Cities Are Like Tattoos.

Another serenading suicide. Another trip to insanity. I hate this part of the city. The part that surrounds home. There are stories written in the wind. Memories are scattered here.

I walk on with a lonesome song blaring in my ears. I want to walk to those parts of home that trouble me, that madden me. Autos, blue buses rush past. I walk past the 'favourite chicken roll' shop, and then, pass that old I-pill medical store. Noone knows what I'm thinking. Not even close people can guess that I'm constantly comparing myself to that girl in the picture postcard, whom I wasn't even supposed to find. I get flashes of the photographs I saw last evening. I create stories about that girl in my head. And wonder how this idiot wind with infinite memories could never ruffle her thoughts.

I walk ahead. I curse S on the phone who has kept me waiting knowing how this place torments me.

I want to purge myself off this city. Of certain people. Even if it leaves bruises, even if it leaves me empty with an unendurable void. I want to close the doors to this part of this city. I want to return to that night in Delhi when I drank so much that I forgot everything and went to sleep with temporary memory loss. I want that retrograde amnesia to continue. I want this city to be devoured by that Korsakoff's syndrome. I want to search for an Axis Bank ATM, pick up whatever money I have and run away where this city won't find me.

S still isn't here. I cannot take it anymore. I want to rush back home. I want to be left all to myself. I want to go back to university. It's safer there. Even Delhi was safer, for that matter. At least, I'm not scared of those cities, like I'm scared of this one.

I look ahead into the darkness, with the same song now playing in my head. This place has long spells of loadshedding.
I wonder what the girl in the picture postcard must be doing with her newfound lover right now, and cry.
I am selfish, I think.

i can sit here and pretend that i don't care. i can stuff my ears with music. find my solace in chocolates. blinking at the create post window and wonder why my stories, my poems have no endings at all. can i write? may i live my life? or should i pretend to you the way i pretend to the rest of the world? you were special. you still are. but something always comes in the way of our sunshine stories. and that something is you. i can forgive but i cannot forget. your self-pity cannot be an excuse for your insensitivity. you need a life and so do i.

let me not hurt myself.

home.

thank you for today. the rain melted the rose-tinted glass, and somehow even with all the imperfections, the moments felt more beautiful. we somehow keep crumpling moments in our palms, laughing the pain away. treating them as if they were just trifles. today was different. the moments, you and the little red staircase are turning into home. home i cannot let go of. home, i'll keep returning to.

home. how can i forget home? home. how can i let go?

i'll take you with me. someday.

because you are HOME.

bachem

for a moment today, i thought that the scarlet sky, blushing like a bride, was in your eyes. your dreamy-eyes eyes were like the sky on obscure, rainy evenings. crumpled tissue paper clouds on the canvas of sepia. and then tears. rain.

i wanted to kiss the rain away. fill your eyes with the sunshine they deserve. is it loneliness that fills your eyes with rain? is it the feeling of living alone, nowhere to cry? whom will you run to in the end? will you be the vagabond, you aren't supposed to be? who will play hide-and-seek with you? who will call you names and run back to you at the end of the day? who will stare at those eyes?

today as we stood in the darkened shadows of the abandoned wall, i could see your eyes. scarlet eyes. tears. today we didn't chase cars. instead we sat in the corner, on the stairs of the old building and saw life scurrying by. somehow the tunes in my head made sense. and i was wishing it would last. last forever?

things change. hope melts into despair. but somehow in your eyes my faith in myself, in life and the world remains intact. hope lingers. your eyes. never let them fill with tears. the glitterglitter is what makes them unique. what makes you unique.

i don't want to go away but i am. i hope i don't lose those eyes, bachem.