chaiNboli

 Sometimes, I think Blue is not a color but a sentence. And Grey?A waiting room where the light used to be. I don’t remember when exactly I first heard Blue & Grey. But I remember where I was: on the floor. Not physically. Metaphorically.  Curled up beside a window that let in too much sky. And too little hope. And then Taehyung said it— “Where is my angel?” something broke. Because he wasn't performing. He was asking. A silent sigh. And it felt like he was asking for me too. Taehyung asks this like a boy who no longer believes in wings— but still looks up, just in case. Like a  prayer whispered into the cold side of the pillow, half-embarrassed, half-desperate. “I just wanna be happier.” He says it softly. Like someone who doesn’t believe he deserves it, but still plants the wish like a seed under winter.  Isn’t that the cruelty of it? Wanting joy while cradling your sorrow like your favorite child.... I don’t know how a group of people who don’t know me managed...

 “ Phir nahi baste woh dil jo ek bar ujar jaate hain, Qabrein jitni bhi saja lo par zinda koi nahi hota." "The hearts that have once been destroyed… they are never rebuilt again. Even if you adorn graves with flowers, no one ever truly comes back to life ." A heart that has collapsed  under the weight of departure  doesn’t ask for tenants again. I t becomes a monument instead.  Still standing,  but hollow.  Still beautiful,  but echoing with absence. Like the love t hat moved out  but left all the light switches on.  Like wounds that never closed, only learned how to sing. Some devastations are final. You may try to decorate the remains, romanticize the loss, speak kindly of what was— but what was destroyed, never truly returns. A heart once ruined never learns the shape of shelter again. That even grief, when decorated with flowers, still smells like death. You can decorate grief in white— call it a wedding, call it forgivene...

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...

Your lungs have started to grow tender wings, like a bird, hollow and soft. You cough feathers in your sleep— each one shaped like a word you couldn’t say in time. Your chest becomes a ribbed aviary where mourning doves nest in the space grief made. You try to speak but language flutters out as birdsong bruised in mid-air. Like apologies stitched in ash. You know molting when you feel it— the ache of leaving your own skin behind just to keep flying toward a light you never believed in. And somewhere in that ascent, you name pain with a softness sharp enough to be mistaken for prayer. But  You are becoming a cathedral made of soft machinery. Half-flight, half-failure. The kind of thing God doesn’t notice until it begins to curse. And even then, He only listens because the metal inside you starts to sing. Because somewhere between flesh and forgiveness, you grew a throat not made for mercy— but for memory. And isn’t that what flying is? Leaving louder than you ever lived.

Once, I tried to hang my sadness on a nail in the kitchen. But it kept crawling back, wearing my perfume, asking for breakfast. It sat in my chair, spooned honey into its mouth like memory, then bled it out onto the floral tablecloth. The bees came. They thought it was spring. They swarmed my teacup, drowned in the porcelain hush. The sadness laughed, lipsticked in my shade. It fried the eggs. It salted them with my name. It told me, This is how mourning sweetens itself so no one leaves the table. I said nothing. The fork trembled. The eggs went cold. I watched it pour milk into the ghost of your coffee cup. Watched the steam rise like something escaping without apology. Sadness whispered : "He never left. He just changed rooms. Now he lives between your shoulder blades." I laughed. I couldn’t stop. It sounded like  glass being taught to pray. I pressed my palm to the stove  until something hissed. Not to hurt— just to prove I still had a name. Sadness licked the butter knife...

Mother said I was born January because I love things that start with hope and then die beautifully. My heart is the blue lick of fire abandoned in a winter— a woman’s sigh dressed as a flame, a boy’s cry sewn into the throat of God. I keep it hidden beneath my ribs like a scandal— each beat a matchstick I strike against memory. There are nights I wear my grief like silk stockings, run my fingers through the static of your name, still humming on the pillowcase. The saints won’t touch me now. They smell smoke and think sin. But really, it’s just the ghost of warmth asking for a body. I once kissed a man who tasted like  Sunday and funeral. He held me like  a broken vase someone still couldn’t throw away. I wrote poems in the  shape of his spine, but he read them like warnings. Now every time the wind opens its mouth, I flinch. It sounds too much like him leaving again. So, I talk to the knife I don’t use. Call her Darling and feed her sugar. This is my love language.

