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Things That Are Violet

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Of all the things I know, my blood is the first that comes to mind. My blood is violet and doctors hate me. My veins are deceptively blue and my skin a sad shade of purple. I’ll tell you I was born this lilac hue, but I’d lie. It wasn’t until i met your crystal eyes, that my heart fused blue and red together.

The sky in my hometown is a soft purple at dawn; it looks misleadingly beautiful. As the sky slowly becomes brighter, the heat envelopes me, and the dry air scrapes my skin leaving angry red splotches behind; to think 18 years would have made me more tolerant of the sun’s assault. The skies here are fake, they look warm and inviting but there’s no room to fly; boxed-in pretty birds are all we can be.

My grandmother’s voice when she sings feels like I imagine heaven songs do. Its familiarity makes me adore it, but the neighbours next door think it is too pitchy. She sings of lost love and family, she sings of dreams forgotten. She sings about marriage and customs and the trees back home in kharagpur. Her voice is lilac; cocooning me in it’s nostalgia.

This house is violet. On the outside it’s painted a warm yellow, with brick red accents, but the inside is lonely, the space between the silences yearning for your presence again. This house doesn’t feel like a home, without you, or maybe it does and I need you to complete it. I need you here, to dance around, and be my twisted sister. The walls are painted colours I could name, but this home is shrouded in a violet daze, till it feels your presence again.

Of all the things I know, my emotions are what should end this miserable list. Not sad or happy, they’re just a lavender feeling I can’t describe. I exist in a vacuum where the only world I see is a shoddy movie; it plays on and on, and I feel nothing but pinpricks here and there. I have lost all emotions, and I don’t know what to make of it. Every day that passes, I fear I’ll lose what’s left of my mind, because I keep thinking of where I went wrong; with him, with her and with me. I’d like to know the answers, but only you could give those to me and right now, ashes in my mouth would taste better than listening to your lies.

Window Pane

shubhangiadhikarla

Everytime I think I start to like you again, I climb out the window.
It’s not that high, I only live on the first floor.
The curtains are pretty, the wood old, the glass shattered and the window pane crumbling.

The glass on the frame is stained red,
because I’ve done this too many times before.
I made my bedroom into a shrine –
I have all your notes,
your cologne is in the air and
sometimes I sleep on the floor because the bed is too lonely.
I think once I leave that space,
I love you a little less.
I love the sky, the puppies and the flowers when I’m out of our world.
But I end up plucking a single daisy on my way home, because you said i was yours.
You said your home wasn’t a home without one of those, and I’ve long since dried up –
no longer your daisy, i’m poisoned ivy now.

For all this time, that window has stayed like that – broken.
Because i wondered if you would come around, and fix it.
Don’t you see I’m hurting?
I come back home after classes that suck my soul, and the room is freezing – frozen.
That should tell me you don’t care – but all it tells me is I gave you too much power.
Once upon, I would’ve fixed that window myself. I need to let you go; I’ve let time freeze like my room.

I think last night when I woke up shivering,
I realised the broken window pane was me.
Cold and lifeless – waiting to be made whole again.
You said I reminded you of a victim at a shipwreck, begging to be rescued.
I was stuck between endless waters and rubble.

I thought of you, I went to climb out again – that pain hurts less.
But I just stood there, thinking about you for the longest time – hurting.
My final goodbye, the last of what I gave to you.
Because I wasn’t a shipwreck,
I was a salt water river, and you a fresh water lake – never to be.

The next time I walked into that room,
I was happy.
Someone asked me out, and it didn’t hurt as much.
The next time I walked into that room,
the window was boarded shut.
I’m fixing it, I think.
For now, I’ll think of you, and I won’t hurt myself climbing out the window.

poison

shubhangiadhikarla

i think of you like i think of chaos;
butterflies in a blender
and fireworks in a crowded parking lot.
you’re like this drug induced haze,
you can’t possibly be real.
you don’t dare kiss my lips,
don’t want to show your true face.
this isn’t passion, it’s not romance,
this is poison turning my insides to acid.
i know we need to stop this charade,
but you love so good when you want to,
my mind blocks the pain out; temporary amnesia.

i think of leaving you,
but can’t stop this endless slow dance.
we move in sync,
your body with mine, my heart with yours.
cowards like me hurt the most,
we cry tears for sympathy and chase ghosts.
i say you’re no good, but i still crawl back in;
i cannot do any better, you’ve spoiled me for others,
for i know i fell for celestial magnificence.

you’re moonlight bottled up;
you sweep me up like the tides,
leave me crashing and gasping for breath.
so i place my fate in your hands;
i’m a crumbling house,
i need you to fix me, brick by brick.
we’re intertwined like roots underground,
i don’t know where we start and end.
greeks say the world started with chaos.
it started with you, you’ve turned me into you.
you’ve lived a millenia now,

you embody the divine light,
so everything i own i bet on you,
i know you gamble like you breath.
i say you’re poison, you ask why i don’t leave before i die.
you don’t know what you are yet then, you don’t what you taste like.
poison only tastes like poison till you’ve swallowed it,
and i breathed you in ages ago,
all i taste now is ambrosia.

