Will They Blame You?

It's not that hard to understand. A child of bare 7, all you do is run around on the terrace, play a little, call names and double up laughing at everything. You make friends with just about anyone. Of course, they have to let you pick the teams.

He isn't family yet. And he comes along, blows you away! The coin just disappeared! You pester him around and ask him questions no one else would bother with answering.

'Why is the sky so high?'

'Will a fly stick to my tongue like it does to a frog's?'

'Do you think our cat might be a ghost? Last night I saw her eyes glow in the dark.'

He has an answer for everything. And he smiles, holds you by the arm, as he tells you. Tells you of the frogs, the cat, the sky. Tells you of things that leave you spellbound, and quite often chuckling insanely.

'Did you know you can't lick your own elbow?' You try, and again. He's right! You are now a fan.

One evening, you're on the terrace. You and him. You'll never forgive them for leaving you behind that day. But they didn't know.

He lays you down, there's a story to be told. 'Of pixies and fairies! The Enchanted Wood!'

You are out of your mind! But wait, what is he doing now?

He begins by caressing your face, tracing back the curls. And now he's planting kisses. Affection? They get sloppier and they're all over you. You're uncomfortable, and you squirm. But he's a big man, and he's touching you wrong. He's running his hands over you, down there. His firm grip has you pinned down.

'Let me go!'

'Aw, come on now. You want a story? I'll tell you one, a really good one. Just stay still for a while.'

You're gripped by overpowering, stark terror. This man scares you. And he won't let you go. He's doing these things to you, and you know they're wrong, and painful, but he won't let you go! You find yourself going numb and you can't feel the tears that you shed. You're drained of all spirit and you hate that man. But he won't let you go.

Just then someone calls your name, you jolt back to comprehension. He flusters, panics. You manage to wriggle out of his hold, but not before feeling his glare burn your skin. You want to scram downstairs, and to never look back. But you're legs allow only a stagger. You will remember precisely, how many times you tripped that day, and the jaggedness of the stairs you lapsed on. Will they blame you?

You bring yourself to stop crying and obscure the affliction. You don't know what happened and you don't know whom to go to.

Dinner is served.

Inveigle This Shadow

Of slamming doors that reassure,

Of steps that pretend to skitter for cover.

Of trices that blur the vision fleetingly,

Of raindrops that trace their way on stark skin.

It's a strange evening today,

An intimate affair tomorrow.

Witchcraft And Beyond

You know what I love?

That when the night materializes, the still ink-like expanse of a late October sky, the unversed breath of seasoned novelty , the mirrors reflecting the scintillating lights reveled, chords that arouse the quantum of existence in that empty, cryptic room...

I can be anyone, I can go anywhere.

One Night To Speed Up Truth

Feigning indifference is your saving grace. It's when you give that cold-shoulder that you can face anything or anyone. If you can convince the person on the other end that nothing ever meant anything to you, you can get through just about everything that comes your way. That 'Heartbeats' lapsed you to tears, is your secret and the knot in your chest which refuses to come undone, is for you to withstand.

There's a sense of comfort in knowing that the person who caused you to falter and left you unsettled, won't get to see you in that disoriented and disgraceful state. It's caitiff in the least, agreed. But if you have to go through the inescapable motions of grieving and affliction and regret, you might as well do it in the quiet of your room where no one can see that smudged kohl or hear that heart-wrenching song which reminds you of the time spent unscathed and then of everything you did wrong, of every moment in which a choice was made, of every expectation you said you won't have. You can't help but think, 'what if I hadn't gone through with it'.

God forbid anyone saw you this way. You who claimed to not care, claimed to be on a different level of sensibility, claimed to be in control, claimed to be detached, dispassionate.

And now you snivel while the song plays. A girl can only do so much.

I've Only Got A Sleeping Sun

I put those glowing stars in her room, and took her in. They gleamed in the dark and she squealed in animation. 'Lift me up', she asked feverishly, so as to touch those things that radiated magic. She beamed at me with angelic delight, gave me a gleeful, soft kiss.

Pieces of plastic can make for an exquisite moment and there are always some relationships that you can be thankful for, that one kiss which couldn't possibly make you feel foul or dirty, unlike the myriad others you've been smothered with.

Like She Does

So here's to a miserable night and a miserable day spent in bed, resolving to not move a limb. Ever. Or as long as I could get away with it.

I cried my eyes out. And I forget why. No, I'm not disoriented, just bi-polar. NOT the same thing. What triggered it, was pretty stupid. Sides of a fucking slice of bread ending up in a hard blow in the gut and a tight slap on the face. It didn't hurt.

What was it really then? A year and a half worth of stifled anger, asperity, frustration, anguish, disappointment, regrets and just simply the passage of time. My amnesia provides me with it, thank you very much.

So I fall. And resolve never to get up. It's a very comforting thought, I tell you. That of just giving up. Clean, easy and diverting. Even if adroitly so.

And then she comes. She has a way with me like no one else does, or ever really could. And I hate her for it. I try everything from repression, avoidance, projection, pretense, icy indifference, rationalization, denial to downright dirty acts. Erratic fits of temper, hollering foul abuses, shoving the pillow in her face, kicking about violently. You name it. Anything to make her leave.

She doesn't.

'ARGH! FOR FUCK'S SAKE! GET THE FUCKING HELL OUTTA HERE!'

'You want milk? I'm warming some for me.'

'I want you the hell away from me, bitch.'

'So that's a no.'

'UGH! WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?'

'Get out of bed.'

'Not gonna happen.'

'Why not?'

'Cause I don't fucking want to.'

'It's nice and sunny outside.'

'Look, I don't care if you are warming milk, or if it's fucking sunny outside. I want to stay here and get miserable, and rot, and die. So you can have your milk and shove the fucking sun up yours.'