If God forgot me for just one night, I think I’d light a candle inside my stomach and call it mercy. I’d sit beside my shadow and braid its silence into something almost holy. Let the night come— without psalms, without perfume. Let it sit beside me like a ghost too tired to haunt. I would take my grief and split it open like overripe fruit. Maybe then, something sweet would bleed. If  would leave my homeland in the hands of wind. And  would write my name on every broken wall until language forgave me. Then the minarets would bow, but not for prayer— only for memory. Because memory, too, can kneel. I would speak to the olive trees And the daffodiles: Tell me, when do roots stop listening? Then  I’d kiss the earth where his voice once stood. Let the dust keep it. Let the dust be God tonight. And I would wrap the moon in an exile’s blanket and offer it tea. Not because it is cold— but because I am. If God forgot me— just for one night— i would not scream. I would not plead....

 You have left And i stopped mumbling prayers. And still, I lit incense for the absence. Still, I called it god. What else do we worship but what won’t stay? My body became a reliquary for the things he forgot— his laugh, a throatful of ash, his name, now just a shape  my teeth remember. I wrote psalms on my ribcage with a stolen pen. They smudged when  I prayed too hard. Forgive me— I mistook hunger  for holiness again. Once, I dreamed of him underwater, his mouth full of salt, still trying to say my name. Even the sea refused to carry it. Is that not love? To keep dying in someone else’s storm and call it music? Even the gods, those tired archivists of longing, have begun erasing our file. So I sit here, sipping my shame  from a chipped glass, and whispering into the dust: come back. not because I need you. But because the silence has started to answer. And what is silence, if not God turning away slowly? What is a body but a failed temple where no one arrives...

Sometimes, I wear his shadow on my wrist like glass bangles — pretty when I move, dangerous when I stop. The candles gutter, a dying breath, a final flicker of hope. The crows watch, impassive, like they’ve seen  this kind of breaking before— a girl curling into  the mouth of a scream she can’t name. My voice is a scream, yes— but also a lullaby no one asked for. In the darkness, I am lost, a small,  insignificant thing, like a note slipped between war and forgetting. If the gods are watching, let them weep— or blink, or turn the page. Because love, when it leaves, doesn’t slam the door. It vanishes quietly— like a fever breaking in a body no one stayed to hold.

They said God is near. So I carved his name onto a brass plate and left it at the edge of my grief. Not even the ants wanted to carry it. If the saints saw me now— braiding longing into a garland of yes and no— would they spit or weep? Would they offer sandalwood or silence? My throat is a temple. My pain is its only devotee. I light candles made of plum skin and memory, sing with a cracked jaw. I stitched his absence into my darkness, so every night I could sleep inside the shape of leaving. I watered my mouth with his name until my tongue grew roots, and the silence began to flower. The flowers say I’m speaking to ghosts again. But I know— only ghosts know how to stay. There is a bowl on my windowsill that catches rain just in case his voice falls with it. Some days, I tie anklets to my shadow and let her dance until the floor remembers what it means to be wanted. They don’t teach this— how to survive the god who forgets you. How to kneel without offering. How to sing when the hymn i...

I kissed a clock until the time stopped flinching, like a child turned into a jellyfish, since tears and water are somewhat chemically same. Then I painted my heartbeat on the wings of a moth, like a cry transforming into a violin, because music is a thunderstorm angels create for fun. I wore dusk as a dress sewn by blind saints. The sun bowed at my hem, begging to be forgiven for always leaving early. A giraffe walked into my kitchen and said, “You’ve mistaken hunger for memory.” So I fed it all my lullabies and watched it sleep in the arms of my shadow. I whispered my name into a glass of milk and drank it slowly, hoping to understand what world was before the laws of nature explained. My bones sent postcards to old lovers, written in languages only flowers could read, while sky folded itself into a paper boat. And when a star remembering how it was once a lighthouse, it decided to visit me So that together we can teach birds to fall without grieving.

Grief knocked on my ribs, said nothing, just stood there — dripping like the mouth of a dog that’s forgotten how to bark. I opened the door. Because  My hands are god. You already live here,  I said. The bruises in my stomach remember your name better than my own. Sit down. Don’t make a mess. Don’t grow teeth. Don’t start naming things. Don’t ask about the blood on the floor — it’s from the poem I bit in half before it could say your name. The curtains are breathing again. The salt has learned my tongue. Every room is a mouth now and I keep walking into them asking for mercy, asking for knives, asking what’s the difference anyway. I buried a mirror under my bed so I could watch myself leave. I stitched a fire escape into my spine but still climbed back in. I was trying to be brave. I was trying not to want you. I was trying not to turn every bone into a door you could close. Stop whispering. Stop pretending you don’t know the color of my disaster. It’s the same shade as your m...

