Pity

I grieve as she sings

Her woes of broken wings

That will not fly

Because she won’t

And in sync with the refrain

Rattles the wretched chain

That holds her hostage

I persist to open

And unlock her voice

That must have more to say.

She holds it shut

Having made her choice

Unyielding, as I pray

I try I try I try

To drive her out

I cannot stop

I cannot let go

‘How could you not want more?’

I cry.

She pities from her cage

She pities my freedom

Wasted on her

‘Just like you don’t’

She tells me.

And then there is nothing to pity

Because she won’t she won’t she won’t

The Spell Breaks

Silence she startles

With her witch-cackle

And ignorant folk

Unacquainted with the joke

Cluck their tongues

As she empties her lungs

Into staccato peals of mirth

To me they turn

Expecting communal scorn

I return a look perplexed

They want the joy annexed?

How shall I dare rebuke

Laughter that might nuke

The cries of despair stark

Only I hear in the dark

Freak

Rejoicer of the mundane

I watch from my sanctum

As they paint their faces

with plastic smiles

And each other 
with kisses

that mean nothing

And I am the FREAK.

Traitor

Eyes clench

in a redundant endeavour

To hold her captive

as she abandons me

She knows not

That I care not

About losing sleep

But

The dream

That dissolved

In its wake

(crying) At the movies

I was eight years old when my father took me to watch ‘Titanic’. I bawled like the child I was when Jack froze in the ocean and Rose screamed herself hoarse asking him to come back. (I always thought she was talking to him, not the rescue-boat.)

Then came an array of ridiculously cheesy Bollywood movies I now abhor, and I cried in the climax of every single one. Openly. I never cared about what people thought of the copious tears that flowed from my eyes at clichéd dialogue. I can still vividly hear the sniggers of the college-going kids in the back row as they pointed at me blowing my nose loudly during the mother-son reunion scene in K3G (along with every alternate scene in that movie). My mother shook her head lovingly in my direction as I cried over the deaths of protagonists in k-serials who would eventually be re-born.

Friends and family chided me playfully throughout my childhood about the involuntary nature and eagerness of my tear ducts. I responded by smiling shyly, because it was never something I was ashamed of. On the contrary, I think I even felt pride at the thought that only I could feel this way. These stories and the characters in them spoke to me like they did to no one else. I smiled like I knew some secret they didn't.

Saving face

‘I'm out with family.’ The lie falls seamlessly from his lips, as he presses his index finger to them signalling me to stay quiet, cradling his phone with his other hand. 

I momentarily phase out staring at his mouth, thinking of all the different ways I've imagined him using it. Quick and passionate in the rain. Lazily tongues sliding together as we lie in the grass on a breezy afternoon. Tickling my ear with whispered nonsense as we hold each other close. 

He coos a vomit-inducing endearment into the receiver that snaps me out of my reverie. To me it sounds profane. He hangs up with almost bored, obligatory words of love that would sound real to an untrained ear, but I have been studying him too well to not see through them. I realise how pathetic I am to want those counterfeit feelings, in the very least.

Ruler

His miniature fingers

Scratched the colours

Across the page

Into a collage of nonsense

And they called it Art

But then he grew up

And they forced into those hands

A ruler

And a warning

To stay within the lines

Now they say

He knows his place

After they made him forget