July 2022 – Poetry In My Veins

Rain (Part 3)

He says nothing. Like the last time, I cried my eyes dry. He sits there silently letting me rant, letting me go on because he has nothing to say or because he doesn’t want to. And it breaks me yet further that he does not even care enough to give me an explanation. I feel like a broken vase that has been put together with adhesive only strong enough so far. I feel frozen and numb and a million different things but he sits there with no emotion on his face. I shed teardrops bigger than the hope I carried in myself. I curl up like the earthworm from the rain in the bush nearby. I know I should stop but I don’t know how to. I never knew how to.

“I’m tired, Ty. I’m tired of pretending that I am done with it, done with you. I’m tired of wanting to text you and asking my friends if I should when I know I will be getting the same answer every time. I don’t fucking understand how can I still dream of someone I left behind every other day. Every day I dream of you as if nothing happened or if it did it still worked out or even if it didn’t that I am trying. I am sick of these random breakdowns and unasked-for tears. I loathe that every night my mind subconsciously injects memories into my head, memories that I do not wish to see. Memories that were never made and I wanted to make someday but not anymore. I hate that after everything that went wrong, I am willing to forgive you. I hate that you are going on with life as normally as one could and here I am still left with these leftover crooked feelings, damp and stinking, rotting into nothingness. You used to say leaving was never an option Ty, and look at me now spending my nights alone staring at ceilings as if they would somehow liven up and tell me what to do and how to do. How to get over this hurt, ahead of this hurt.” I’m breathless as I am practically screaming by now. I collect my breath trying to calm myself down, getting flashbacks of a convo we had some time back. I realize I’ve said too much when I notice a tear on your cheek. I crumble.

“I’m sorry Ty. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I never really thought of a life after you, I mean, sure we talked about it but I never thought it would turn real someday. And now it’s real and I am alive and breathing in this world without you by my side. I thought, I really thought we’d make it. I’ll shut up now.”
I say as I get a few handwritten letters out of my bag, letters I wrote but never had the chance to give. I hand them to him and he takes them and looks at me to tell him what they are.
“I knew you’d be coming. I had a feeling. One of these, I wrote a few days ago when I decided to visit. I think I should leave now. I… I’m sorry Ty.”

“I think it has stopped raining…” he says looking up at the sky.

“Of course it has, we aren’t dancing in it.” I say as I sprint out of that place, the place I used to look forward to for ten years of my life. The place I knew to be the only home besides my real one. I leave with no intention of ever coming back not that I will ever be able to. It has stopped raining.

Rain (Part 2)

You greet me with a rather glittering smile, and I return it as you ask if you can sit adjacent to me. “Of course,” I say, as I still cannot get ahold of my heart throbbing at the speed of a bullet train by now. “Watching the rain fall?” you try to make conversation. “I am, yes. I was missing this place, so I decided to visit. What brings you here?”, I reply. “Me too actually, weird coincidence.”
We sit there for a few fleeting moments, in utter silence. I rely on you to continue further with the conversation because I seem to have finished my word limit in my thoughts today.
“You miss this?”, you say motioning your finger towards the ground, the rain, and the ambiance around us and without a breath, I say “dearly”.
“It’s really been long, hasn’t it? I think over seven months?”
“I believe so.”
“You really can stop with those one-word answers you know. I promise I won’t mind.”
I look at you with pain in my eyes. My pain mostly converts to anger soon after but today I don’t seem to have that energy. “Hmm. Yeah, sorry my bad, I’m just a little overwhelmed.”
“I know. Okay I have a confession to make, I knew you were coming so this could be more than a coincidence…” he says.
“Do you remember how we got close? That one time back in 10th grade when I mistakenly hurt you and we had that dreadful walk to the water cooler? I remember seeing your eyes full till the brim and my body losing its strength. I remember the next period was sports and I was sprinting here, right at this place, drowning in shame for making you feel that way. That was the day I realized there was more than friendship between us, at least for me.”
“Yeah. I didn’t cry though.” He laughed. Not a hearty laugh though. A ‘I really don’t know what else to do laugh’. Things like these snap me. When someone tries to hide their emotions when they obviously need to let them out takes a toll on me and yes this reaction did. Now I know I would be saying things I should not. But it’s too late.
“You know, I never thought there would be a day you won’t be mine to touch. It’s saddening. You’re not mine to crave anymore, not mine to dream of. And yet I dream of you every day. Every night. Every night I have you in my dreams, trying to get close, trying to get near. How did we reach here when we promised each other we won’t? When we made a pact we won’t. How did we reach here?”

