to every girl that stood by my side. this is for you!

we might’ve met in school, in college, in a tuition class, through someone or just somewhere. i want to thank you. thank you for letting me ugly cry in your arms. thankyou for stroking all of my worries out of my head with your fingers parsing my scalp. thankyou for stuffing sense into me. thankyou for making me realise how worthy i am. thankyou for letting me know that my hair is out of its place and thankyou for fixing it for me. my girls, i love you. i might not say it often but y’all hold a very dear place in my heart. thankyou for actually being one call or text away, always. i am so grateful for all of the saheliyan i have. i can really count on y’all. you make this world a better place to dwell in. we live for picking flowers and putting it in each other’s hair. i have shared some breathtaking moments where i felt like these girls are my roman empire! like sending random funniest voicenotes. laughing till we get a heartstroke and then forgetting the reason we’re laughing which just makes us laugh even harder. video chat cooking shows. making silly reels. making art together. sharing poetries that we write. always planning but never executing. meeting after months but always feeling at home when we meet. having maggi together. “i will cry if you dont stop crying” and then actually crying with me. every moment, every gesture deserves to be captured in a book. i adore y’all. some of my girls have grown apart, they hold a special place in my heart as well. girl friendships, to me, are ethereal. i will die being a girl’s girl💗

my blue and yellow

everything i wanted to be in the cup in my hand, i find it in the cup that sits on the table in front of me. staning the papers that were laid out beneath it. i look hopefully inside the cup in my hand. it is the most favourite utensil of mine. its handle is broken and it has cracks at the edge of its mouth. still i do not seem to care and hold it layering both of my hands clenched to that cup. even though it sometimes leaves stains on the collar of my shirt due to its uneven cracks. it sometimes also burns out my hand due to the hot coffee in it. it doesn’t have a handle, remember? that cup is still so dear to me. it is blue in colour. i look at the cup that sits on the table desperately wishing to be picked by me. it is yellow. i feel bad for that cup for it has all the things that my blue cup lacks. it is new with soft edges and a very fine handle. i eye the insides of my blue cup and it suddenly shatters in my hand leaving me bruised. blood slides down from my fingers and i can taste the feeling of abandonment. again. my blue abandoned me yet again. i cry and fill up yellow with my tears. it stays calm and collects everything without complaints. i don’t pick yellow up. i am scared of abandonments. i ask yellow how long will it stay? how long will it wait? “you know waiting is so beautiful if it ends with you” yellow has this carved besides its handle. and i tear up again. i look forward to the day i can pick up yellow without any hesitation. when i can fill it up with my favourite desserts. i really hope blue is at peace though. i miss blue. it is still my favourite cup.

I am an addict

my chest hurts and my mind is overflowing of all the things i want to say to you. my skin stretches and gets ripped showcasing the flames that are lit underneath. i am an addict. an addict for him. his smell i want to sniff in like cocaine crushed with credit cards. i wanna smoke into his mouth, inhale his fragrance and breathe out my love. a joint. rolled in with the love letters i wrote for him. i hold it between my fingers and see the letter burn and turn into a black ash. it doesn’t fade away even in a storm for it carries the weight of my words, kiss marks and the smell of coffee. i am an addict and i crave an injection of his touch flowing into my veins. the ripped insides under my skin appear to be a drought of desperation. a drop of his love or even a glimpse of him would quench my thirst for love for i am an addict and he is my addiction.

my homemaker

He is my regular dose of serotonin. love grows whenever and wherever we share even the tiny bits of moments filled with smiles and understanding. he makes my heart bloom. and picks all the thorns out of that plant of longing in my heart and kisses the leaves and stems. flowers grow everywhere his lips touch. the plant of longing dies and rebreeds into something more breathtakingly beautiful. i pluck the flowers from the plant and check if he loves me or does he love me not. every last petal in those flowers scream that he loves me as deep as the red colour of that flower, or as deep as the roots of this new plant reach. he loves me. with actions. with words. and smiles and smirks. with petals and with leaves. he loves me with everything he has to offer to me. i take care of this gardener of my heart in a little bud on top of my plant. he lives there. rent-free. i love how he transforms that place from a swamp to a garden filled with deep red roses and lilies of the brightest colours. i love how butterflies fly from my heart all the way to my stomach. i love love and love the minutest details of this man in my heart. he gardens so thoughtfully and hangs up frames filled with memories full of laughs and smiles and compliments. he has made my heart a home. where he dwells and maintains my heart like an art gallery on the show.

