writer

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.

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.

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.