The Almost 3 am Post

This is one of those nights when I don’t really feel myself. Then again what is myself, what is this self, for I have been a different person a year before, somebody else again the year before that, and now that I lie on my bed, and feel my eyes glazing over as if a sheet of clear plastic shields them from the light of the bulb, I remember a different person, a different me. A different me with a different life, with a different love, smiling at different jokes, whispering different sighs. It’s all so different, my mind wonders along wisps of fantasy, and as the eyes find more whites and blurs, whether those memories are mine, or borrowed, I am no longer sure.

A yearning fills me, I can feel its threadlike fingers wrapping around my heart, cocooning it in a warm, dark net. I long for that person who made that different me smile, sigh, love. My fingers stretch forward and search for him, and I suddenly realize my face is buried in his shoulder, he is that close. I smile, and hope he can feel it, through his clothes, his skin, through the warmth.  I imagine feeling his arm on my back, holding my tight, pressing me against him, securing the hug, ensuring that it lasts. The other arm just lies there, dangling at his side. I don’t know what it is supposed to do, I don’t know whether I’m allowed to hold it.

I remember looking at that arm, for I’m afraid to lift my face and look at you, I’m afraid you will disappear if I do. But for all the reasons, known, unknown, right, wrong, I look up and you’re looking at me. But who are you? I know the smile, those eyes, that nose, that hair, that neck, but they are not yours, they belong to many, many others before you, many others after you. But what does it matter if I fail to give you a name? names have failed me before, words have betrayed me, more often than I can count. I will let myself gaze at those eyes, feel them calling out to me, feel their hunger, the lust, the love, for soon enough they will disappear, that much I know. Do you wonder who I am? Am I the “me” you were looking for? Or do you also see a different set of lips, a different pair of eyes, a different nose? Do you feel a different kiss, for I know we just kissed and it is a kiss that can’t be contained by memory, a kiss I will forget as soon as I will open my eyes. I do want to talk about the kiss, but it would break my heart, and I don’t want to mend a broken heart alone.

I am here with you, and I will be with you even after I don’t remember this. It feels good that at some place we are having this moment, letting it last through eternity. It gives me hope that someday we will be in this moment and we will remember it afterwards.

I will just be here with you for a while longer, with all of you, with all of me. A shudder runs through me as you pull me even closer. The heavy breathing, the loud heartbeats, the rushing memories create a heady rhythm.

Maybe before the dream breaks, she will reach out and hold that hand.

Dust on the Keyboard

Every time someone has asked me to start my blog again, I have had to sit back and wonder but write about what? The words were there, the ideas as well, but something always made me close the word document after the first line.

There’s definitely no scarcity of topics to pick from. One glittering boon of tech advancement is the bubbling and babbling pond-world of the internet, where you dip a finger, and there you have - all the mundane and not so mundane, the crazy, the brilliant, the loud, and the quiet, the ignored, the forgotten, waiting to be picked up, talked about. Type a few words, let the insta-search produce humorous, reader friendly socio-political articles, lengthy in depth, lived in, in situ analysis, and thesis about almost everything under the still warm Sun. Every thought, every fragmentary, partially formed shred of muse is documented, published, displayed. And witnessing this rumbling mill of activity, I feel stunned, and quite envious. For these armies of writers-analysts, who come from different vocations and practices, have so easily mastered the concepts of literary theories, producing engaging strings of words seemingly effortlessly, whereas even after four years of continuous training, I fumble about the idea of literature, poetry, frankly, intimidates me, and I struggle to find the confidence to pen down, to give form to my muse. I am a disheartening case.

Thus I have had to sit back and wonder if it is still alright to talk about the simple; autumn sky and the lazy afternoon, the tired salesman who asks for a glass of water, the rooftops and the memories, the failures and the fears. May be everything has be said and told and discussed, but there is a chance we will find something new if we start again.