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You're Always Leaving

In every memory, you’re always leaving. White t-shirt, messy hair, at the threshold of my door, holding it open to say a goodbye. I never ask you to stay. You always leave behind some trinket in my life that you can come back for. In this memory, it is your copy of The Picture Of Dorian Gray . Some other day, I had asked you to read this book. I take my blunt drawing pencil and scribble in soft letters a note— ‘I will always be fond of you. You represent all the sins I had the courage to commit.’ In another memory, I watch you dance with some stranger at a party while someone else runs their hands over me. We came to this party together but I watch your eyes pierce into me from over her shoulder and I know you will leave alone. You leave behind some shattered pieces of a heart, you leave in the middle of her dance. In another memory, you leave the pen your brother gave you between the pages of my notebook. I watch you walk out of the classroom in the middle of the lecture. You ne
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Evening Coffee

If I had to kill myself, I would do it in October. The first time I loved was in the fall of 2017. The first time I broke my own heart was in the fall of 2023. I would start the month thinking about when I wrote a song for my first love because I did not know any other way to contain what I had felt. Then I would think about the day he left. And I would mix a drop of poison in my evening coffee. Memory by memory, drop by drop, I take in a little bit of poison every day as the month goes on. Every day, a new remembrance of an old memory. Every day, a drop of the same poison. I would think about the girl I spent five hours with, in the forbidden cemetery of our hometown. I would think about the sunset being reflected in her hazel eyes and how my heart raced when she held my hand. And I would mix another drop of poison in my evening coffee. I would think about the boy I first gave my body to and how I let him have it even after I changed my mind. I would think about the sunrises w
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Consideration

Love is considerate. I set his message notifications to high priority on my phone and he texts me to ask if I want anything every time he goes to get himself food. I don’t write about him the way I have about past lovers— rash, unthinking, distorted. All the words I give him are gentle even on paper. I make them so, syllable by syllable. I lose myself in lectures, doodle in my notebook, and think back to biology classes in school. Mutualism is when two species interact and benefit. Two types. Obligate or facultative. The former cannot survive without the symbiosis, the latter can. I think about how a younger me would have dreamt of a lover who shares the same breath as her but now I think of the honeybee and its favourite flower as the ideal kind of love. Hydrogen is flammable and oxygen helps it catch fire and yet, the two can combine to form something incredibly stable and life-sustaining. Even in my boring science lessons, I tie my thoughts back to him. Love is considerate. (S
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Doorway

All I see is darkness. I hear voices echoing all around, meshed with each other, not a single clear word. I close my eyes and think about how this is what the first few moments after waking up are like for me lately, day after day. The sun hits my face because I forgot to pull the blinds down when I fell asleep the previous night. I wake up and stare at the ceiling, vision clouded with a strange darkness despite the golden light streaming into the room. And the voices. I open my eyes and stare back into the doorway— familiar darkness. The voices disentangle themselves from each other. Phrases that feel like uneven glass edges dragging along my skin, become louder and clearer. You are not enough. You never will be. Everyone hates you. The pretence of perfection is not sufficient. Harshness echoes around me and I wonder why my mind has become the universe’s greatest weapon against me. I see a woman— someone from my past, someone I once loved and was loved by. She carries immense rag
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Most babies find the single syllable ‘maa’ easier to form and hold in their tiny mouths as their first word. Mine was ‘baba’ . Spoken often and with such clarity that people would sigh at their own children’s mumbled noises. I learnt to sing almost simultaneously as I learnt to talk. My mother tells me the first song I started humming, and then singing perfectly was one of the Rabindra sangeets my father often played— one of his favourites. She tells me how overjoyed he was when I started humming it while he held me in his arms. He never tells me any of this. Growing up, I gave several adjectives to the image of my father, in my head. I thought he was strong and invincible like every other child does. Now every time I go back home, he seems to have grown older. I thought he was my best friend. Every argument we had when I was sixteen made me doubt it. I thought my father was flawless. But he is only human. Most of my family tells me I’m just like my father. I’ve grown up hearing this
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In Another World

