Solaris

In the hush of nights, in the wake of the sun draping itself around me. I miss you Vita, like a maiden stranded on a distant tower. My longing is gathered in leather-bound spines, stacked in gravestones. It grows agonizing, even for me—one who cradles endings. I take everything of you, everyone who loves you but, in the end, I am left with nothing.

The law that governs me demands order, finality. But the second I see you; I crack. Between the quills of a dove, in the spaces between your footprints, in morning and dusk, I see you. I’m not used to being loved, so I wouldn’t know what to do when I meet your emerald eyes that offer me no kindness.

One sharp glance, and my entire order unravels. I forget everything I’ve built inside; to let go of you. I question with pity if those few seconds are enough to change what my heart has always felt, to change how the void within me still searches for you? Our distance cleaves through me, a wound no grave could hold, for even I—Death—come undone. You always fall in love with light, yet you spare my love no grace, even though I am the certainty left. No darkness in you ever frightened me, yet my shadow is where you cast your ruin?

Your disgust lingers at the edge of my silence, seeking refuge in the hollow of my being. I hold my breath through fire, through grief, through nights that smelled of prayers and trust. But even that sanctuary scorches, so I run—to the trees, to the chirping birds, to the blooming flowers but they all push me away.

The roots resist the drought; the stars flee their light even they pray for my absence. Yet time remains kind. Cornered and trembling, I weep and weep—relentless, exhausted—patient with the fire burning through me, waiting for it all to burn away.

Oh, dearest Vita, I know what my love does. Everything I touch turns into ash, every gesture fades into the abyss. I destroy what I adore, yet I find myself chasing you. Against all wisdom I am blessed with, I foolishly yearn for your touch to reach—to bless me like melted sugar, and find me through all this rot.

I root out the ache I sow in secret every time I see you smiling, for it pierces less than your hate for me. I touch what remains—dried petals of your love, the golden hour of smiles left behind. I hold your children when they lose their glimmer of light, I stand tall when they burn through their end. I take them when their rope tethering to you breaks away all in hopes for you to spare me a glance—even in sorrow.

Yet you turn cruel and empty to me, if I even go an inch closer to you. In moments such as these I remember when we were sinner’s fruit of Adam and Eve, swallowed by their fake smiles. I wonder if you do too?

Do you remember when we were young, void of colour? You cracked me open, my ribs a doorway, your touch pressed into my skin, your fingerprints on every inch of me. How fiercely we loved, Vita, a love I’d give anything to have. But when the days lengthened, you left me—an untraceable absence. My heart traces backward, bearing the curse I became, whispers of punishment, all to let your rain wash the acrid edges of my faith.

My heart writhes for you, a handful of worms humming towards you. I hope you find me spilling and hollow—do not fear me, jaan. I won’t let fate take you from the earth you love, from the children who cling to your care. Yet I am torn: every time your glimmer fades, I ache to end your suffering, even as I hold the smallest of you—your soft smile in an embrace, your children, the pale glow you keep as everything crumbles.

The forests echoes the melodies you sang through spring, and all that provides me hope is your quiet strength as grief seeps through. In these moments I become the void aching for the irretrievable.

Silence and anger they linger like shadows, heavy with unspoken torment the only two emotions the men in my life have truly ever embraced. On a blustery day I lit a cigarette it's smouldering end almost scorching my finger, its metallic taste spread across my mouth, the astringent vapour steadily travelling through my sinuses engulfing me in its miasma of tobacco smoke and it felt bitterly nostalgic. Taking me back to the memories of my beloved grandfather to think how much he adored this embittered ritual. As I took a final drag memories of him danced vivid and sweet the but the coffin nail in my hand now burnt down to a fragile filter it's remains resembling his slow yet elegant death. I could visualize each puff pushing him towards a step closer towards the end. Painful yet imbued with strange grace like a final stand off with mortality. The bitterness lingered on my palate, and I yearned for something to cut through it, something crisp, sweet, and robust—a beer. And then, like the sudden gust of wind a realization struck, heavy and undeniable; I am you Baba

No matter how much we both despise this a vile truth remains, screams that we are grotesque reflections of each other—distorted and fragmented bound by flaws we can’t escape. As the sun sets, restless spaces form between us shaped by our habits and our tangled bond. I know that for you I am nothing but a harbinger of curse, a bad omen like a serpent poised. I strike your fragile mortality with my so-called venomous fangs and every glance shared a glaring reminder of our shared resentment. Like a slap on your face, a reminder of your stupid past, a mistake you can't undo. Each fight ignites itself into a tempest so sharp, venom spills from the both us, dirty exchange of letters, a vicious dance of our fragmented egos and I brace for what's to come next but this body of mine turns weak and I abhor it. It's shameful how I betray myself every time allowing to be left with bruises that I am not proud of, the weight of it all drags me to the depths of despair and I keep drowning deeper and deeper—hoping to be saved but I see you gleam with twisted joy over this pitiful victory and I know God dammit—I know that not a single cell in your body will flinch with fear when you see my shattered form—cracks etched deep onto my flesh, my lifeless corpse hanging from the ceiling; a final act of defiance and oh, your joyous eyes meeting my dead ones, quietly savouring my ruin. You’d revel in my end, wouldn’t you? after all you never cared whether I wanted to live or die because I am nothing but a regret you want to end, a reminder of everything you abhor about yourself. Love is a lie, a cruel fiction which doesn't exist for us. We hate each other yet we are the same, cut from the cloth of shared disdain and this truth fills us both with hatred. I often wish the child in me didn't care so much, didn't fill her small body with the sadness of a lost bond, didn't expect much from your pretentious displays of love, didn't cling onto this frail hope.

