•jan•

i drink and coffee and cry Instagram: @janviisharrma

[bloodandblackink]

The house was quiet, except for the faint sound of bangles clinking against each other as I sifted through a box of jewellery.

Because love isn’t gold, it isn’t diamonds or silk-wrapped promises. It isn’t something that can be bought, gifted, or put on display.

I close my eyes, remembering the way your breath used to settle against my skin, the way your name never quite left my lips, even in silence. The world has given me everything it thought I needed, but it has taken you. And in the end, that’s the only thing that matters.

If you come, let it hurt. Let the weight of the bangles leave red marks on my wrists, let them press into my skin the way love has always pressed into my soul; beautiful, painful, unforgettable. Because the truest love doesn’t shine. It lingers. It cuts. It leaves pieces of itself behind.

I push the box of gold away. I don’t need it. I have never needed it. I only need you. Your hands, your breath, your name in the silence.

If you come, bring glass bangles; so that even if they shatter, I will know you were here. That, even for a moment, love was real. And for me, that has always been enough.

[bloodandblackink]

Hatred is still an attachment.

another tuesday morning, gently resting my hands on the porcelain sink as I took a deep sigh. I washed my face, and went out into the kitchen brewing the same coffee we bought only to put it in that one stained mug that I haven’t washed in days . Re-reading the same sticky notes that you left on my fridge. I’m fed up of this sick routine you know. I opened the door, grabbed my keys and went out. That very same unreleased track that I once played for you.

As I drived I started thinking. What is it that you’re doing right now? Are you with someone else? Perhaps someone better and less insecure I guess? Only to realise that I took a wrong turn. I haven’t been on this road before. I continued to drive on silently with tate McRae’s voice echoing in my car. This song feels like all the things I expected you to be and all the things you weren’t. It made feel so many things at once.

I continued to drive on when I noticed a little cemetery on my right. A rush of emotions. Weren’t cemeteries “our” thing? I stopped only to realise That all along I was begging for something that died long back. It was in the middle of the woods. I walked in, it felt humid and as if it hadn’t been disturbed since a long time. The flowers had dried, like the ones I gave you and the shurbs, overgrown like my expectations of what you never were. The ground was damp and it all felt very humid. It started drizzling. I heard a whistle, maybe it was just the wind. Something creaked behind me as the chirping of the birds grew louder. I turned back and I saw an old lady.

I assumed that she had a dead relative here. She asked in a concerned voice, “what’re you doing here?” “Oh, I-my car I- just-“ “shush, come with me if you have nothing special to do here.” I was unsure about this but I still nodded. We continued to walk. She looked like someone who was disinterested in the pursuits of what old people usually had an opinion on. She had aged beautifully, she felt like old piano blues, old photographs, a bedroom left alone, and unspoken feelings. I wanted to start a conversation because the silence was starting to creep me out. “So, what are we doing?” “Missing an old lover, who died long back.” She replied sadly. I could see a tear at the corner of one of her left almond shaped eye but I decided not to say anything.

We stopped at a grave, she gently dusted it with a hankerchief and sat near it. “I come her quite often but I haven’t seen you here. You know people don’t quite come to a cemetery unless they’re grieving.” I gave her a confused look.

“I miss my lover, I know you do too. From what your face says right now, you miss someone who felt like autumn mornings, freshly cut grass, soft hair, love ballads, daisy chains And starry nights. You don’t have to say anything sweetheart your eyes are a way of listening to the shapeless silence within you.”

“But I don’t love-“ “I know you do, and the concept of being in love is very beautiful isn’t it? Its like you look at someone one day and you realise you see them in a different light than the one you saw them in before? That’s love.”

“But I hate him-“ hatred is an attachment that makes you look at him from a distance, but he never really leaves your head does he?” I turned back to answer and she wasn’t there anymore. All that was there of her, was her grave next to the man she loved the most.

[bloodandblackink]

The inside of a poet’s mind

(From a person who uses it as a coping mechanism.)

Someone wise once said and I quote “we’re poets honey, we bleed on paper.”

what and who are poets actually? Just some humans that according to mentally stable humans with sane minds are somehow blessed with the “art of portraying situations beautifully on a piece of paper?” but, what are they if not this?

