Uma Bokil

And if your skin must thicken, may it thicken with love.

[umabokil]

Wait, whispers the air—for the saltiness to dissipate and for the aroma of cherry love to waft through. The salt shall roll with the waves and become one with the sea, and the humid summer shall make the gloomy sky pour down a relief. Wait for all the good things, it tells me. Wait, just like I do.

[umabokil]

Dipped my ink in forgiveness for a change and what came out of me thus was love—pure like a child’s laugh; unadulterated like blood from a cut; boisterous like a party, and wild like the entwined branches of a mammoth tree on the moor.

[umabokil]

You should know that my heart tugs and twists at my resolve to melt into my utter desperation to crawl to you; but these are words that I’ll evaporate before I even let them brush your eyes. You call out to me like an echo from a valley of ghosts—haunting yet so, so addictive. And truth be told, I am almost tempted to slice off all my tethers and hammer down my mirror of sanity that I’ve built so carefully, broken shard after broken shard, and take the fucking leap into your arms somewhere deep down from where there will be no return. Almost. You should know that I’ll probably stay in the asylum of my own mind, wandering insanely amidst your thoughts; your voice; your imprints; hoping and building a mirage that doesn’t hurt me the way reality does. On the other side of the mirage, we laugh in each other’s arms. You kiss my temple as you pass by me in our home. I breathe without feeling there’s a boulder on my chest and I wake up in an embrace that is eternal with your love. On the other side of the mirage, I am yours and you are mine, and we are never just ‘almost’. On the other side of the mirage, we are. But love, I’m sorry; my knuckles are white from clutching the hammer too tightly, but I am not breaking the mirror this time. I am not taking the leap. I am not giving myself up just for the hope that we can be. My molars grind against each other trying to delude me to let go of my restrain; it’s unbearable for my heart to not beat to the rhythm of how you speak. But if I fall, I know I’m hitting hard ground, because waiting in that valley is neither you nor your ghost. It’s always just been me in this asylum I’ve built in your name.

You just come to me for vacation when you’re bored.

[umabokil]

I think about the tragedy that our love story will always be: the last names we will never take; a love that will only ever remain as the one against which all other dishevelled, sorry attempts of love shall be measured; a question that will always remain: What if? What if? What if?

Ours will be a broken vinyl, a myth, a lore; a love people would only wish were true knowing that they can’t find it anymore. It will be the climactic end of a love that felt like it was God’s kiss. And every night, I’ll wonder into my pillow: What if? What if? What if?

[umabokil]

They call it singing when I’m raging my throat out; it’s almost like they find melody in my screams.

[umabokil]

A list of things that remind me to stay kind:

Sunlight in golden streams / my pet trusting me / flowers and their delicate petals / smiles between strangers / strangers going out of their way to help each other / plants / water finding the wild animals and quenching their thirst / grain feeders for birds / hugs / empathy / listening without making it about me / ants as a team / finding out your poem helped someone heal / not knowing what the others have been through / toddlers looking out for inspiration / being someone’s safe space; yes, even a stranger’s / believing in yourself even if you’re the only one / encouraging someone to pursue art not because they’re talented but because they can and want to / finding your family among faces you’ve never before seen in your life / finding your new puppy/kitten cuddled in the crook of your neck on its first night in a new home/ the flipping tables of life / love in all it’s unpredictable forms / not knowing who’s wailing storms on the inside / realising that we’re only a small part of the universe/ and that we should be kind not so that others are kind to us / or even because it is the right thing to do / but just because.

Be kind just because.

[umabokil]

I am consumed by a buzz-between-my-bones deficiency of love and loving. Sprinkling my apology onto your cereal after a fight to make it extra sweet just so you like it. Wearing your shirt around my bosom like a tree cupping my barrenness. A whiff of your scent residing in every pore through which I breathe, and I connect the dots between my breaths that hum “Yours. Yours. Yours.” Steady. Calm. At home. And I wait, wait, wait for you to come barging and knocking in my life and knocking me over. Please do. I pray. Please do.

[umabokil]

Don’t you say you had nothing to do with how your love shifted the way my cells began to breathe better. You breathed fire into my flame and burned with me without getting torched. You held me like a home holds a baby. You cradled my heavy breathing when I woke up after nightmares and you carried me in your eyes and by your side; shoulder to shoulder. It’s ironic that you’re my oxygen when you so clichedly take my breath away with every step you take towards me. But you make my blood rush even when you calm it. You’re a complete paradox in this whirlpool of love, romance and intimacy and it’s driving me so crazy I don’t know whether to go down on my knees crying or do that and ask you to spend your life with me in the middle of sobs. You’ve had me insane ever since you walked into my life, yet for the very first time, I feel like I have finally stopped feeling crazy. Where the hell have you been?

[umabokil]

Nose tips brushing, teasing, nudging each other as our foreheads remember the warmth of the other. Absorbing. Imprinting. Etching. Like a realisation that came rushing, flooding our blood with something no book, no movie warned us about. Your lips brush my pointed nose as your tears fall on my cheek. Neither knows why we’re crying, yet we do—all too much. The overwhelming surge of whatever this is; the ‘if I let you go right now, I’ll stop breathing’ grip that has my nails clawed into your shirt; your hands holding me in a tenderness yet slippery obsession. “Mine,” scream your eyes. “Mine,” quiver your lips. “Mine. Mine. Mine,” thunders your heartbeat when you pull me into your chest and drown out the noise with your arms covering my ears. Love? Lust? Want?