“I don’t know what to…” he tries to say when I cut him mid-sentence.

“You used to be my Cornelia Street, my Say You Won’t Let Go, my Bonfire Heart, and my Paradise. Now, look at you being my Empty Space, my So Good, my Glimpse of Us, and my Wrecked. All of this when you simply could have stayed. I would have started riots for you, Ty, I would have elevated to the sky and burned like a star for a million years if you wanted me to. And for some sick hopeless reason, I believe you would have done that too. How do you not remember all those future letters we used to write to each other? What about the future at all? Look at us now. On the ground dark and grey like ashes of all the words, we used to say as if they ever meant anything. Did they Ty? Did they mean anything to you? Then how could you let me go Tyler?”

Rain (Part 1)

I step in and it feels like a different world. A world I have known forever maybe even in my past lives. It feels like a million years since I last came here but also like yesterday. I remember my plan. I’ll go on a day it is assumed to be raining, sit on the bench near the book shop, facing the ground in the U-shape building. I would sit there until it starts to rain and I would watch the rain like we did when we used to be a part of this place, when we made this place from our existence. When this place was mine, ours. I cross the book shop and sit exactly where I was supposed to. I can see some young kids playing volleyball in there and shouting at the top of their lungs. I can see the usual buzz of the place and the air that is filled with moments that are becoming memories with every passing second. The memories these kids will reminisce if only they could remember them. I am overwhelmed. I continue to breathe in my thoughts as I see a guard walking towards me asking me who I am and what am I doing there sitting. I tell myself to be a pass-out student waiting for the period to get over so that I could meet a particular teacher. I lied, of course, I was there entirely because I missed that place. I was just writing in my notes when the first drops of rain touch the ground and the students run around finding shelter to save themselves from getting drenched. It’s funny watching them trying to avoid the rain as it was the only thing I lived for in these months. Getting drenched tip to toe, watching you do the same. I can literally cry my eyes out to this bare memory if I try to but I will save them for later. I heard a guy, seemingly an 11th grader, talking trash about the school, my school, our school, and I could not help but get offended. And don’t get me wrong I remember doing this myself as well but somehow now that I’m not a part of this world anymore it means the world to me. I know it sounds hypocritical but be it. As I watch my surroundings, I see that one girl not hiding away from the rain, letting it soak through her clothes, her body. Now, I might just start crying. As I continue watching her I see a guy walk right behind her and let himself get soaked too. Oh, to be that girl. Wait, I have been that girl, haven’t I? The two seemed to be in love, more like the last few days of friendship right before they fall in love. Deep, kind, breathtaking love, funny, exciting, exhilarating love. The kind of love that lifts you from the ground before it turns into convicting, soul-crushing love, bloodsucking, suicidal love. I had it once, I still do I guess. The bell rang and the clatter around starts to go back to their classes as their period seems to be over. They dread to go back to their classes, not knowing how dearly they would miss even the tiniest bit of it once they leave this place behind. There aren’t many people around anymore and luckily the guard is not in sight anymore, giving me enough time to be sad in peace. I am in a weird place honestly. I have always believed myself to be the type to always have her next move planned out, to know how the day is to go, to have it all planned out. But somehow, for the first time in my life, I don’t know where I’m going, what I want. For the first time in my life, I seem to have lost purpose, direction, and motivation all at once. And I believe you are a big reason for me feeling this way. It always baffles me how one person by your side can make you go through the darkest days by keeping you safe in their arms and how the same person can take that comfort away within a fraction of a second and leave you on the brink of existence. I miss, in bold capital letters, being yours. I am certainly crying by now, I think as I touch my face and yes, I was. If, only if there was a way to turn back time. I would give all my tomorrows for that one yesterday. I would sell my soul to be able to live those few days again even if I know that every time I would end up the same way, crying, brokenhearted, unwanted. I would not think twice. I dreamt of a life with you and that life was taken away from me ruthlessly a few months back. I fought but I lost. I sometimes stop and wonder if you think all of this too, if you feel this way too. Or are you free from these suffocating thoughts and leading your life without me, like it used to be before you ever met me. I remember one of the last things you told me was that you watch the moon when you’re lonely. Now I watch the moon hoping that maybe someday, we both would be watching the moon at the same time, at the exact same moment, with the same thought in our heads and the moon would look at the two of us, disheartened, thinking how good we could have been. I am crying my eyes out and probably making sobbing noises too.
I hear the guard from a distance and almost prepare myself to be thrown out of this place like we were once before because it does not belong to us anymore when I see something too extraordinary to believe. No way, there is no way on earth. I am sitting but my legs are trembling from the sight in front of me, the sight of you. I wipe off my tears in haste as I see you walk towards me, flesh and blood, like I remember.

