Happiness and Home are the Two Ends of a Bracket

 
It's summer again.    rooftop with a starry ceiling.
you asked me.           what I fear the most.
I could have said,      spiders.
with their eight legs crawling on me,
like death on a bed with you,       at an ungodly hour.
or the height, that crushes if you fall,
breaking you into a million pieces.
maybe not more than how broken you were living.
I was thirteen, young and naive, 
heart shattered when a room full of
familiar people said unfamiliar things, 
about me. lies and deception.
my lips almost deceived me and said: people. 
but no. heart murmured.
history remains the documentation of how we befouled. 
our lives are water, boiling in a low flame,
waiting for spring during the long incessant winter blues, 
making every knot tighter.
and I say it: I am afraid of being forgotten.
of being a small smear in the infinite pages of the universe. 
the world will forget us one day,
the city will no longer remember my name
and we would be one with the soil on the earth. 
maybe someone
is forgetting what the colour of my eyes is, 
how my laugh sounds like, how I take my coffee 
or if I forget how it was to hear them
say my name.
I took a list of things that will die with me,
amma’s eyes, appa’s lean bony hands, 
chechi’s voice and  the mass of my misery.
the stars are in the sky. but strange enough,
that they hide when the sun comes out
like how I flee from everything that stains me invisible. 
but to whom can I lie?
if ever written, my autobiography
would be made up of mostly two sentences
I am drowning, I am lost.
will it be okay if I don’t leave things
for people to remember me by? I fear that the earth 
would want to erase that too.

I watched as the broken heart turned 
whole again and smiled.
but mine was a ruin, to begin with.
love is embarrassing, 
but it is everything.
that’s how the story starts.
two people meet, and the second
one finds the moon in their eyes. 
your name stuck in my throat like
a pendant attached to a woman's neck,
voice ringing in my ears like beethoven's. 
symphony clashed together in c minor,
and I hung onto you like a child to her distressed mother.
your being lingering under the shadows of my poems, 
hidden until I painted it red, one afternoon.
but, now they carry a void, sucking everything in,
a black hole in all its glory.
I wouldn't know love even if you spelt it out for me: 
in block letters,
I wouldn't know what to do with it.
so, I don't flinch when the knife sinks in,
it being a small cut among all the untreated scars. 
last week, under the angels, when evening light
seeped in through the cathedral windows,
I made a promise
to myself, to let the world heal the cracks of my existence. 
what was once meant to be forever,
its ashes now spread on the ocean, 
a new tombstone in the cemetery,
a closed chapter.
but some time ago, in that one moment, 
I swear we were infinite.

 
sometimes, I feel like
the earth is my playground, it grounds me 
reminds me that I’m a child, after all.
a child looking for a place to feel at home, 
to be accepted, to belong.

no one has ever been more crueler than life, 
it takes my every breathing moment,
to paint a big flashing neon red sign 
that I do not simply belong,
like a sore thumb that sticks out,
a black sheep among the pristine white flock,
the injured among the healed.

two am in the morning,
I am binge-watching my favourite show,
finding relief in the fact that
even when the world outcasts the hero, 
he still rises up like a phoenix.

I feel my heart pumping against the world’s rhythm, 
unable to match the sweet melody of a morning bird, 
the crashing sound of waves, my friend’s laughter,
or my mother’s lullaby.

I tried to drench myself in colours,
smile till my cheeks hurt, put a mask on, and went out 
into the world, just so it could laugh at me for even trying. 
then it slowly hit,
when we belong we feel joy,
I belong when I’m watching them making memories
I belong when I could feel the warmth in my 
father’s hug, and my mother’s homemade sweets,
I belong when I am out there by myself, 
watching the world thrive.

as I got older,
I stumbled upon this truth,
happiness and home are the two ends of a bracket, 
and in between I find where I belong.