'Hey, I know what's happening and it'll be okay. I know that because you're gonna make it okay. Yeah?'

'...Yeah.'

And so we went out and lay in the warm sun. It was the most placid afternoon in a long, long time.

By evening, my eyes were swollen and red from all that crying, my head throbbing. It didn't matter. I was back to figuring my way out through the mess.

She picked me up,

like she always does.

Every single time.

Fix Me?

Shun the light, distort their memories.

Existing in your world, living in his nights.

I was never here.

Apathy makes for a facile veil,

The questions never call the buff.

Let me go, it's what I do.

Piñata

High up there, it rained in that thought.

Dreams were spun in that breath.

Drenched in the muck of simple thrills,

Covered in the filth of innocence.

And yet, celestially clean.

It's been pouring myriad witching hours now.

Why am I still dry?

Not Ready To Make Nice

A family of four, but not the way it should have been. There was an old man and his bed ridden wife, her grandparents. Her mother must have been forty even if she repeated the magical number of sixteen, year after year.

She herself was sixteen.

I remember this one day. We sat on the porch and I was telling her about my day at school, about how this one guy had called me ugly and pulled my hair. Shaw looked horrified, but it was a practiced look and I knew. She had been hearing me get miserable over this boy for a month now.

'I know Shaw, I really do. I should complain to the teacher, right? I was going to. I swear I was, and then I felt his eyes on me, I could already hear what he would say to me afterwards. I just sat back down. I hate him, Shaw. I really, really hate him.'

She wrapped her arms around me and said, 'I hate him too'.

And that's how it was. I don't know why I called her Shaw. I remember her having a beautiful Christian name, though I couldn't quite get it right then, and now I forget.

Shaw's mama stepped out. She wore a radiant orange salwar-kameez and her hair were two pigtails fastened with spare clips. Looking up to the sky, she inhaled a rush of fresh air, looking up to the sky, only to release herself as she said, 'higher! higher!' It beckoned her, to call out to what we couldn't see, asking to be taken 'higher! higher!' She might have been shouting to the void in her mind, or she might have been serenading the entire cosmos. But I know as much and as little for sure that Shaw's mama couldn't really see us, she could see no one. And we were right there.

And now she danced. Sixteen, in her mind and grey to our eyes.

Shaw smiled.

'What?' She had my attention.

'Nothing,' she replied. 'Just that last night, when everyone else slept, Mama told me about this man she met. He has a job and she said he loves her. They are going off to some place nice and that I could come with her. I think she was talking about my dad.'

Shaw's dad was nobody. One morning he got up, went to work and never returned. But her mother mixes up the story too often to be taken seriously.

Shaw started to say something again, when we heard the song. Her mama now sang as she danced. And was she loud! Hysteric movements and that song. Shaw was used to this, she had seen it coming but I was only beginning to comprehend.Before anything else, her Nanu came out and frigidly told Mama to get in. 

Only if she could hear him.

'Get back in!', this time louder, perceptions of honor seeping in through the cracks of his voice.

She ignored him, but only because her song hadn't finished yet. Nanu now grabbed her by the arm, and began dragging her towards the door. Struggle.

She strived to get herself out of his big, burly grip, never quietening her song. He made his staunch efforts, alternating between curses and blows. Twice he slapped her and just as loudly she wailed her song. She fought, she wailed and she sang. He somehow managed to haul her to the door. She fell, she got up, she ran back out and she sang that song.

Nani could be heard from within the house. 'It doesn't stop, she doesn't stop! Don't hit her too hard, just get her back in. We deserved better. Oh! We deserved so much better. Get her inside...'

More struggle, more persecution, more singing. Nanu went after her. He was enraged and it was a scary sight. He caught hold of her hair in one hand, grabbed her arm in the other, and savagely began to force his way. She gave a loud cry, kicked her legs everywhere, resisted violently for another few minutes and then, just as impulsively, went quiet. The song was over. 

Rapture.

She asked indignantly now, 'What are you lugging me for, huh?'

'Just walk back in, stupid whore.'

And she did, unruffled. The old man drew a hefty breath. This had been tiring for him. The disdain was explicit. He started to walk towards the door, when he saw Shaw and me there. We hadn't moved all this while.

'I can't deal with you and your mother in the same breath. Get in', he said to Shaw without moving that petrifying scowl on his face. Shaw scampered. By now she had learnt to play second fiddle. Nanu was a nice man, he was. But he could also beat her to the last breath without any sense of remorse. He was capable and he needed no reason enough. 

That evening when Shaw came to prepare dinner, her forehead was sore. We would ignore that bruise even as it turned blue in that awkward silence it brought with itself. She showed off a new pair of earrings. 'Nanu got them today. Tasteful, aren't they?'

That night Shaw's mama died.

Another evening, and we were right back there, on that porch.

'I expected Nani to die, you know. She can't move a limb. Mama seemed okay. She wasn't even that old really. 

'It was all so strange. We had dinner, Nanu talked about his new employer, Mama complained a little about the tasteless meal and Nani went on about finding me a husband. The dishes were washed, the beds were spread out and the lights were switched off. The night was called and then somewhere in the middle of it, she stopped breathing. Just like that. 

'Nanu hasn't uttered a word since, but Nani says he'll come around. We all do. You know what else she said? That last night was the most peaceful she has had in a long time.'

'Shaw, do you miss her? Like, right now?'

Shaw looked at me, frowned. She was figuring that out. 'I don't know. No, not right now. Maybe tomorrow it'll happen. The dead are to be missed aren't they?'

I didn't know, so I said nothing.

'You want to know something funny?'

I looked up.

'Mama always thought she was sixteen'.

We laughed. Tears followed, The sun went down.