When Darkness finds me

I can feel you. 

You don't have to shout any louder, run any faster, be any heavier or any more anything, not even lesser. I can see you from the corner of my eye and sense you with every beat of my heart, creeping towards me. 

Your grey vapours only chase me harder when I run so I chose, this time, to brave your wrath, to cross my fingers and wait for you to pass me by. 

I chose to believe the false promises I made myself and I chose to believe the false comfort every disconnected whisper offered me because I was hiding from you in plain sight. I was hiding from the person you are conjured up by the recesses in my mind not deep enough to keep me safe.

I hate that you caught up. I hate that you chose the brightest day, in a room most filled with love in a voice I cherish deeply to wrap your vapourous trail around me and inch your way up to my mind while I stood paralysed- without even a whimper in self defense.

You know your own ugliness. 

You know I will succumb to the power you have over me. You enjoy the chase and it was longer this time than ever before. I didn't miss you. Not one bit. If I could wish you away I would. I let myself believe that is all it would take but you have proved me wrong. I will congratulate you on your victory, ever the graceful loser. You have taught me from practice, I will even thank you, gratitude flowing out of the wounds you stab into me. 

I wonder if this will be my last memory of these months in the rainbow. I stand here immobilized by the crushing weight of the knowledge you bring. 

You call it the truth and I want to believe you but it is difficult to have my mind reconstruct reality to suit a whim while you are twisting your knife deeper into my heart making sure I can see you through the haze of tears I won't shed from pride.

After all that I have sacrificed- laughing little floaty bubbles and flitting through reality, my pride is all I have and if you asked nicely I'm sure I would give you that too, but not while you suffocate me and watch me bleed out so clinically. 

It won't do. I won't give you that satisfaction, not because I don't want to- for you I would give anything, but because my pride is the only oxygen I will find in the dark lonely grave you have dug for me.

I will dream of flight and wine and dancing and sleep through the worst of this. I will wake up in another season having befriended my nightmares again. Companionship more reliable than your promised smiles in the dark- I am blind.

I feel

I wake up some days and feel life bursting out of me. It's like an explosion of colour that has more than the seven of a rainbow and colour the world in shade I want to see. Actually it isn't a morning feeling, it's an anytime feeling. I feel as much sadness as I do happiness but it's a strange world we live in where sadness is celebrated and happiness is frowned upon.

So I can't skip down a street singing my lungs out until my throat is sore and I can't see a colleague on my way to get print outs and hug him and say, "My God, I'm thankful, so thankful that you are healthy and happy and back again. I love you I do!" I can't say it without being seen as so much other than just genuinely happy to have a second chance at making somebody feel the joy they make me feel.

Some days I want to make a gob ball of everything I feel. I think it would feel like the spit gobs we made as children, gross bits of chewed up paper all stuck together with spit and drippy but strangely, oh so strangely alive. I would throw it with a big smile and an open heart to my friends and family and strangers who make me think the sun shines because of them, those days I'm even glad for them to think it shines out of their bottoms because heck, maybe they know more than I do. They would be covered in that spray of emotion and know, just know, that the world for me would suck without them.

I can hear my room-mate sing in the next room. She's a bit crazy. She sees all of my inexplicable highs and my frightening lows and only occasionally makes mention of it. She and this friend of ours put up with my bawling like a baby while blowing out the candles on my birthday cake and laughing hysterically 10 minutes later taking the most ridiculous selfies. I hug them and scream in their years and tickle them as though they really do owe me some debt that they will pay off this lifetime. They bear the weight of all my happiness and misery and they still don't know just how much I want to run down a semi-crowded street singing as though I were in a musical. It's true, sometimes I do.

I swear it bursts out of me some days. All my happiness does. But you see the problem is this- I accept being human because I like feeling despite the numbness I have begged for since August. I like feeling every feeling. It kills me to bottle it up but I feel many kinds of dead without feeling the threat of violence in my anger the failure of exhaustion in my sadness or the buoyant exuberance in my happiness. I feel it all as surely as I feel the raindrops or  smell the clawing stench of an open drain and as surely as my sight sees the children to whom that filth is home.

It is real- every emotion. And yet, it's a funny world I live in- there is only so much emotion us mortals are allowed to admit to.  

Dear Pen

My dearest pen,

Courtesy of http://www.penherostore.com 

I miss you. I can't put words to how heavy my heart feels at the thought of replacing you and yet I must.

I loved you the minute I set eyes on you- my first true acquisition. I wonder if you could tell how scared I was about losing you as I had everything else dear. He said I had earned the right to have you, that nobody else he knew would take care of you as I would, that you and I deserved to be together from the first salary he ever drew.

Oh I loved you but I was so scared I would lose you. For a whole year you lay in my draw with jewelry and cameras, only used at home. You dried out so often I would wash you out after every use and search the internet every time for proof I wouldn't destroy you. I worried and worried and worried that I would ruin you- that you would be like all those perfumes Velliachan would bring back for Ammama from his travels across the world, stored away until they turned putrid. Oh but I loved you; I loved you so much that I couldn't resist your demand to see the world.

I remember the first day you came to work with me. We were writing lists, boring boring lists for a production house that I would later discovered, I loved. I remember being asked about my handwriting, you- you always gathered so much attention it almost took away from the work of art you are. Oh but how we flew- you me and stacks of magazines, the sheer joy of writing...
I also remember the first time I couldn't find you- the panic and tears, the prayers and amusement on the other end of the phone. You were you and so much more. I wonder if it is the same relief parents speak of, the feeling of my sins being washed away on your discovery the next morning, exactly as I had left you, on my desk the night before. We had our adventures didn't we... so many. We traveled, you found words for my tears and stoically refused to speak of our travels, so many letters bear your mark mistaken for mine.

Today somebody else said I had earned a pen. I was so happy, discussing the details in giddy excitement as only those who labor over a nib for a year and a half for the perfect angle will ever understand. We were discussing the weight of the nib and I could only think of you love. I couldn't replace you but now I must, I've earned it, she said. You will always be my favorite discovery but I hope you know I had to let you go. I couldn't bear the sight of you anymore if you weren't all of you. It wasn't you love, it was the world and that is the tragedy of it all, that mighty as you are, you weren't allowed to have your say.

I remember when I decided to let you go. I felt frozen until I washed your ink out in water just the right temperature and wiped you down one last time. I can't remember if I kissed you and held you tight, if I whispered my words of regret as I packed you away for the last time as my world shattered around me.

I hope you're happy. That you are treated with the love and respect you deserve. That he understands you need love and care, some adventure and some bravery. I hope you have ink and sunlight, paper and solemnity; I hope you don't miss me but know how much I miss you, how much I will always miss you.

You were my wings love, I look up into the blue for you- always, always.