Dream

I woke up in a haphazard today, due to a dream. For someone who has potentially worked on getting rid of a few memories, I think I should have stopped dreaming about you way before. But there you were, looking breathtaking as always. The setting was our school corridors, and recess time. I was outside the classes with my friend R and my cousin N. N doesn’t show up in my dreams very often and today she did for some reason. Maybe because even she was upset when I gave her the news. Our classrooms were different and I don’t have a reason for that either. Neither did I try to find out. I remember laughing and roaming around and then my eyes move to the window of the class you were sitting in. I wasn’t exactly peeping, I was seeing you from a distance. You were having lunch with some old classmates we knew mutually. And I was overwhelmed. Isn’t it crazy? I saw you in a dream and I was overwhelmed by emotions I dread. I was somehow aware that we were broken up, yes, even in the dream and I was wishing to find a way to just have a convo. Maybe an awkward one, but one. So I go to R and N and ask them to do something, anything, which includes both, you and me. I sound so desperate even in my dream, trying to get one conversation from that one person. I remember N and R made fun of it and I had to let them because well, what else could have been done. I remember they went into the class without me, failing our little shenanigans, and I, disappointed as always, hung my head low and started walking on the opposite side of the corridor. I saw an unknown girl calling in for a hug and for a second I thought it was for me because I really could have used one but it was for another girl, one of her friends maybe. I remember I was so upset from that idea failing as if I lost something that had already been lost. There is no way of putting it into words but if I could, by any chance, it was a nightmare. I call such dreams, emotional nightmares. It’s funny how dreams make you feel things you haven’t felt in real life for a long time or ever. I don’t remember being a school kid. I don’t remember what it felt like and I don’t remember what the lunch break looked like. But in my dreams, I see it just the way it was. It baffles me how our dreams know what’s going on and how to make you feel things you feel in a real-world, as they are. I remember being in a position like that, but not a situation. There has never in my life been a situation like that and thank goodness there hasn’t. This dream was such a tremendous blow I had to write about it. I think, sometimes you go so far hating someone that at one particular moment, you don’t know what you hated them for. But you can’t go back to not hating them because you don’t know how to. How do you tell yourself the reason doesn’t exist anymore or does it? Have you just forgotten? Which leaves you with empty hate, which is all you know. I am not a big fan of dreams unless it’s some fictional character I’ve been crushing on. But this, this made me feel a certain wave of emotions, happy or sad, I’m yet to know. Thus, I had to write.

Consent

Hello readers. This is going to be deep so I want to warn you already if you are here for the latest gossip decoding or shallow stuff, might not be the vibe today. I have been thinking a lot lately. I have been facing writer’s block for some time now. Years, it feels like it’s been years. I write a lot but not poems. It just doesn’t seem to rhyme anymore and then is when it hit me. Things don’t always have to be rhymed to make sense. Poems are poems for the way they carry emotions and make you feel warm or cold or a stream of energy rushing to your veins and not because of the abab rhyming scheme it carries. And that’s what I will be doing. I have decided that now this blog will not be confined to poems. I started this blog keeping in mind that I wanted to share my emotions and feels across and that’s what I’ll be doing. Sharing what I feel, when I feel it. It’s going to be words, just words. Not poems, not stories, no boundaries. I will write whatever way it comes out and I hope you accept it that way. After all not all deep thoughts have a place or a set frame to fit in, just like some things, just like some people. So here, I will be talking about songs and how they make me feel, every feeling that hits me throughout the day, and what I think about them. Good emotions, destructive emotions, things straight from my notes whether or not it makes sense. It must have made back then. Love and heartbreak, unicorns and ice creams. I hope you find a home in these just the way I do. And hope, I will talk a lot about hope.