cigarette smoke

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everything i write sounds ugly
when i read it out loud,
to try and drown out
the sounds of the five foot
waves coming at me.
everything i write is jagged,
because i don’t know how else,
to tell our tale.
everytime i read out these words,
they cut through skin and bone;
they make me bleed violet blood,
fuel for love.
you blue eyes tainted my red being;
i burn too bright now
i wasn’t meant to be kerosene.
everything i write sounds ugly
when i read it out loud,
(and i read it out too loud,
too often).

i bury my head in clouds
to hide from chaos i create
when i fall in and out of love,
burning my way through
ghost towns and bright city lights.
(chasing demons
that look like you).


eyes and voices fade away,
till i’m floating through black
and there’s nothing to stop me
from crashing into emptiness
(emptiness that spells out your name).
everything i write is us, woven
between tales of beauty and disaster,
with sandcastles for palaces,
the moon and the stars for eternity.
every word that
spills from my pen is
our love bathed in doom.

everything i write
sounds ugly when i
read it out loud;
every page paints you and
me. everything is a
age old tale that forbids love,
because everything ends with us,
broken and corrupt,
like lungs that love cigarette smoke
(i love cigarette smoke).

graveyards and remembrance

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i dig around my belongings for things that might make sense but broken bones and ashes are all i seem to find. it’s funny really, because you always said my pockets rattled a lot, made you want to dig for treasure. i do have treasure, but it’s not the emeralds and gold you want. i carry ghosts of my past self, i’m haunted by days of the old and i don’t know how to escape the clutches of the dragon who seems to always catch a hold of me, in my dreams.

i dig around in graves, hoping to find faded memories i killed long back but they’re gone. it’s almost like someone stole them, because the roses and wine i buried with them, are still there. i always wished they’d find better homes but this wasn’t what i meant. they were mine to mourn, like they were mine to kill. but amma says, once someone dies, their memories slowly crumble to dust and are blown with the winds to faraway lands, until they’re forgotten.

i dig around my heart, in the deepest corners i pushed your essence into. and it’s there. faded, rusty because i’ve been trying to forget you for millennia now, so the laughs are pitchy and smiles wonky. because amma also used to say, dead people forgotten by the earth and wind and fire are remembered for eternity in the hearts of those who loved them.

i dig around my mouth trying to find words to fill the emptiness your death left behind. you used to say how you’d rather be dead than face the day when i don’t have words to pour onto paper. i try to move on without you and poetry, but i’ve forgotten what i used to be like. i have boxes of stuff i should give away, things you loved and things we made. i don’t have much of myself left any more, so these boxes are here to stay.

i’ve got empty rooms in the attic i need to rent. maybe i’ll house you there, untill i know how to come back home again.

bloodlines

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lavender blood flows through my veins
shifting and pumping through this
jumbled mess of a heart.
my skin now a pale grey
i crush what remains of my old self,
like a snake would shed it’s skin.
i hate my flesh and bones now,
but my limbs no longer break
not matter how hard i fall.
i keep trying to go back to how it was,
alone in a graveyard world,
dead laughter around me,
haunting like ringing bells
in an empty temple;
but peace has settled over me,
i despise it – i ache to
hear voices screaming at me,
anything is better than this screaming silence.
the red of my blood
turned to purple a while back,
when endless blue skies
made me their own.
I’ve got angel blood now love,
it burns like acid would.
cast aside are dreams for tomorrows,
i’m a gear in the system now,
i’m alive when it wants me to be.
clawing into my skin to draw out water,
i turn my insides out,
i’m in awe of the melancholy hue
which covers my fingers.
fascinating how things turn out,
i was never one for art,
now it’s all i long to be;
as immortal and just as dead.
i’m a slave to the archetype now,
with my life drained out.
hysteria settles over me,
I can’t be dead, i know I’m breathing;
i can’t be alive, i know I’m suffocating.
does it ever work this way?
do we ever get a chance to escape?
lavender is my blood now,
it burns through me like wildfire.

sad songs

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Your laughter rings in my ears like
the sounds of construction on a sunday morning; uninvited, loud and disruptive.
it cuts through blue-gold dreams
i’ve stitched together.
it cracks – so seductive.

i almost forget about us but songbirds
chirp incessantly in the corner
of this boxed heart, set off by ringing
church bells we promised ourselves.
i scream your name late into the nights;
remembering your love for the feminine,
for me.
i tried looking for recipes of forgetfulness,
couldn’t reach the books, you stacked them on the tallest shelves.

where do i shovel this last bit of heartbreak?
the bathroom tiles have seen too much of it,
to not be sick anymore.
what do i do with what’s left of you,
the best of you?
i ask questions even god has no answers to,
he doesn’t remember us;
we built our own religion –
your skin and my sad songs our deities.

your laughter rings in my ears like
an old record that knows too much
of your story; welcome, soft and aching.
i play it on loop, mourning what once was;
it plays like a wedding song, breathtaking.

why i packed my bags, and left the earth

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1. the sky is blue, and so is my heart. blue like the dandelions that blew past our house; the house that is now burning a never ending inferno. he slowly turned to dust while i sat and watched from the sidelines, my hands too much for him to hold. i was gasoline he said, i could burn the world he said. it seems like i did do it, but i have no memory of it; except bruises on my thighs and skin under my nails. i have no memory of it, but he has scratches on this arms and perversion on his face.