a plant in my heart

solitude is becoming my best friend. we share tears very often. she plants longing in my heart and i accept it with a smile. tears. we hang out very often. solitude and i. she comes with a pot to water the plant in my heart. its been weeks now and i can feel it grow. i ask her what is this plant longing for? “Love”, she says. “The kind of love that holds up your hair while you’re throwing up. The one that acknowledges your feelings. The kind of love that makes this plant die.” i get sad at the plant dying part but the rest i contemplate and end up agreeing. solitude knows how to make me believe things that do not exist. i do yearn for love. i tear a page writing my name and then draw a silly little heart besides it every time. i yearn for love in ways which are simple. like searching for that note which you never secretly slipped in the pocket of my worn-out jeans. you never pluck flowers for me so i shamelessly ask you for it. i enjoy the love which i actually asked for. its a remorseful feeling. like asking for presents on your birthday upfront. but you do pluck that flower for me and tuck it behind my ear. its yellow. i still have that flower in between the pages of my romance novel. solitude is still accompanying me. she listens to everything that i have to say and then gives me more things to believe as a response. things which again do not exist. she serves my delusion with a silver spoon. she is my best friend after all.

“will he ever pluck flowers for me without me asking?” i ask her. for once i think she’s giving me an advice instead of responding with confetti filled promises.“stop asking for it and see it yourself”, she eyes me with a smile. i dont smile back. she knows i yearn for love. she knows that the seeds she panted in my heart still blooms and the longing grows. i leave my solitude alone. i walk away and i continue to ask and ask and ask for love. sometimes i get lucky enough to get the love without asking which is so beautiful. i wanna let solitude know that i want to stop asking for love. i want to let it come to me flowing in the air. i want love to hug me without me making efforts. as easy as breathing. but if i stop, will i ever get enough love at all?

he doesn’t feel like home anymore. i never had to knock asking him to let me in. i didn’t feel like im eating up space. i felt comfortable. i felt secure and safe. now it has started to feel different. as if im being pushed out? i don’t know. he usually asks me to sit in an unused corner nowadays. i am not allowed in the balcony or on his study table anymore. i am scared to disturb his peace. i used to be his peace. things are changing and i dont know where to go. my dwelling avoids me. hugging him used to give me a sense of security. when he ran his fingers through my hair while i slept on his lap. i remember it very well that he couldn’t bend over to kiss my forehead and we used to laugh about it together.

where do i rest my head when shit gets hard? his shoulder doesn’t feel inviting anymore. my tears wait to be wiped away in the way, they roll off slowly on purpose so that his fingertips can get enough time to reach my cheek. the little tear droplets end up reaching my neck or as a temporary stain on my pillow cover. his finger tips dont feel relaxing anymore. i miss when they used to dance their way in my hair to caress my thoughts. when they rubbed my back to vanish all my worries away. when they swiped onto my cheek wiping away my tears without me waiting for it. he used to plant a gentle kiss on my eyebrows just after that. when his fingertips actually felt relaxing. like the favourite corner of my home, i miss it. i miss everything within your embrace that was home to me. you’ve stopped feeling like home anymore.

girl dinner? yea i binge-eat my thoughts😍

DOORKNOB

Love had abandoned me a couple times, Yet I stand at its doorstep, waiting for it to accept my arrival again. I feel it peeping through the keyhole, making sure that it isn't me again before opening up. I smile. With tears in my eyes tho. I bring a flower bouquet in my hand as a bribe. After a couple of "be patient"s and "it's okay"s, someone finally opens up the door for me. To my very surprise and disappointment, it's you. The last set of hands I was expecting. I've felt those hands caressing my neck and parsing my head. Today I see them rested on the cold doorknob of my patience. You eye the flowers in my hand and then my face. I mistook your stare as to be of admiration while I totally forgot about the salted tears rolling down. You've always found me too emotional. too needy. too unlovable. too much. I hope you know that I was too loving aswell. Loving you, alot. Too much. I know you've let my hand slip from yours once, I hope u won't do it again tho. Will you? Crush my hopes again? Please don't. I can only knock so many times, my sweet boy. Let me in okay? Let me take care of you. Let me love you. Let me be your lover.

