arnymaa

We crave for love When we’ve embodied it all our lives And yet, it becomes numb to me When my hands bleed, Clutching onto something that wasn’t mine

Strange how four letters stitched together Can become the warmth of a sweater Its absence fueling a desire To burn itself  In the coldest fire

We live in a void Believing that borrowed love will fulfill us But it only brushes our souls  Reflects like light Turning our skins into mirrors We stand on the opposite shores To witness endless reflections of untangling threads Before we choose to close our eyes And collide to intertwine into each other

As our final act of letting go

I wonder what shatters us more

Being a victim of one's cruelty or

Accepting our own helpless reality?

When we swallow sweet poison

Not because water is too scarce

But because of its tendency

To act bitter on tongues that feel

Too starved

We pretend to be sufficed

When it feels never enough

We pretend to love who we've become

And that everything's just a charade

Wondering what words would explain,

Our blood turning poisonous blue

An attempt to become the water

That was never ours.

Sometimes beauty doesn’t bloom, it’s forced into shape. I wrote this while thinking about how even our smiles carry stories of control, discipline, and quiet rebellion. How the things we call flaws were once the freest parts of us.

Oh! how I miss my milky malformed teeth A jewel that I used to wear with pride Is this what they call beauty When they have to be confined In the braces that cut my inner skin For the sake of a pretty smile?

A layer of silver glitter that adorns the enamel Their quirks forced to align Like disciplining kids with lustrous chains Who dream to wander off in the woody wild

I still wonder if after all these years of control They would want to revolt And go back to their crooked time But I fear those chains Would’ve seeped down to their roots

A society of retainers With a mold

Silencing innocent malformed cries.

Maybe the things we try hardest to correct are the ones that once held the purest form of us. Maybe crookedness was never the flaw.

How did I pretend for this long? How many truths did I unsee to believe in lies? To swallow those deafening screams and simply smile.

When did I start despising my adorned poems? To sit among the shreds of paper, I once swore to take to my deathbed, And let those pretty words taper.

To let silence conquer what it was meant to guard. Making the hardest substance to ever exist, A broken heart.

Is this what they call losing one’s inner child? Not a gradual erosion rather ripped apart from the soil, When the ugly world seems innocent, That poisons everybody just enough to survive.

I wanna fall in love in a metro When the sun has long set When the dim light illuminates above us When the scent of exhaustion lingers in the air

I imagine how may be one day, one night We both would end up stepping in the same coach You, at a distance with some music you'd be lost in Those lyrics humming on your lips Those pretty words

I'd look around maybe stuck on some thought or just emptiness And my eyes would see you they'll make me feel you I'd lower my gaze and be snapped back to where I was I would smile at my madness and then look up To find you, to breathe in your presence

But I'd lose my balance with a halt Only to search for your eyes, those beautiful lashes adoring them To feel the calm and beauty your existence radiates To smile when you do At a baby, who plays with your bracelet I'd search for the strands of hair falling on your face Whose skin would have tiredness sketched on it from the long day we both lived by

The world lived by

And then you'll look for just a second At the girl who lost her balance in the metro you stepped in, just like some other day You'd look away when the doors would open Walking away to your home, to your comfort

My feet would rush for the window to glance at you And maybe lose you forever You'd leave and again the metro will move Just like yesterday but never like tomorrow When my world would stop and slow down At the station where I last saw you

No, not to find you again or wish that our eyes would meet I'd want you to be lost in yourself and the world While I lose myself in my own

I always hated ink on my skin, A stain. It wasn’t a paper to be marked, I wasn’t someone to be claimed.

A gifted diary, too precious  To be hindered with its white. While every page of an old notebook felt mine. What was it that I couldn’t find?

Me. Who was I if my flesh didn’t carry my memories? Too sacred to be scarred by my soul tainted  With sins. My sins but not my skin.

Deprived of my hatred and disgust, Deprived of my anger and an annoying rush. Deprived of my emotions hidden beneath The curse of being a gifted diary.

Being fed pretentious care, But not my naked spells. Yes, a hundred scars, healed, But not a single heart, sealed.

A source of light  Untouched, sacred and pure  I burn myself every moment To mark the beginning and the end of every day Everyone saw the world around, I made sure.

But a thought lingered somewhere, A desire. To be loved like the moon, to be admired Maybe I am unworthy of it I lack it's allure Never the sight to behold People look away, scorching under my gaze I hate myself then All I wanted was someone who would look my way.

To shine like the sun, first burn like it I am an inspiration but not a sight of admiration That I longed for Like the umbrella after the rain Bandage after the wound heals They are never acknowledged, Because, They aren't wants but needs 

At the station of doubts, I looked for the wheels of the answer's train. Colliding with people alike, Our luggage carried the same weight. Watching many moving ahead, Towards their right abode, I tried to cater more time, hiding my defeated face.

I peeked inside each of the trains, Trying ensure that I wouldn’t drown, rather, someday sail. Lost in the lost crowd, I searched for an abode that my destiny had framed.