You’ve crossed life, my child, with no clocks ticking, no moments wasted in the wild. With no breath to chase, no time to flee. I write and write with no way to go; I pour and pour with no meaning to do, so I bleed and bleed with no purpose in view and live and survive with no reason true. Days blur and stretch like the birds in view, and the nights shine and shine like verses steeped in rue. But life no longer seems like a joke, nor does it seem like a ray of hope. Hence, I slash and dance in midnight’s fury; I jest and soar through the whispering trees. But tell me, child, does life seem so bright? Do you love life—or death? Or do you hug the flowers with their honeyed heaviness? I see you clutching onto them while they tremble and wilt away. Is everything still delightful—wild, perfect, and crumbled the next? Perhaps love is felt most when it’s leaving. Is that why you cling to its frailty?

Perhaps they are beliefs shoved down our throats—a bitter pill we are told that we ought to swallow. Oh truth—oh merciful truth, how masterful you are at deception, bewitching us with your earthly elegance. I seek you in moments of longing. On days I yearn for comfort, and yet, you remain ever elusive. Like a chameleon shifting, like a performer acting—you keep morphing into something entrancing. In distant lands and on bright sunny days, I hear some calling you 'verity,' others calling you 'sincerity,' and for most, you are 'honesty,' but truth—oh supreme truth, do you actually exist at all? For all you seem to be is a fiction based on falsification, a tool constructed out of sheer convenience, and how amusing that frankly is.

Alas, it is all effortless because, frankly, my child, you’re stuck in a perpetual loop! The world moves in a pattern so beguiling, a pattern so-so amusing, and you’re trapped inside yearning for more. You pine for tokens of power; you crave scraps of love—all such fun just for a myth. Truth? Oh, truth? Because, tell me, my dearest—my beloved child, does truth really exist? For I wonder what it truly is. Are they merely a collection of statements, bound by the fences of fact? Or are they fragile notions, sown in the bloodied soil of morality? 

And I didn’t know that I was a person until I stopped being one. My head spins, the skull hums, and my tears glisten under a crust of whitewash, and I am back to where I was left off. A butcher’s table—peeled open, an altar near the nailed palms of the dead goat—frozen, blue but painted white. 

Time spoils all things, but none so cruelly as it ravages life. The kitchen table looked like a graveyard of forgotten things—bananas, once golden and firm, now lay bruised, with their skin splitting like an open wound. Oranges, shrivelled into leathery husks with their sweetness drained. Rot crept in unnoticed—just as my child slipped away and life is sweet one moment—withered the next.

The world moves on, yet I remain: a mother hollowed by ache. My arms call out for her but all that hugs me is a blanket frayed and torn. My sweet home once alive with radiance and laughter, now rests on silence so profound—a silence with a life of its own. Gripping the corners of my house, settling into every crack, refusing to let go of this gloom—the truth of what remains of my motherhood.

I press my face into the folds of her clothes, in hopes to catch the ghost of her scent. I search for her in the untouched strawberry compote. I yearn for her at the edges of my memory, but memories are cruel, for they do not stay.

Every giggle, every smile, every cry—all of it, all of her—slip through these pale fingers like fine grains of sand, slipping away, dissolving just as she did on that wretched day. She went leaving a guilt that now rots within me and an echo that continues to wander in the spaces where her voices once stayed.

Her name lingers like a fading note on my tongue as I call out for her, but there is no voice left to answer. Death did not storm in like a tempest—it arrived, still like a glassy lake, unfeeling and unmoved. For it did not rage, did not weep; it simply took.

It swallowed her laughter, warmth, and breath, and left behind a hollow space where love once thrived and took away all that was dear and mine. My child, my love, my very breath—gone, gone like a fleeting memory. And yet, I remained.

Others wish for their children to outlive them but I only wished for you to stay. I wished for just one more moment. One more breath. One more chance to hold you, but love does not make bargains with death. And all I am left with is nothing but regret.