he returns

i trusted you. trusted. past tense. its so funny how feelings can change in a fraction of second. one minute im swearing on my life about how my bf is the most loyal man in existence and the second minute im humbled down. after our breakup, my eyes have never felt the hollowness . they’ve always been overflowing. with tears. with flashbacks. with hopes. everytime i’ve entered the shrine of my almighty, and everytime my head has met the ground in the posture of sujood, i prayed for you. i prayed for your well-being. i prayed that you realise your loss. i prayed that something makes you learn how to stay. i wanted you back. i wanted you to be mine again. i wanted to feel your hug while you wanted the same hug from someone else. i didn’t know it then. i was foolish. i am foolish. ever since we broke up, my eyes have been waiting for that one notification consisting your name, but now that it’s really there, my eyes finally feel hollow. i am confused by the emptiness in my pupils to converse about what is it empty of? love? hopes? trust? expectations? i dont know. i want to embrace you in my arms and listen to your heartbeats if they have changed the frequency. they haven’t. or maybe thats what i noticed. and then your glimpse filled my eyes again, with remorse. nostalgia. regrets. are you here to visit my confused heart? are you here to stab me in the back? are you here to stay? are you here just because you miss me? i couldn’t tell. “i miss you. i realised what i lost and i want you back” you say. since past one month my ears have been itching to hear this one sentence but now that those words have escaped your lips, they seem jumbled. does that sentence contain a metaphor? it’s sarcasm, isn’t it? your eyes speak about seriousness and regrets today. mine make a brief contact with yours and i dont know what do you interpret with whatever my eyes spoke. if you think they spoke about forgiveness, you might have been mistaken. i look back at our broken relationship and tears escape my eyes again. you catch a hold of my hand. whole eyeing the broken pieces of the past you say “please, i’ll fix everything i broke. i promise.” knowing too well that promises were the first thing you ever broke, i believe you. i am foolish. i let you enter my aura again. my eyes still do not utter a word about forgiveness. they are now not empty though. they are filled with worries, fear, issues, flashbacks. but love rules the crowd of feelings that my eyes are filled with. it has always ruled.

i hate it so much.

i love you.

i am foolish.

first letter to my future husband

i sit and recall the things that happened in the past. mistakes made, words understood, actions misinterpreted. and now when i see my husband carrying his mini version on his shoulders and showing him the world, a smile escapes from my lips. my tiny boy raises up his hand in an attempt to touch the sky. we laugh. my son has your lips and hair. eyes are like mine. the way you hold the door for me, get me a glass of water while im working in front of the screen, our baby replicates all of it. we are successfully raising him to be a gentleman like you and im so proud. he has also got the habit of woodpecker kisses in his genetics. and the love for boobies too, ofcourse. in this big world of cruelty, id choose our little bubble of laughter and chaos. always and forever. thankyou for such a wonderful baby. i love him and i love you so much.

girl dinner

“you’re too much, try to be a little less” words that stroke a dagger in my heart. “stop overreacting”, the dagger got twisted. “okay i’ll try loving you more” these words brutally removed the sunken dagger and then i apologised to you for dirtying your hands with my blood. “i am sorry” my words. you sigh and walk away. im sitting on the mattress of solitude with my thoughts as a brunch. i gulp one thought after another, brutality accompanies my wound to put on bandages. as if brutality ever helped healing. i giggle at the irony and then another thought seeps in, humbling my laughter and gently replacing it with tears. “try to be a little less”. i can never perceive the act of being a lover with limitations for you. when i love, the sky is my canvas and i make sure to connect through every star in it. “i’ll try to love you” is it that difficult? doesn’t love appear naturally? effortlessly? atleast he’s trying.