2. i left this planet behind. packed up my bags on my way to Venus in my search for love. or maybe Neptune because i want to be numb. anything but this blue and green world with gaia slowly rising and people slowly dying. I’ve forgotten how to weave metaphors because my fingers are charred. everything they touch, they ruin. my lungs are still smoke; i am the earth now – she hates what we’ve done so she burns us, i hate what he did, so i scorched him. my lungs are smoke, my eyes mist and my heart shards – i am a walking kaleidoscope.

3. the air is colder up here but it is not so bitter. or maybe my body is dead and this is all theatre. that would be nice to write about, except my tongue is dry and words don’t make sense anymore. i see little pinprinks of cities; they look like the map i put pins on – hoping to travel the world. i’m moving to a different galaxy now, would i need a new map? with places for sorrow, for emptiness, for forgetting and for love? or is it all greed and hunger again? if so, when’s the next bus.

4. i see stars now and they’re not as pretty as i thought. they hurt my throat and my belly. they fly behind my closed eyes as i float and float and float – towards the night sky. my ears pop; that gives me hope. this paper plane is about to land on a burning star. i see the earth now, far off. far off – he is far off.

5. i haven’t thought of him and smiled in ages. i do it now, for he’s one with the breeze and I’m on my way to Jupiter. oh did i tell you? i changed my mind; i want the whole world to myself and jupiter seemed big enough. i’m a flicker in the milky way now, i am me now. i left earth behind. i left my lungs behind for they burned.

6. see when i said i left the earth, i did mean it. i chased after the powdery moonlight and ended up so close to heaven. moonlight enters my blood through my nose, and heaven flashes before my eyes with beeping noices in the background. i am one with the universe now, i am god’s child now. i left mortality behind, for it had it’s pains. i left my body behind, it had his handprints.

7. the last happy things i remember are maa’s eyes and nanna’s arms. the last i carry with me is akka’s smile and my own heart. the last smell i remember is adrak vali chai and maa’s words. she said there was a pattern in the tea leaves, she said it was ominous. there was hopeless dread in her eyes, i wonder why. but all of that is in the past. i only hope they remember me, the girl with her sad eyes and poetry.

two faced

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if these walls had ears,
they’d wish they were deaf.
the agony they hear everyday
burns like acid through the paint.
the screams that echo
loud through these rooms,
tear apart carefully plastered
walls, underneath which,
lie cracks filled with ghost dreams.

if these chairs could see,
they’d wish they were blind.
they bear witness to massacres
of hearts and promises,
while stangers with thorns
for words drift in and out –
devastation trailing them,
like a well worn perfume.

if these pictures had voices,
they’d wish they were dumb.
because they don’t have
answers to questions i scream
at them at 2 in the morning,
when the facade slips and
the world spins a little faster.
is this the wine talking?
might explain the stains on
the carpet, or is that blood
from when I cry too much?
hysteria tarnishes carefully
painted smiles. it sniffs out
self loathing and laughs at
my pain.

if things around me had life,
they’d wish they didn’t.
i reak of death and brokenness,
everything i touch,
i turn to dust.

legacy

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i write massacres now;
poetry is too pretty, too easy.

my legacy is lukewarm
like chai left forgotten on a Monday morning;
gulped down in bitter swallows
and not sipped like i intended.
you meant for it to soothe,
it burns down the walls of your throat,
the bite from ginger is too much for you,
you’d prefer honey coating your lungs.

i write grey words,
they shackle your limbs to truth,
bright hues which spell out lies,
are what you crave.
i have nothing left to give,
my fingers have a thousand cuts
and my art is soaked in blood now;
i don’t have metaphors to throw at you
there’s police that monitors worth now,
i’m afraid i murdered illusions
and my poetry is evidence.
i write massacres now,
poetry is too pretty, too easy.

you’d remember me later i believe,
like paying homage to ashes;
for my art is dead;
my words a coffin for the questions i bury.
so I’ll leave my name on a napkin,
i hope it floats through your mind
when you drown your tears in stale coffee,
you chose over my morning chai.
i’ll leave my name on paper plates,
hoping you like the taste of it.
there are lemons squeezed in there,
i know you’ll tire of the saccharine lies.
I’ll leave my name in places
where you like to go alone,
so i can creep up on you
run you over and drive off, no headlights.

there’s madness that runs through my blood;
it seeks to possess a place in history, in art.
i want to leave a piece of me behind,
something that survives the cruel summers;
art that talks of trauma and jagged cuts,
and not just love and pretty flowers.
art that survives the tribulations of time.
time is liquid, slipping through crevices,
which mar my being.
time dampens my life,
like a hungry wolf trailing it’s prey,
time pulls me over,
i need more of it.
i need time,
for my legacy is lukewarm;
it begs for me to water it’s hungry roots,
it begs to blossom to life.