.

I could wish for the easy way out, and ask someone else to make a decision. But that doesn't seem likely. I wouldn't be able to bare it all in front of even the closest confidante.

So should I take a giant leap with no parachute and only self to trust. Or this giant leap would be an escape from the present, clearer, present (and a possibility of an assured future).

I need to place my feet firmly on the ground to hang on. And defer the decision again, perhaps?

.

And we dipped the tip of our fingers in nostalgia. For, you settle in as easily as you let go.

Perhaps? No.

As if washing the skin would wash off the hurt!

...

I tried to smell stale cigarettes on another set of fingers and copy patterns of our lovemaking on a different bed. I would not reveal how futile it has all been.

I wish I could wash away the little specks of your desire, which have stuck to my skin despite the incessant scrubbing. And your kisses have been absorbed by the pores.

And this time I can't even string sentences to yank the misery out of my nauseating gut.

Textbook

The one I love is not you.
If, in a fit of pique, you ask me
'Then who am I?'
I shall say: you are that one
who, in the first flush of youth
Remained obscure; unvalued;
You are that one, who, time and again
Has taught me how to love.*


I was thinking of a time when I wanted things to stop. The thought of turning 'stale and moldy' was acceptable, even welcome. The time when routine mails were akin to poetry. And emails were sent despite the time together.

Yes, I went back to that tiny room on the first floor. Where time was just a beautiful verse.



* translation of an unknown Bangla poem.

Moira - Offred - June

And I thought loneliness was overrated. I wonder if this is how years will pass and nostalgia will grow roots, and like a well-grown peepal tree harbour ghosts from the past and the future.

I want to read C.Ayyappan. I wonder if there's any good translation available.

P.S.
The title is just there to fill the blank. I just finished reading The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, and I am shaken - which is good because even that involves a break from the routine.

'We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?'

Twice a day

One is constantly waiting for this to end, so that something else can happen. If it was any clearer, one wouldn't have logged in.

I hope one can find the point or the silver lining soon enough. A ray of hope, perhaps? Over-used metaphors are, after all, the only constant thing about these incoherent, splattered blog-posts.

It just struck me that I have stopped singing. Even humming to myself.

It has never happened before.

I am scared.