eyes don’t lie

its 4am and i am going through our memories. around all the chaos and quietness, i spot your eyes. those eyes stared at me filled with so many emotions. they stared at me with love. they spoke. i could communicate with them for hours. they speak so clearly. i was deep into them. those brown jewels with overflowing with feelings for me. but today, when i met that same pair of eyes, they felt hollow. empty. i searched inside of them even for an ounce of love for me, but all in vain. they still spoke tho, as they say eyes dont lie. they informed me about how hard it is to love me. this time, i couldn’t communicate with them. i pretended not to understand its fluency. i did not want to accept. then your lips moved, making me understand what your eyes seemed not to. your voice has never felt more unpleasant. “incompatible. unlovable. flawed.” i saw myself hating on me. never ever in my almost eighteen years of breathing have i ever hated myself as much as i do right now. i wish i stopped breathing. my eyes filled with the same overflowing love stared into your empty eyes. wish my hands were capable of collecting that overflown love and fill yours with it. i hate my hands. i hate my eyes. i hate hate hate my entire self.

antidote

he touched my neck and i felt a glint of light. he kept touching me until that light turned so bright that it burned right through my skin. it seeped in and left scars. invisible scars. scars that can only be felt. that heat and saturated warmth underneath, picks at my skin. it wants a way out and all that flame evaporates and drains down through my eyes. it travels through my cheek and the corner of my lips. it keeps pouring but the scar is still left unscathed. he is responsible for it. the scar. the fake touch. i’ve never experienced fingertips lying in such a way that feels real. i felt loved so deeply that my core bloomed. but now i do realise that the screeching of your fingertips on my skin acts like nails on the chalkboard. it makes me shiver despite of that boiling warmth that my scar radiates. now my wounds are deeper than the love i had for you. the cure for my wounds is you. your fingertips. although this disease throughout my body were their cause, the antidote is the same. my insides crave for your lies. lies that quench my thirst, heal my wounds. not to forget at the end of the day, it is all that they are. lies. my scar feels at peace only when you are near, when you hold me while deceiving my heart and my trust. the second you let me go, the molten lava inside my skin seems to burst. it cuts deeper than before and now i do not have the antidote. i do not want it. it hurts. but it hurts so good that makes me ignore the aftermath. so im gonna live in the present. without my antidote. suffering until the fire in my core gets dim. or until i get immune to the flames. i will not go back to get my antidote. i am strong. i am patient.

we drew apart and i lost my love. do you feel the loss of a lover?

i still write letters to the people in my past

the first kiss

we are on a movie date

him watching the movie, me studying his face,

he catches a glimpse of me

and his lips curve into a smile while my thoughts process how would it taste.

i see the attention of his eyes drawn to my mouth

every square of my skin burning, as dry as a drought

just as he tucks back a strand of my hair behind my ear

brushing my face along with his finger tips

lets out a sigh i unexpectedly hear

eye contacting

our hands hovering near each other’s

pulling in and pulling back

a same thought both of our mind covers.

deciding who leans in first

our lips part for a second and then close again

and that maintained eye contact made my heart almost burst

he finally makes the move

leans in, cups my face and parts his lips another time

only for them to land right on top of mine

the slow burning journey of our first kiss ends there

a memory revolving in my brain like a giant wheel in a fair.

when i sit and think about love which is very often, it makes me smile. like how beautifully two souls connect, physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, in all ways. how the fingers entwine between each other just perfectly. and how the lips fit in amongst each other’s so divinely. it all feels surreal. Love gives me a sense of peace and calmness. it gives me assurance. it tells me that romance exists. when you sit and talk with me about things as silly as monkeys and we laugh together. when u force out a laughter even when my jokes aren’t funny. it all provides me appreciation. appreciation of existence. appreciation of understanding. appreciation of my appearance. my mind. my thoughts. my heart. and all of these appreciations makes my aura glow. and it just feels right to be with you. it tells me that my idea of LOVE is YOU. so when i say i think about love very often, i actually mean i think about you. very often. almost everytime, every moment. you are now engraved my heart like a very very old manuscript. and as I’ve always mentioned before, my heart is a museum. and it’ll save this manuscript for a thousand more years. when it stops pumping blood, and the beats are no longer heard. just know that its still waiting for you at the other end. until then, i’d be re-reading that manuscript everytime i think about love. which will be very often.