All of it?

All of it. All of you.

[umabokil]

Today, my heart goes out to poets. For the way they just get it. For the way they carve words directly onto our souls whether or not they get medals for it. They should get medals for it. I am in awe of the way poets feel: a bit messy from the spill of hurt blood on their shirts and the remnants of love around their lips like they hogged on wine, yet continuing to do the absolutely courageous thing and breathing; loving; feeling the next day. Warriors with scars on their souls, I tell you. What must they be made of? Heartdust? Sunshine and storms? Lightning? Thunder? The ability to absorb grief like a sponge? Maybe all of it? Poets are creators. They birth what we cannot put nor fathom through words. Poets get it. Poets just get it.

[umabokil]

I went down a guilt spiral five minutes ago about how all my posts are about “I” and how I had barely written anything that did not include first-person pronouns. I spiralled further from there as I analysed whether that was the reason I was not able to write my novel. Whether it was because my writing had become so limited, so restrictive, that I couldn’t think past “I”. I spent a good fifteen minutes after that trying to come up with random prompts and ways I could spurt my poetry to life without making it about me. I failed.

I challenged myself further and made myself write about anything which did not include a human pronoun. I spiralled even further down when I couldn’t. The spiral widened when it made me think whether I was restricting writing itself by putting this restriction on me. Write whatever the hell’s coming to your mind right this instant, my mind hissed at me; or maybe it was my words.

And now, here we are. Me, staring at my blinking cursor, and you, in the future (for you it would be now), trying to humour me when all that might be going through your head is, “What on earth is she rambling about?” For what it’s worth, thank you if you stayed till here. It’s more than what I could ask for.

I guess what I am rambling about is the wired brain of a writer and poet trying to coexist with an existential crisis and an imposter syndrome. Trust me; it’s quite the cocktail. I carry fictional characters in the form of metaphors in my brain and I have no idea how to humanise them. So, I think, my brain does the escapist thing and writes; or rants. It escapes what it needs to confront. It runs from what is difficult. It chases what comes naturally under the pretence of how poetry happens to the poet. Even though yes, that is exactly how it works.

I think the tussle between my brain and I being hard on each other will persist. No reason why you should be caught in the crossfire. But I think it’s just a poet thing. Poets are like close friends. If you have them in your corner, every word out of your mouth is golden magic. So, if you can relate, know that you can ramble any time. And really, thank you, if you stayed even till here, so that in case you were able to figure out what the hell I’ve been rambling about, maybe you could tell me.

[umabokil]

So I bestowed upon myself the kindness I thought came from other streets; other cities; other hearts. It still might, but I stopped hovering in the dimly lit porch under the fly-picking sole yellow light and awaiting its arrival like a damsel for her groom. I walked back inside and wore the softest tshirt I could find. It had stains and holes of a story that was five years old, but I always kept it for the fabric. Hugged myself in the mirror and played some classics. Poured myself some red and got to cooking. I chose the best for the night. I chose kindness for myself after many a sleepless night. I wasn’t going to replace the love that we get from others with my own. That was the lesson I needed to learn all along. I needed my kindness, yes. So, I walked back inside, but I left the door open for any kindness that needed a shelter, too.

[umabokil]

This time, I dare to flap my wings into the heat of the battle; to look into death’s eyes and roar a warcry; to beckon it with a fight in my fists; to lick the fear from its rays. This time, I am Icarus. And I am burning the sun.

[umabokil]

I’ve enjoyed drinking your love from the veins in your palms as they cup my chin. Satiating gulps in crimson quench my thirst and my search for a fire that keeps alive my own. And as I drink from your pulse, I rise, rise, rise.

For you. Because of you. With you.

[umabokil]

So many storms that could’ve broken me yet it was you who did.

[umabokil]

I feel pretty underwhelmed living in the dreary reality of the world. Poetry has not caused me to lose my sanity in so long. I miss the adrenaline of abstract imagery that speaks more volumes than I could muster confessing in my diary. It hasn’t sucked the air out of my lungs with its subtle, dark truths and hasn’t made my pulse race with fairytale hope in a while. It hasn’t made me daydream of a forever romance, it hasn’t made me gush like a river, it hasn’t made me weep oceans into my own pits. I sigh, bemused, at the numbness that makes my joints creak. Let me feel alive today, I wish upon every first ray of the sun. Let me feel my blood rush to my veins. Let me bleed in love and pain. Let me smile through a crackling, crumbling heart. Let me feel my scars stitch up with hope. Let me cup some sunlight and sea in my palms and wear the blue of the skies in my hair. Let me braid daisies into clouds and bury sparkling secrets that become sprouted verses long after I’m gone. I want to see the world green with poetry, but I’ve been pushed around too much in the polluted, brown, dusty life. I want to see the world green with poetry. I want to see the world saved by poetry.

[umabokil]

Let’s not wait for death to make us start living.