This is Where I Write Things

and take pictures of things and colour things and draw things. But mostly it's where I write things.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

A Death

I will fly to Bombay tomorrow morning, seated between my sister and the sunrise.

We will walk into that apartment; pick our way through piles of dusty Marathi books eat parathas soaked in home-made ghee and tell each other jokes soaked in home-grown sarcasm; we will not cry. We will not tell our cousin that her favorite uncle is dead.

We will take short walks in the humid parking lot and track in dust that will settle on every surface until our vision is blurred by the white noise of our cathode ray television set that will never work again.

We will not tell the neighbours that our lives are better now. That buried deep within this grief there exists an unfolding freedom; to wear tank tops and short shorts, to stay in bed some mornings, to talk about love without being shut down by the heavy hand of heteronormative patriarchy, to write, to say as much as we want to.

We will hang a hastily photoshopped portrait On the wall of our living room, and glance at it occasionally with a faint sort of fondness that is devoid of respect; we will not wish for things to go back to the way they once were.

We will cry, sometimes. We will not be ashamed of our tears. We will wipe them away with the yellowed pages of books that are parts of stories that are bigger than those they contain.

We will laugh, sometimes. We will laugh without abandon, without shame, at the strange subtleties that we have been wrapped up in.

We will sit down to do the daily crossword and find a blank that we cannot fill. We will not think too much about it; we will move on.

__________

Rewritten and extended as a spoken word piece.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

12 // vulnerability

It's not easy, ripping yourself apart at the seams (no matter how drunk you happen to be) feeling the thread that you've laced over your wounds pop apart like a few thousand firecrackers

and acknowledging that existence isn't your biggest worry; that you care about more than how long each line of your poem is.

It's not easy.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

11 // entropy

I fold my clothes neatly and put them away in the hope of being able to decrease my own entropy, expelling explosions of randomness out into the universe; like stepping in a pile of concrete dust on a street corner, washing your feet to rid yourself of memories that cannot be held together as one single entity.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

10 // words

My eyelids flutter closed, sealing dead metaphors into a pit of darkness from which they can never escape. The world does not need any more weights lifted off its shoulders. The fabric of our reality has worn thin with words, wasting away precious paradigms, that now exist only as the poorly constructed playthings of someone pretending to write.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

9 // suffocation

I wrap myself up in white gauze that is quickly stained a sluggish betadine brown, like freshly caramelized sugar that wafts through the walls with the promise of burnt tongues and light heads, held down only   by a piece of string. I breathe through the manufactured yarn over, with chafed lips and unseeing eyes, camouflaged against the muddy memories of the world.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

8 // indifference

The jagged edges of your broken voice have been smoothed over with time, falling in great big dollops against the top of my head. It trickles down my back, seeping into my mottled skin, diffusing through my body a wave of self-hatred that I no longer feel.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

7 // blue

I am stuck between the white-washed walls of my childhood and the confusion that rests in the spaces between an explosion of colour. Blue is no longer the colour of sadness. It is windows and feelings and the highlights in your hair. It is the deodorant that you use on a particularly sweaty day, and the softness of your gaze on the back of my head from halfway around the world.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

6 // identity

It's tough deciding which person to write in. Do I write in myself or do I write in you, looking over your shoulder while you look over mine as you read these words?

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

5 // morning

You wake up to the smell of last night's reheated dinner and the sound of the window pane scraping against the frame. You know you'll get out of the wrong side of bed even though there's only one side you can get out of. The books piled up beside you are sleeping more comfortably than you ever have.

You breathe in the smell of last night's reheated dinner with a sense of complacency and you can no longer hear the sound of the window pane scraping against the frame.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

4 // pain

The scab on my big toe is safely enclosed in a layer of skin that feels thicker than it actually is. I am reminded of this in subtle ways; my morning routine includes stubbing my toe against the bottom of the bathroom door, and letting my sister drop sleep-riddled sarcasm at my feet.

I don't notice the tiny particles of street dust and caged whispers that enter my body through a wound that pretends it is healing.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

3 // control

A single strand of a spider's web stretches itself out from one end of the room to the palm of my hand. I sway slightly in the gust of wind that breathes in through an unstoppered crack, and a fine dust made of memory and dead skin flutters down to the floor. I keep my hand steady, so as not to disturb the spider sleeping at the other end of the room.

I could break the thread with a sharp downward motion the way I would have in the past, but I have lost so much time (perhaps all of it) that the past does not exist anymore, except as motes of dust that sit unmoving at my feet.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

2 // procrastination

The five hundred and thirteen things that are left unchecked on my to-do list sit heavy on my shoulders and crumble my conscience to dust. The heaviest things on that list are the names of people who I do not recognise anymore.

How long does it take for a promise to break?

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

1 // death

I will fly to Bombay tomorrow morning, seated between my sister and the sunrise. We will walk into that apartment; pick our way through piles of dusty Marathi books and eat parathas soaked in home-made ghee and tell each other jokes soaked in home-grown sarcasm; we will not cry.

We will not tell our cousin that her favourite uncle is dead. We will take short walks in the humid parking lot and track in dust that will settle on every surface until our vision is blurred by the white noise of our cathode ray television set that will never work again.

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

from a moving car

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

       T E A   &   T R A F F I C

  S L O W   &  F A S T

  C A L M   &   F R E N Z I E D

L I G H T   &   D A R K

[this-is-where-i-write-things]

Light

I spread my arms as I lifted up off the ground, I felt light as a feather, Soaring through the air. Below me I could see people and buildings and cars, Each one smaller than the ant that I crushed Beneath the weight of a heavy heart. The air rushed past me as they steadily grew, The people, the buildings, the cars that were once so insignificant. I could feel the golden rays, The sunlight on my back, And the astonished stares of those who were beginning to look up, Shading their eyes from the evening sun. And just as they began to shout, Just before I hit the ground, I felt as light as a feather once more.