Maybe in another world, I get to wake up in your arms and watch you sleep. In another world, you don’t feel like you have to lie to me and keep me at a distance just so I don’t end up falling for you. In another world, I can hold you when you cry. In another world, you don’t think a hundred times before showing me the tiniest part of your heart. In another world, we don’t limit the glimpses of our souls that we grant each other. In another world, I don’t write and then delete texts asking you to meet me. In another world, we don’t dance around the lies we tell each other. In another world, we don’t feel like we have to lie to each other at all. In another world, I don’t have needles growing up from my skin and you don’t block out every voice with the noise in your head. In another world, we don’t much care what people say and we meet each other at the right time. In another world, I let you read the poems I wrote for you and you care enough to listen to me when I sing. In another
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Then There Was You

I used to find a definition of love In every single thing I adore Took me a while to realise Love is all that and more Then you came along and Somehow love was madness A rollercoaster of a journey From anticipation to sadness   I’d look at you, stop breathing As if I was suddenly set on fire I didn’t ever want to look away It felt like walking a thin wire   And everyone else would say This isn’t love but infatuation Love isn’t madness and chaos This has to be plain attraction   But if it was just attraction Then why did it last so long? Even when I saw you years later My heart burst into a song   A few more years passed But the ardour always stayed Still whenever I see you My entire soul seems to sway   Because love is just love,  And a lot of other things too With you, it was something else because There was love………                              And then there was you.
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Festival Nostalgia

October rolls around and brings with it the Durga Puja— my heart rejoices in anticipation, every year. And every year, my mind becomes sick with bittersweet nostalgia, without fail, thinking of you. It’s not fair to me, the fact that your memories are now so closely woven with the one festival I look forward to. This is the first time I haven’t gone back home for the Puja. This is the first time I haven’t seen you during the Puja. I remember, on the first day of Puja, shashthi— I visited the pandal next to your home, and you visited the pandal next to mine. It’s an exchange of worlds that occurs every year. Not this year. I could only see your pictures and laugh a derisive laugh because you are closer to my home than I am right now. I remember, on the second day of Puja, saptami— both of us sang at the annual singing competition in our hometown. Not this year; this time, it was just you. I haven’t heard you in so long, I am scared of slowly forgetting your voice. I remember, on
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Entanglement

“The moment I see you, I’m going to hold you so tightly and never let go.” But what about all the moments we don’t see each other? Yesterday I got myself a rose and sent you a picture of it. I wanted to hand it to you and watch you smell it and grin at me. Today I scraped my leg on the edge of our glass table. I texted you about it but I wanted to be there in your arms and make a fuss about it all. I was mindlessly scrolling through the endless tabs I have open on my phone— song lyrics, movie titles, physics articles, psychology research… I would tell you all about it but for all my writing tendencies, I find it so difficult to text sometimes. I use the backspace button a little too often nowadays. I read about the red thread of fate. In old Chinese mythology, it is tied around the ankles of two people; in modern tales, it is tied around their little fingers. The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. This magi
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The Sun Watches

Time stumbles,  but I never do,  every time I step across                                       the threshold of your door. I gently dress up the wounds I gave you                                                                 a few weeks ago and let you do the same for me. The setting sun is peeking in through the gap under your window’s blind The rays turn you to gold and I— I don’t make a sound  as you draw your own blades out of my skin and let me bleed  dark red             all over your pastel blue bed sheets. We buy back the illusion, bit by bit. The room is a haze (is it passion or hallucination?) Your skin is on mine again. My skin is yours and yours is mine again. The sun’s rays slowly shy away from us. The haze will soon lift again and the room will dissipate. You and I, two figures in a snow globe                                                               stuck in this moment forever. You and I, two parallel lines                                           some distanc
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Room

Like a pebble on the edge of a cliff Silence hangs delicately in this room You pacing the wall’s edge Me sitting frozen on the bed The air is growing wet with apprehension Say the words, just say them. Now you’ve stopped pacing to look At me, from across this confined room. The space between us used to be quite small Fingers always intertwining Some sacred thing rested quietly In the crevices between our bodies The silence falls like a slap You’ve said the words, long last. Now this room is fast expanding The space between you and I is cosmic.
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I Promised Myself Gentleness

I promised myself gentleness                                                         but I turned you inside myself like a serrated knife I let the blade pierce my heart and I looked into your eyes and smiled as the blood stained my dress.  At least you were touching me at least you were holding me. It hurts               but at least your eyes are on me… I promised myself gentleness                                                         but one look at you made me forget all else The first smile you gave me was dripping lust and sin and I forgot all else All I knew and all I wanted to know was you.
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Right Before I Fall Asleep