Finally, finding one down a new track, I tried to board it with all my luggage. The bags tossed away by the crowd, I found them etched with my fears’ name.

It was then I realised, I had ruined my life, Thinking they belonged to my unhealed pain.

I broke free Too tired to survive in monotony Too tired of being recognised, known to anybody.  The urge to just disappear lingered,  To become a part of something new,  To feel new, to dissolve, to be lost completely. 

Wandering in the endless desert, I searched for a stable land. But who knew I searched for more time, Just a little, to live and die once again. Enclosed behind the bars of glass, My attempt to avoid the pathway towards the end. I let those pages free, but the memories, Tried to recollect the pages falling into shreds. Living like I have centuries tomorrow, I held the needle, with a little thread, Who knew, my eternal life ran, In the hourglass of my forgotten death.

I sculpted it With the desire To reshape something I could never fix To create something I could never become To make it distinct from me To let it live my every dream

But it wasn't the only one coming to life With it I was reliving I was being crafted in the process of crafting I was creating it to recreate me To give it life to live mine To feel complete

Displaying it one day, The audience seemed to be smitten with its beauty But it refused to believe them It refused to believe me It refused to love itself It refused to be Caressing it, I reduced it into pieces Only to realise, The molds I had used were once used on me, I had created nothing but me.

The noise of the world penetrated within, Settling deep inside,  Trying to stir the dead silence that hung,  Hiding beneath the mask of peace.

I never knew why but a sense of void grew, A hollow too stubborn to consume me and not contain me.

I remained indifferent, a way to run away, Forgetting, remembering, cherishing, regretting, Thoughts like water, flowing through my fingers, trying to cage them.

In this whirlwind of life, The feeling of being lost lingered, The fear of messing up,  The embarrassment of being monotonous,  Being too weak to overcome, being too stubborn to move on.

Forcing myself to understand everything, To make sense, to become understandable. Not being too loud, not too silent, Nothing extreme, to avoid attention.

I kept searching for definitions, A way to find meaning of something in my life, A way to define myself, But maybe,  I was fluid, changing itself with changing places.

Too difficult to be bound by boundaries, Yet too soluble, To completely dissolve in me to feel me To be with me was to be contaminated by me An existence, to be ignored for being a necessity; valued in scarcity, A shape, full, but never whole. A story remembered but never told.

The urge to remain where we are, not wanting to move, not wanting to change and then feeling guilty for not achieving, for not changing, for not beginning, for not ending, for not continuing.

Standing in front of the mirror yet avoiding it to not witness the failure achieved, to avoid the reflection of the coward who refused to give the best, who chose to ignore everything.

The guilt of not putting efforts and then reading the disappointed expressions hidden beneath the acts of consolation. To show that you worked when you never did and when they say, “At least you gave your best. That’s what matters” 

How do you break it to them? How do you present your cowardness, your lethargy, your unfaithfulness. And then, you opt for a path you never thought you would take. You become something with a void building within. All the emotions that were never expressed eventually stop hurting, they become a habit. The void gradually growing consumes all the emotions leaving a creature too selfish to even care. Showing acceptance for something you should’ve fought harder for but you leave it, you leave yourself where you were.

But in all of this, one thing remains,

The guilt of not feeling guilty. The constant war to define it, to categorise it as justification or an excuse. But these words seem inappropriate, what do you think would fit?

My mind and heart are always in chaos. Their conflicts are my contemplations, their silence my dilemma. 

Their contradicting desires to fulfil a single temptation, their yearning to solve something unsolvable. And that’s what keeps me going. Thinking, understanding, then losing it and then reassuring. 

For the cycle to go on, they must stand at opposite ends so the boat doesn’t sink.

They must act parallel to walk together until my last breath.

But then, how will peace be achievable? For how long must this war go on? One must find content, one must feel fulfilled. 

We choose how we live. Life is a series of them, like every mountain followed by a valley. Pain followed by bliss, riot followed by peace. Read it backwards and the perspective differs. 

And at every turn, isn’t every choice, a war of wants?

Peace isn’t constant, a result of constant choices rather. Choice to stay silent and then speak, choice to find peace in war or war in peace.

Thereby, I choose to find solace in conflict. 

Between heart and mind

I let people go while I hold onto things. People drift apart, flowing rivers and I remain a shore, holding onto their fragments. The letters they wrote, the illustrations, the conversations, I preserve them, becoming soil, fertile and fruitful.

I hold onto memories, capturing the person I know would change eventually. Who finds the same person twice even in the same person anyway?

So, thereby, my efforts are never focused on caging the flowing river rather, take a part of it and make it a part of mine. 

Be it good or bad, I absorb everything to nurture my being, to experience bliss and pain, to experience fertility, to experience solitude when called barren.

The rivers become a medium of change sometimes, I flow through them, my silt deposited where it didn’t belong but still absorbs in it, becoming a part of something different yet I remain different. 

I wonder whether my identity of being silt was just an imagination. Being a human, I must be a river, ever flowing, irrigating fields of livelihood, ever changing, giving and taking yet never keeping.

But that’s where the difference came. I too give and take but after making it mine.