Theoretically it is not possible to forget to swim if you didn't know how to swim in the first place.
But when I say I became a cyclone which wanted to drown itself before reaching the shore , it means you are the shore and all I wanted was to save you from destruction and we are using metaphors, because we are afraid of clean words. I am not telling that metaphors are not pure and clean, but they are not innocent like the language we made up in the playground when we were five. The politics of language is so much here ,that, may be the metaphors will file a case against me for defamation. So it will be wise if I close my mouth and prolong a silent prayer. But in the end, it won't help: as you know. When the silence gets too suffocating you move through my mind : metaphorically : like an image of a half peeled orange resting in the summer sun. There are no cars to bump on you when you are crossing my mind: you shouldn't be afraid. You don't need to look left first,  then right and to left again. (Sorry, i was trying to use a pun). You should be calm, because you are safe in my mind. We are  not talking about that kind of calmness in your eyes while watching my wrist bleeding g and turning your carpet. I said sorry, looking at that blue carpet which reminded me if Aladdin's story and already thinking about the road side dry cleaning centres next to the market. It's ok its ok - you said and tried to  tie a cloth over my art (every wound is an art,so add the ones I made to the list too). I wanted you to help me. I wanted you to ignore me at the same time. Is this diabolism? I wanted you to stay and I also wanted you to help me build a noose ( like one over the neck of a goose: am trying alliterationor something,  I dont jnow). Is this dichotomy? I wanted you to eavesdrop to what my grief was saying. I wanted you to reassure to what my hope was saying. 
Only if I knew you were second guessing about the breath you were taking. Only if I knew that a confession was turning and tossing in you , measuring the tight amount of hurt it can cause.
Only if I knew that you were a free falling charm. Only if I knew we were the same. Then you shouldn't had to leave alone.  You shouldn't had to leave at all. We should have left , quietly, together. Or we should have hidden ourselves inside a gift box and gift them to each other.
Now that you have gone, I have forgotten how to swim. Not theoretically but metaphorically. 
But, now tell me how can I hold a body that is not yours but is yours. Tell me how to clean a kitchen counter in a stranger's home. Tell me how to love you if not as a long sleeve shirt loving a bruise?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 I am longing for death.  Forever longing for it.When people around me crave to live, do everything to have a life, I could never understand it. I could never understand the meaning of their desire. I always wanted to die… slowly, painlessly, and alone. Over time, my death instinct  became an inexorable habitual thought. The yearning to merge into an infinite darkness is there, always. The swelling torment I can't put into words. There was nothing, until him, that could dilute my urge to die. I used to think I can hold on a little, until he disappeared. I was obsessed to wither completely.  Look at me now. I think I have died, when he left. What a metaphor, the old cliché, you may think. I can declare this without embarrassment, but I can't express it. It is really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts, and consciousness... Many moons ago, I listened passively to Nee Mattume by T.M. Krishna. And yesterday night, like a little miracle, it came back to me...
Read more

THE BOOK OF SETHI

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...
Read more
If love is peeling oranges, then  God is the transcultural smell  residing inside crescent of fingernails. Consuming prayers,  a bead of fragility in hands,  he tells you that : In love we are blind,  In love we are far sighted. His delicate crockeries inside  a filthy broken sink is  his metaphor for us. The way he scrub them is his synonym for violent love  and antonym for soft grief. Once in a while, the shards of his anger  turns me into a silent film  suffocating under city lights. Then you change into a morning  with mourning , Into a ship torn under monsoons, Into a broken concave mirror, Into a prime number in solitude, Into a black hole singing opera. Still we exchange kisses with words  inside  the holes on our throat.  God chain smoking in his evening gown interrupt us with a question,  What is your religion? This is when a love letter switch into  a propaganda poem  written by plum faced ang...
Read more