then we're out. We don't make love on the terrace, we fuck breathlessly against the cold bathroom tile, and never stay for the aftermaths.  I guess that makes us selfish- to want you, but not want you enough. But, we are half robots with not enough heart in us to care about the hurt that we inflict, and the guilt that comes back sometimes in flashes only vents itself out in these words that keep repeating themselves like a mantra in my head : 
          
          "Did you think you could make me care?"
           

My head feels light tonight. It's October, but am dreaming of May evenings that used to glow in the liquid gold watercolour palette of the sunset. When our feet would run almost barefeet in torn soles of white converses that had turned ashen, bathed in grey dust of residue concrete- and we looked up at wonder at the buildings they made that promised to touch the sky and hold the clouds in human hands. When the bristle of the radio changing channels would wake me from slumbers that didn't carry the stench of nightmares, and the bikes that we rode to and fro to places marred with the breath of fresh air and petrichor weren't Cadillacs. They didn't need to be. When eyes didn't see the curve of hips and the slope of cheek and bones and cheekbones, but only the ripples beneath wiggling naked toes, dipping into azure waters, and the embers flying away with gusts of wind in bonfires that were too hot for chilly summer nights. We were made of adrenaline gushing through our veins and euphoric laughter, then.  When the nights we spent amidst tall lights and goal posts, sneaking onto each other's backs and raising our heads to marvel at the constellations in the vastless expanse of the universe's canvas was all the inebriation we would ever need. When curfews flew by in the blink of an eye, and we were flying by in scooters through haze midnight streets, only to come home and punch digits into the landline to call our best friends and gush. When we were gangly kids with braces and upturned limbs, waiting to hold the world in our fists, not caring about getting old, not caring about reliving our youth.  We were one and too many together, and in those moments, we had lived the pinnacle of our yore. 

I need quick fixes. 
          Twenty three bottles of alcohol that I hope gives me enough dementia to forget your name. 
          Twelve packets of cheap cigarette that I smoked until three the day after you dumped me to erase the stench of you from my body. 
          Illegal marijuana. Enough to stone my bruised, beating heart to death. 
          I need quick fixes. 
          Sex on the edge of a balcony overlooking the noisiest parts of the city with a stranger- the road drowns out the whisper of your name from my lips, and for once, I can pretend that's you. 
          Aching bodies gyrating against each other to the sound of crazy punk rock and grunge of the 80's- I sway to the songs that you love, but you are not here to dance with me. Were you ever? 
          Route 66 at 150 miles per hour, and my hair slaps at my cheeks, as I let the adrenaline overwhelm my senses. I want to tell the world that I feel infinite, but all I feel is incomplete. 
          I need quick fixes. 
          Bare feet running against concrete, smearing pavements in red- this blood is better than the blood on your hands. Who killed us? 
          Drugs that poison my veins more than you poisoned my head, but is that even possible? 
          You.
          
          (But, now you're gone, and I am thrust in this murderous rave, avenging lovers that aren't you. 
          
          It's a cyclonic circle, and you are the epicenter. I'm done partaking the blame. )
          
          Can't have my fix anymore. 

Thanks for the vote!! I hope you're enjoying Seafoam :)

II
          
           And it’s a little weird that my mind remembers only blurred scenes and haphazard whispers from the night you chose to staggeringly come home drunk with your mouth worshiping another woman’s name, and the days in the wake of that mishap that I spent holed up in my room, skin tingling with every loathing you can name, only and only for you; all of it, every inch of it is gone. I never thought I would reach the day where I didn’t have to rub my skin red to take off your essence; that it would just magically disappear like time is the only potion I ever needed. If you were here, you would ask me how then, I’m still mad at you, but sweetheart, if you ever had a head that wasn’t inflated with just that ego, you would know that I’m still thinking of what you would’ve said and asked if you were here, when you aren’t, and that is what makes me mad.

I
          
          That the fact that me not remembering the stench of alcohol on your lips and the gravelly voice of your murmurs too early in the morning doesn’t bug me anymore bugs me a little. That I have a void in the place of a gaping hole that doesn’t seem to burn every time somebody even utters the first syllable of your name irks me more than I would care to tell; that I fill the void with memories that aren’t of you shouldn’t be a big deal because I know you did-are doing- the same, but it does. Why do I care so much about not caring? And yet, you had the nerve to tell me that I didn’t. 
          Everything about you made me mad, and it’s funny how much of that is still true. If you were here, you would tell me how much of me is still consumed with your body and soul to be able to feel something like that.

I still like my hair barely kissing the nape of my neck, and I still exhale raggedly through my lips on winter nights just to see my breath rising up in circles, but nothing else has remained the same since then. We are no more teenagers with crooked gap teeth and eyes with crinkled corners smiling while we stand beside basketball courts looking for each other during recess. We are no more painted with the colour of gold dust in the heat of the sun seeping into the contours of our face, on early mornings when I’m trying to look for the football jersey with your number on it. We are no more walking side by side underneath the shadow of twisting vines and bougainvillea- I have to tell you that I always knew your eyes were following me as I looked away blushing when our elbows touched. We are no more stupid kids with white uniforms trying to find light in a fucking black world, but I still remember you. I remember you on days the drizzle trickles down my face, because nobody else has touched me with that sincere reverence since you. I remember you on days I wake up just before dawn, and the tint of the overcast sky reminds me of the colour of your skin and the rumble of the thunder reminds me of your raspy voice. I remember you on winter late evenings, when I’m passing through playgrounds reminiscing (like me) of the days you spent there kicking the dust with the ball as it went tumbling down to the goal post. I remember you on nights when I’m looking at this ghostly town (that I have chosen to forget for the most part) with the same rose coloured glasses that I saw you through all those years ago, and I wish I would have told you then that you look the same with my naked eyes. And, even though, tonight, we are light years away from who we were one thousand eight hundred twenty five days ago, I remember you, and I still remember you, and I will always remember you.

(2/2)
          
           Show me the azure of a boundless blue sky beaming at us, but I’ll still remember the hazel of your eyes better. Show me the drunk haze of tequila mid-nights, and I’ll still cling on to you like you’re the only drug to my addicted soul. Show me the bouldering skyscrapers and toppling towers of cities that I don’t remember names of, but I’ll only still look up to you. Show me these fireworks lighting up the sky on new year’s eve, but all I’ll do is compare them to the fire that engulfed our bodies when we shared that breathless afternoon of passion. Show me the art of the land as we roam the streets of some faraway city still stuck in Renaissance, but all I’ll see is you and the masterpiece that the universe created in you. Show me the handwritten sonnets of legendary lovers scribbled on crumpled sheets of paper, but my words only begin and end with you. Show me the concerts crowded with fanatics praying to the rhythm of the music playing, but all I need is the gaps between the breaths you take to enrapture my being with a dance of its own. Show me the earth quaking to the shifts in tectonic plates, but the ground never felt like it had slipped from underneath my feet before I saw you. Show me the tincture of the elixir of life, but I’ve already drank the concoction that you brewed to slither your way into my heart. Show me the temples, the mosques, the churches, the monasteries, the holy grail, the sins, the gods, but the only religion I know is the one that worships you. Show me all the world, but my world lies here. With you.