Who are they;

A poet’s mind is like a blank canvas, that has had numerous emotions spilled over it like paint. The pages are actually nothing more than bandages to us. We just put those on our wounds to stop the bleeding. It’s not our fault the blood decides to act like ink. The process; It’s never beautiful, its ugly, messy, horrible..slitting our wounds again and again to let the poisoned blood by past lovers out again and again, so that it never gets the power to fully ruin us. As gus waters once said and I quote,”you put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do the killing.”

Nevertheless, they break and break. the beautiful thing about poets is that, their minds; they’re tricky.

Love them; and they’ll make the whole world fall in love with you.

See yourselves from their eyes and you’ll never see yourself the same again.

Die; and you’ll be alive in their pages.

Break them; and they’ll end up breaking every heart around them

[bloodandblackink]

Here’s what you should know in case we never talk again;

(Because I’m leaving.)

• These nights I write about you, more oftenly than I used to, incessantly, obsessively, till I suffocate in my tears.

I never said it but I remember digging my nails in your back so that you won’t go away, you were bleeding and so was I, this wasn’t love.

[bloodandblackink]

Dedicated to everyone who wonders if I’m writing about them, I am;

1) you’re just another picture that i burn tonight.

2) you’re like flecks of sugar on my tongue, you taste so sweet at times. I don’t want you to go away but you melt and disappear.

3) my mouth always trembles when I try to tell someone I am in love with them because they get scared and leave. I made the same mistake the fourth time.

4)I thought you were the poem I never knew how to write, look at me licking love from silver knifes now.

5) this bottle of poison tastes bitter but so did your lips the last time I tasted them.

6) I always thought, I’d write love poems for you, and here I am writing suicide notes whilst being dead about my undying love for you.

[bloodandblackink]

Broken crayons; still colour

I told you I was hopeless,

That I wanted my life less than death.

But you knew that if I’d jump into a pool right now, I’d hold my breath.

You sat alone in the corner,

Pressed into a wall;

Thinking “Do they know I’m present,

That I’m here at all?”

I sat there and saw you all along,

the way you needed to be looked at.

Like the world would crumble

and I won’t blink at all.

From the grand illusions to the broken

promises, we tried and tried,

But “the words turned into ashes when they tried to leave our lips” I cried.

I was obsessed with the “picture perfect”,

I searched the world inside and out.

For a single moment I could say,

Is what life’s all about.

Until I met an angel shivering on a street,

I draped my jacket over his shoulder.

Over his folded amber wings,

I promised to be there as I watched him grow older.

You unstitched my lips and

I finally got a chance to speak,

I took the same thread and sewed up your throat like rhapso in the Ancient Greek.

I know I’m not the one,

So I couldn’t help but cry..

I still won't accept my own advice .

I'd live that moment ,

Blushing ,

As my fingers trembled ,

For i wrote .

That it’s okay to be a

little damaged sometimes,

We’re just two broken crayons

that can still draw,

A million times.

[bloodandblackink]

her;

You made crowns out of your bones,

And placed them on her head.

You loved her with fragments of yourself

until they were all dead.

The last time you kissed her,

she slit opened your throat.

As the leaves begin to stir,

She gave her heart to

the man in the long black coat.

[bloodandblackink]

Broken crayons; still colour

him;

I only saw him once in December,

I’m still confused.Screaming at me, remember?My body is still bruised.

He stitched my lips,

the blood on the walls dripped as it rained.

My soul screamed as it slips,

Out of every slit in my body,

Where love was once contained.

Never in a million times

did my heart agree,

That I was a flower and he was a bee.

He took everything I had for free,

I stood there,

staring at him,

Hoping that one day,

he’ll also fall in love with me.

[bloodandblackink]

you’re like flecks of sugar on my tongue. I don’t want you to disappear, but after a while you’re just gone.

[bloodandblackink]

I don't even love myself at this point/do you?

[bloodandblackink]

It's been a while since I got to know about my anorexia, I don't look at my body the way that I used to. I wonder if its still the same for you?

[bloodandblackink]

how do I tell you that I haven’t eaten in days and that all I see are a set of hollow bones that echo when You shout at me saying that you love my body and that its beautiful. I don't want to tell you this but it feels like a lie.

[bloodandblackink]

You’re like warm wax and dried flowers dripping on the top of my tongue, sealing my letters to myself about how tough it is to look at myself in the mirror now.

[bloodandblackink]

When I’m with you the devil doesn’t speak to me anymore.