Solo

The way I look for you in crowded streets in the morning rush, the way I scan faces in cabs passing by hoping one could be yours, on rainy nights, wanting to see you by the turn of the road, drenched, probably wanting to be found by me, my life has become dangerously entwined around yours. But the glitch is that I have learned to live with this. Gotten used to breathing sans you. Waiting for you, and never watching you arrive. The need inside me is so persistent that it is almost like a limb. It is so obvious that I do not notice it. You do not notice it.

This is a new stage for us. All those unsent letters in your name, lying in forgotten folders, are testimony still. Always will be, to my madness. To the craving that used to drive me insane. But not anymore. Because I know, you aren't mine. Never to be. Because loneliness is my sole benefactor. This acceptance is my genius. Being far from you has so seasoned me to live by myself,  I can't thank the gods of estrangement enough. I have learned to bow down and let go.

But on nights like these, when I return to empty rooms after tiring days, of endless searches of looking for you amongst the unknown, I know that I will find you, one day I will. Because you are mine. I have kept you as mine. And that nothing should do me apart from you. Not even you. No matter where you go, you will come back to me. To take me along.

I don't know why. I think I love you.

May be I am just crazy. One expensive wish every few days. Let me live with it. Let me live without.

Antidote

I don't keep a picture of you. I would lose my mind if I did.

So I look at mine.

Strangely enough I am the only thing that reminds me of you. My love for you shows shamelessly in my picture. Between those eyes of mine, I see you. In the curl of lips, the mild pout, I see you. Definite memories of you.

It's a helpless situation. Because, now I can never get to you. Nor will you to me. I have desperately ensured that we lose each other and that every strand of contact be broken. And now that there is nothing between, you and I, I feel love. Nothing but love. Pure, stagnant, glistening, love. For the first time in forever. I feel assured that I love you. There is no glitch or doubt.

And yet I don't feel helpless  at all. Could be because I have learned not to hope. I have drawn a line & abandoned the world on the other side.

Nevertheless on some nights, I cry. And cry relentless. My mind missing out on that line between truth & untruth, I sway into thinking, wondering how would I have been if I had you.

I would have been like me, in that picture.

Raising Hope

What have I missed? A few long full moon nights.Of a big moon hanging behind solitary buildings. Long chats and aching laughter. I have missed hoping. The art of hoping. Terribly missed it. How I used to place one hope on four pillars, each another hope. Like a complicated geometrical structure, each arm of which is a hope, some random wish that longs to come true. All by itself, like an unruly child.

What that unruly child doesn't realize is an entire world of things that could negate, crush and destroy mere delicate threads of hopes.  And entangle them in a way, life could never again dare to disentagle.

So that's what has happened. Threads are entangled, knots are tied, heart beats have halted, eyes have promised never to look up at the sky making forms of clouds, stealing dreams. The art of hoping is forgotten.

Ceteris paribus is a phrase from utopia. At every fork of the road, I take the most unexpected unwanted of turns. Sometimes, I head back and return to where I had begun.

In afterthought, hoping seems to be the most ridiculous of escapes a wastrel could engage herself in.

;

Girl in the wind. Strands of hair wipe her face. Like there was no tomorrow. Girl in the wind. Stopping. Believing, in make belief. Living a night or two. In closed rooms. Away, in closed rooms. No dreams. A regretful past. Fleeting present. Like worthless. No tomorrow. Just tonite. Just she. Only I.

Stranger man. Forgotten romance. A drowned city. Knee deep in sorrow. And a love that wouldn't be. Broken promises, heart torn apart. Holding hands. No glances shared or love exchanged. A night like it never lived. A night like it was the only one. Ever. Soaked in tears and rain. In redemption, and with the hopes of many many regrets to come. With the girl in the wind.

No pictures. None. Bonds neither. Quest for freedom. Quest for love. Search for the unknown. Probably. The power of not knowing. An intoxication of uncertainty. The gutlessness of flowing. As is expected. Bowing down. Numbness. Dearth. Dearth of life in life.

Hollow shells. Hanging in mid air. Creaking noises. Discarded fates, alongside hollow shells. Swallowing darkness. Swaying by thin strands of thread. Hollow shells. And discarded fates. Like dead lovers. Like wishes that were.

Like him & I. Like only I. And the him I assumed existed. Never did. Never did.