Today, the rain forgot to fall. It hovered, stiff and unsuckled— a ghost’s son nursing on the mouth of sky. I watched it— black-lunged, glinting like the tongue of something too divine to touch. And grief sat there, fat and maternal, purring like love under a wolf’s eye— kindness of the old canine god licking its bones. I thought of being brutal. Of tearing the thunder from the child’s mouth before it could sing. What use is a lullaby in a world where the cradle is a furnace? My fingers— an antique grenade. My mouth— a lace of arsenic and honey. Still, I sit. Still, I mother the silence like a coffin carved out of my origami apologies. And love? Love is a pink thing that bleeds when you look at it too long. Love is the knife you forgot to sterilize. So, I wear your absence like a holy thread — wrapped three times around my throat, just tight enough to remember.

 I’ve loved you in seven lives. But you only return in even ones— with your velvet feet and famine hands, as if absence were a skill you perfected across incarnations. In the first life, I braided my spine for you. Offered it like sugarcane to the god of no answers. In the second, you arrived with a name I could not pronounce but still carved onto my ribs using a toothbrush and patience. The third life, you left during a monsoon. I was a girl with glass wrists. You poured red wine into my mouth and called it a lullaby. The fourth— you stayed. But only long enough to teach me that love is a flood that drowns only one. In the fifth, maybe I was a soldier, maybe a flowerpot. You were absence either way. In the sixth, I found you again: this time as a boy selling bruised pomegranates in a town with no name, where grief tastes like rust and mothers salt their prayers. And now, in this— the seventh— I wait, spooning honey into my mouth as if sweetness could summon you. Because  You ...

You taught me to love in a dialect of exit signs. So now, my ribs turned to pews where your memory kneels every night. I lit incense in the folds of my skin so grief could smell like home. There are hymns in my spit— unspoken, fossilized, each one humming your name like a broken violin left in a rainstorm. I carry your shadow in my lungs, exhaling it like a slow funeral march on Tuesdays. You see— I make altars from bruises. Name pain after cities I’ll never walk through. Last week, I stitched a window onto my chest so I could watch how you left. And still— I place a saucer beneath my tongue for the blood of your return. I keep dreaming of your hand as a spoon, scooping silence out of my mouth. And when i looked  at the holy tongue, God said nothing. But the flies bowed.

I think God stutters when He spells your name. Each syllable trembles like a prayer dropped from unworthy lips. Even angels hold their breath— not in awe, but in warning. Your cruelty is my wound’s favorite lullaby. It hums under my skin, rocking pain like a baby wrapped in thorns. I dare not hush it. To silence it would mean forgetting how deeply I was once held by your fire-warmed hands. You came to me with the mouth of a prophet and the heart of a butcher. You touched me like a sermon— beautiful, brutal, and never for me. Still, I built altars out of your silence, lit candles with my lungs, offered my breath in exchange for your shadow. When God looks at me now, He looks away. Perhaps He’s ashamed of the love He placed in my bones— the kind that survives like the grief of a mother. And I ask Him, “Why did You allow this?” Only for silence to stare back at me— its cat eyes, neutral. As if pain were a riddle too old to answer. As if  suffering were just one raindrop in His ancient...

Tonight the moon decided to cut her hair, so that the stars may ignore the light for once, and see its wounds. My heart wore a paper crown and begged for oranges. You were the first art God shared. I was the first mistake God kept. So we became two rooms without corners, where angels will sit And demons will play. I remembered you as a spiral song, its melodies sharp enough. How I kissed your silence like a temple bell: you didn’t ring, but I bled anyway. To erase the emptiness. So I peeled your absence like a ripe guava, sinking teeth into nothing, and calling it sweetness. I laid my sorrow at your feet like jasmine strings on graveyards— they wither slower when no one is watching. You became a verse I stitched to my shoulder blades, so when I knelt to pray, you’d ache along with me. At midnight, I swallowed a broken anklet just to feel your rhythm in my stomach. I sat beneath a banyan, asking the roots how long a memory can hum before it forgets the tune. The crows, black scribbles i...

I will call you kindness For you loved me the way a crow loves murder. Like a battlefield loved the blood of a young boy. And forgive me, I want my anger to rise And swallow you Like the ancient fire that kissed the hair of a young witch. But my throat is closed. My fangs are melted. Am nothing. Still, I whisper your name into spoons of boiling rice, hoping steam will rewrite what silence refused to say. I carve you into candle wax and let the flame disfigure it— again, again, again— until it looks like a mercy I never received. I braid your absence into the bedsheet’s edge, like a mother sews her dead child's buttons into a new coat— not to remember, but to touch. I will call you kindness until the word begins to choke. Until it blisters in my throat and bleeds down my ribs as apology. And then I will disappear, for the memory of your voice makes everything else ugly.