I think about The colours of the sky when the sun set today.  Did I lock the door before I came to bed? The pink wildflower I saw by the side of the road.  Films. Art. Blood. Storms.  Bees. And how the one time I got stung is still fresh in my memory.  Quantum physics. How there might be universes colliding in the space between our lips when you lean in for a kiss.  The way my skin feels too tight on my bones sometimes.  The star I gaze at from my balcony every clear night.  The way your eyes turn honey gold in the sunshine.  Your hands and how they feel on my skin. All of you.  You... You...
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Death Threat

The twentieth summer of my life came with the threat of being the last.  I sat in the bare-walled room where my doctor saw “serious” patients and thought about how all the plans I'd made for the rest of my summer were melting away.  I thought about my roommate sitting in a dorm with my side of it empty, waiting for me to come and put my colourful posters up, even though I'd never.  I thought about my best friend giving his first lecture as a TA and how I'd be missing out on it.  I thought about that one course I was looking forward to the most about trauma and drugs and other things people dislike talking about. I thought about how much I've been looking forward to kissing you in the fall. About how I might never get to hold your face again. And how I didn't realise the last I was looking into your eyes that it was going to be the last time.  Soon enough, I'll be a name and nothing more in the student history section of our college’s website.  And someone else w
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a love that will never be Love

You held my face in your hands and kept asking me what was wrong and I couldn't speak because my words have always come with a bitter price. So I just look into your eyes and think about how they are the colour of my morning coffee and how I despise my own eyes for reminding me of my tar black soul. You're telling me to breathe and your forehead is against mine now and I want to tell you how you feel like water being splashed over my burning skin. But I couldn't speak because my words have always come with a bitter price. To speak is to hand someone a knife that I cannot protect my heart against. To speak is to love and I am not allowed to love you. So I don't speak, I don't hand you the knife, I don't let myself trust you with my words, I don't let myself love you. But I let your hands stitch together the gaping wounds on my skin and I let you quiet the voices screaming in my head and I let you memorise every curve of my body again.  This is a love that wi
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There's Always Tomorrow

Pull me closer in / your arms tighten around me / too many things to do / but we ignore our lives / caught up in our own little bubble (how long before it bursts?) / your eyes are brown / mine are so much darker (I like yours so much better than mine) / brown eyes like the coffee I'm addicted to / how long do we ignore our lives? / “it's okay,” you say / “there's always tomorrow” / I like your hands better when they are on my skin / can I taste your lips one more time? / we have time we make time / and of course “there's always tomorrow” / touch my soul / you're the only one I'd let in / I see through you / I see myself / do you see yourself in me too? / your fingers trail up and down my thighs / how long do we ignore our lives today? / “it's okay” / until the bubble bursts / “there's always tomorrow” / until there wasn't .
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Dream of You

Every now and then I dream of you.  Of quiet corridors in our busy high school / side eyes from our classmates / teachers’ knowing glances (even when they knew nothing) / you sitting a little too close to me / your best handwriting / your laughs being funnier that the joke / sharing secrets we never shared with anyone else / studying together in all those free periods / just talking when we had nothing to study / just sitting in silence when we had nothing to talk about / you telling me you loved my hair, my eyes, my laugh / secretly texting late into the night and feeling guilty / long phone calls / hushed whispers every now and then / ‘I love you’s that were sometimes returned, sometimes not (what if someone overhead?)  Every now and then I think of you.  Of broken promises / missed calls / unanswered texts / spiteful words (I know neither of us meant them but we said them still)  My dreams are longer than my thoughts but they are both equally destructive. And I wonder if you re
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October

October used to be my favourite month of the year. All I’m saying is, love can change so many things. The first time I exchanged words and thoughts with G was at the peak of my hometown’s rains in July. The air becomes damp and heavy around this time of the year; the imminence of me leaving home for the first time only seemed to add to it. I told him my favourite film was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He watched it and sent me paragraphs that seemed to put into words exactly why I loved the film. Unprecedented familiarity— almost as if we shared a mind. I found myself breathing the damp air much easier than I had in the previous years. All I’m saying is, love can change so many things. The first time I met G was in September, my birth month. He found me looking lost in the corridor of some academic block and introduced himself again, as if we had not already spent countless nights staying up to text each other about inconsequential things. Oh well, we started spending countles
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