My love, my heart, why did you have to leave me so soon? If only. If only. If only. These two words rot inside me, and will rot forever. If only I had been patient with you when you spilled milk on the rug, instead of screaming at you. If only I had played with you when you got your doll instead of letting my grief twist my voice into something unrecognizable. If only I had been patient when you dirtied your pants instead of slapping you till all you could utter was pitiful apologies. Would you have stayed? Would things have been lighter to bear? Would you have known, truly known that mommy loved you?

That she deeply adored you beneath all her failures? The walls no longer answer, for the echoes have faded. Only absence lingers, heavy and unyielding—a shadow of what once was and will never be again.

I was a mother who wasn’t meant to be one, a mother who had no map to love, who found no softness in a role that only hardened me. If only I had tried to embrace you, would the weight have been easier to bear? Would it have been kinder if I had ended you before you could enter this wretched world? Perhaps then you would’ve been spared me, would’ve been happy with a mother who knew how to love.

Because frankly my love, I regret being a mother, I regret being forced into a gift I have come to hate, I regret being me. I was supposed to love you, was supposed to cherish you but all I did was shame you, I projected my rage and now...now the heavens above have snatched you away from me.

Snip, snip—how much more should I cut? Should I keep going until the pain fades away, until the weight of my grief disappears with every strand?  I chase the silence, severing piece by piece, until not a trace of it lingers, until not a whisper of the past remains Snip, snip—it is 3 in the morning. I beg myself to stop, but my hands refuse, and I feel afraid—afraid of this distance, afraid of this change. Snip, snip, the scissors move with cold, rhythmic grace severing every attachment I once held. I breathe, I pause—listening to the fan humming, its breath a cold and relentless whisper—indifferent to this ache, indifferent to it all. The air bites—unforgiving of the smallest mistakes. Frost creeps across the glass and fear seeps into my veins. Everything is slow and merciless, like a whispered omen. And I look at myself in the mirror, but something feels off. The reflection was not of me, but that of a stranger's—a spectre wearing my face as a borrowed mask, a monster stitched together with shadows unknown. I trembled and my heart raced. I looked down—my breath hitched.

Locks of hair lay scattered on the floor, spilled around my feet like ink, dark and heavy like a quiet burial for something nameless. I knelt—defeated and lost. A ghost retracing the echoes of a life long gone. My pale fingers trembled like autumn’s last leaves as I grazed the fallen strands—dark as charcoal, silent as a severed promise, a memoir of a beautiful past. I kissed them, whispering tender final goodbyes and broken thank-yous and—wept. Amidst it all, I wondered. What am I truly searching for in this odd ritual of destruction disguised as relief? An easy fix for this never-ending agony? Or a desperate attempt to run away from the parts that still ache? Perhaps all I am seeking is a sense of self beyond worldly attachments—to become soft and untethered like clouds wandered across the sky. And oh, my heart has slowed, but something restless stirs within me—like frost melting down, like petals wilting away. I ask the trees, the birds, how long until I can be one with Mother Earth? How long till I can be something easier to love?  How long until I can no longer hear all those voices haunting me, until I am no longer them but me. Snip, snip. I chop my hair again; I look in the mirror, and it betrays me yet again. I look horrendous—oh, what have I done for my beauty is gone!  

Memories aren't just mere neural codes encoded within the brain, they're soaked in countless emotions, each one casting its own hue and weight and I wish mine would disappear, erased from existence never to resurface again. It is a scab I keep picking over so that it scars, a tight rope around my neck choking me with regret, making me rue that we ever met. When we parted, you cursed me declaring that I shall die a painful lonely death and you were agonizingly right, in ways I never wished you to be.

My beloved, you are my biggest mistake, a tragedy I am left in, a curse I now bear. You are a chapter in my life I never wanted to read, a light I never deserved see, someone too good to be true and I was better off without you. On rainy days I often wish that my emotions didn't exist, I long to be free from it all to feel nothing but hollow nothingness, to be eternally dead. Now I cling onto this desire desperately in hopes that perhaps this shall be my reality someday. They say to feel is healthy but what do they truly know about emotions? Filthy phonies! spewing hollow words, singing praises of filth they can't comprehend, burying their head in stuff they are apathetic of. Cowards! yes you all are too cowardly to face the truth, the wrath of buried sentiments, unrelenting currents of torment that drag us under. I am not constituted of life and happiness but of decay and regrets, the sum of every broken hope, moments of defeat, twisted reflections of everything lost. There is only rot; where there should be joy, the bitter taste of what could have been.

Expectations and unanswered questions weigh heavy on me but it's guilt doesn't purify such agony, it stains, it seeps and bleeds into me and I wish it didn't. If only it were some hungry feral beast..if only then it could've devoured me completely, leaving no trace behind so that I can be reborn anew. Don't fall weak to your addictions she once said, such a worthless hypocrite you are my beloved, tell me then what should I have done? was I supposed to be grateful, grateful that I survived through all this, through all this maelstrom ? is there where my happiness lay? rejoicing and celebrating my breathing cadaver? Fine so be it then. So I sang and screamed beckoning death with my soulless shell.