apricity in ink

honeyed ruin and tragic longing

[semper-in-flore]

and i wonder if one day she'll start writing about you too just another poet who made you her tragic muse i'll tell myself it's a coincidence that her writing's just like mine that we somehow just have mutuals and strangely similar lines i wonder if you see us as all the same figurine vastly different shadows with the same darkness beneath or maybe it's just you that always yearns to be a muse and when the verse stops selling you cut the spine loose.

[semper-in-flore]

and somehow sometimes the dullest streetlamps illuminate familiar roads far more than the brightest ones.

[semper-in-flore]

i think how we feel about people is largely governed by how they make us feel about ourselves

we love those that make us feel loved, appreciated, worthwhile, chosen.

and we loathe those that make us feel loathed, generic, replaceable, secondary.

we see people not for who they are. we see them for what they cause.

[semper-in-flore]

the oil spills glitter under scorching heat as potential withers under lacking conscientiousness herald the miracle that turns barely scalded hands into sinewy hardworkers.

[semper-in-flore]

and when i will be mature enough i will realize i need not seek comfort in any boy but my brother and need not cry to any man but my father i need not lay bare my heart for anyone but my mother nor discuss my woes with anyone but my best friend skepticism will precede every word i spill over for everyone who only saw my worth as a sponsor or a lover.

[semper-in-flore]

and ever so often

the heart turns deaf

to the brain's persistent rambling

[semper-in-flore]

and if i broke all my fingers

and bared my grave

wouldn't she simply

fill that space?

there is no worse sight

than the smiling faces;

the fear of being

easily replaced

[semper-in-flore]

and when you lose the one that made you lose another do you rejoice or grieve double?

[semper-in-flore]

i didn't wish you happy birthday this year i'd tell myself it's because it's been years. more years of not speaking than years i'd known you. that it's because i treated you terribly, spoke vainly and never cleared out room in my heart for you. i kept putting it off, the pretence of someday was my little white lie. but retrospect is a horrible thing. a spear that reminds me of all that could've been, of how i didn't lose an admirer, but a friend. a friend who almost instilled religion into me, who made me love gothic literature and dystopia, who obsessed over math until i almost liked it and wouldn't have dared to dream until i let them. i know it's too late. the castle has crumbled and my instagram was deactivated for good reason. but every may, i shall sit in the rubble. and never wish you again.

[semper-in-flore]

we convince ourselves there are no villains nor saints until we hold on to the wrong ropes love the wrong people and neglect those who condense for our rains stay out of the shade, we run into the sun scald and gray, for all the wrong people in all the right ways all the right people, driven away.

[semper-in-flore]

the philanthropist turns miser marred by humanity just as we turn strangers marred by love and just like that the altar becomes the grave

[semper-in-flore]

there were sparkles in their eyes. sparkles in the eyes of the little girls barely half my size. sparkles that died, darkened away when they heard that i wouldn't be accompanying them.

we automatically begin to owe something to those who look up to us. we carry a fishing net on our backs, fishing for stars to brighten their skies. and we automatically hold a sort of weight when we disappoint them. one that is very different from defeat or regret.

i hope to make beautiful things for them. for those who see me as something more. for those who hold sparkles in their eyes, sparkles that dare never be dimmed.

[semper-in-flore]

overwriting the same words with a better pen, only makes it more illegible.

[semper-in-flore]

chivalry loses all its value when taken credit for

[semper-in-flore]

I think it's sick. I think it's absolutely sick how titles and the way we start behaving because of them make us end up losing people we were genuinely friends with. I think they tell us "this is not the age for this" for good reason. So that we don't end up eroding our respect in other's eyes, don't end up having to stop all conversation with the people to whom we used to give itineraries of our days about. And yes, our love is fleeting, no emotion is as permanent as the greed that causes theft or the hatred that causes murder. But is it so wrong that I thought of telling you that I am unwell? I have so many others, friends like you once were, who I can talk to, rant to, trust and cherish. But I think it's absolutely horrible how a title could pull us apart. Like the royals pulled each other apart for the throne, like candidates pull each other apart during elections, and like my heart pulls itself apart when I think of all those I do not speak with anymore, for something so petty it is laughable at.

It's sick. It really is.

[semper-in-flore]

and somehow everytime i pray for my parents' suffering, pain and dissapointment to end, i fall sick. it might just be horrible timing. it might be my habit of centering everything around myself. but my deep breaths smell like ammonia now. and i'm slowly losing the will to replace it with petrichor. i weigh the pros and cons like the sabzi bhaiyas weigh potatoes on delhi streets. like my life is a poker chip i'm deliberating whether to throw. they flash in my head like car headlights. the smiling faces. smiling over my grave. sighs of relief, they're so loud. so loud. what is short term sorrow for long term freedom? one becomes attached to a burden when made to sit with it for long enough, but the eventual release is beyond compare. "call 999" they say. but really, that's the last thing someone who wants to stop bothering people will do. i try to recover in the hope that i will fully recover. that i will reform. that instead of running away, leaving it behind, i will fix it. fix the sorrow. fix the dissapointment. i can do it, can't it? god, i just wish i could convince myself.

[semper-in-flore]

oh to think so much and yet not at all. is our mind really so scalar that we cannot control the direction in which we think? to let our doubts and insecurities latch onto us, growing onto our brains like mould. why was your best friend so happy when i asked him if he knew? i let every possibility run through my head like blood through my veins. you would've sighed when it ended. i just hope it wasn't in relief. my reasoning and logic fear the wrath of my heart. it's the hardest to move on from something that lived in possibilities. i think the happiest circumstances can lead to the guiltiest people. and the simplest gestures can lead to the most horrid spirals.