Love

And we keep looking for people to love us

Because we have been taught not to love ourselves

Follow The Rhythm… One. Two. Three

Dear A,

Today marks three years since they found you on that lake. What has changed in the last thirty six months, you ask?

One. Two. Three. One Two Three.

Now I know the last place you sat before you walked into the lake. Now I know the place where you used to live, places you loved to visit. Now I know this was not the worst year of my life. I don’t know what’s in store for me, but I do know my past. Losing you was the worst feeling that I have ever felt.

One. Two. Three. One Two Three.

People ask me, isn’t it time enough? When will I become normal again? A, how can you be touched by death and be normal again? I really don’t get it. They ask me, isn’t it time enough to stop romanticizing my grief? Tell me A, why is it okay to stop hurting merely after three years? Who is sitting on their high chair setting a time limit to my grief? Setting a boundary to my friendship? They ask me, who mourns friendship? They confuse it for love. Romantic love. Unrequited love. Isn’t it just sad A that we live in a world where people don’t understand friendship? You are not just someone I met in school or I hung out in the mall. You are my brother. You are my family. You have seen me grow up and you have been there with me every step of the way.

One. Two. Three. One Two Three.

Once someone I knew had said to me, I can see your heart break. I am tired of explaining to people that hearts break all the time even when you are not romantically in love. Isn’t it sad that people just can’t equate love in any other way? I have never run away from this pain. I don’t need your death anniversary to be sad for you. But even if I do take this day to mourn you again, why do I have convince the world that you are worth it? That our friendship is worth it? Why do I have to put up a facade that I am alright?

One. Two. Three. One Two Three.

In case you are wondering, in case you are worried – I am not on a path of self destruction. I study, I drive, I eat, I sleep. I call my family, friends and take care of my social obligations. I go out to movies, shopping and I go to the beach. Everything in my life is going. One. Two. Three. One Two Three. I am content in my own world. But I’ll always miss you. I miss you on days my grades come out. I missed you when my sister got married. I missed you on my graduation day. I miss you on days when so much happens I can’t process it. I’ll always miss my best friend. But other days I will pick myself up and keep on going.

The earth is constantly in motion. I once read a story where the protagonist stopped time by stopping the earth from revolving. However he didn’t take into account Newton’s First Law of motion. Although he stopped the earth from rotating, he forgot to take into account everything on top of earth that was also on motion. So although the earth stopped, nothing on its surface stopped and so everything was destroyed. I should have told you this story sooner A. That way you too would know that you truly cannot stop time, pain, sorrow.

One. Two. Three. One Two Three.

I will not make the same mistake. I know as long as I am in motion, as long as even my grief is in motion, everything else will be fine. Keep the dice turning. I am still dancing. Do you hear that rhythm A. I won’t stop. I promise.

Yours truly,

First Baby Stories

Trigger Warning: Death

Dear A,

Have I ever told you about my cousin who died when she was three years old? It was the 14th of January – Shakrayne: The festival of kites. She was up on the roof, where she shouldn’t have been, trying to catch a kite, she shouldn’t have been trying to catch, and she was alone. When she fell off the roof, they rushed her to the hospital but they were too late. There was too much bleeding, too little time, too little a body. For a long time, I didn’t know about her. No one in the family talked about it. But even now, when I have heard this a hundred times already, my mother can’t stop crying when she talks about her. My mother tells me, people love their first born children differently because it’s the first child you ever held. You watch their first steps, their first words and watch their first – everything!

I have a different hypothesis though. I call it the “First Baby” feelings. It doesn’t have to be your own child for you to love a child, you know? Any baby, the first baby you have seen in your life, takes a special spot in your heart. That is your first baby. I think my cousin was my mother’s first baby, at least those three years she graced this earth. I know that you know that feeling. You saw your cousin as your first baby too, right?

But lately I have been thinking about my aunt. In all these years A, she has never brought up my cousin’s name. It was her first born child. It was her first baby. It must be so incredibly hard for her. You know A, I look at your mother and I see so many people reaching out to her and I feel so guilty. I never reached out to my aunt. I understood her pain, but I never offered to talk about it. Even after you passed away, I have been so self involved in my own sadness, I have failed to see the pain in other people’s eyes. I wonder what will happen if I do bring it up to her. Do you think, she would like to talk about my cousin. Or would I attacking an old wound that doesn’t heal? I don’t know A.

You know, I have a first baby too! He is the most beautiful baby in this world. A, I can’t even imagine anything happening to him. I don’t know how your mother does it, or how my mother does it, or my aunt or any parents/ guardian – how can they let a tiny person hold so much of their love? How can they sleep without fear that something bad will happen? How can they protect a baby against their own fears and negativity without being overprotective? And how can they live when that baby is gone? A, that baby is my heart. I never knew how much love my heart can hold. My grandfather used to say, that love increases vertically. You love your kids more than you love your parents. I never understood that, until now. I love my parents, my family, but that baby is so special. But you already know that, don’t you A. After all you had your first baby too.

Did you think about him A? Did your heart expand and hurt while you thought of him. Did you think this world wouldn’t be a better place without you for him? That there is this form of love only you can give him? I know, you know everything A. But this time, listen. Sometimes you gotta live because someone is relying on you. Because there are so many firsts you still needed to see. Because there are so many moments you needed to be present for.

Hey A, I have another brilliant idea. Why don’t you look out for my cousin up there, and I’ll look out for your first baby! And someday, when we meet again, we can exchange and relive those moments? You’ll do that for me, won’t you A? You know I will.

Love,

How to own your darkness

I have never been afraid of the dark. The dark lives in all of us. Most days we let it sleep, deep inside our heart, behind a locked door. But some days it breaks free from the chains. It comes to find us. Or we go to find it. Then we sit and talk and get to know our dark inside out.

I have sat for months with my dark. The jealousy that never make it pass my lips, the pain that is stored under my eye lids and the silence that holds all my questions and complains – I know them all. I know how they can grow and expand, if only I give them space. I have learned how much they crave attention, all the time. I know even if I sit with them and talk to them and learn to understand their source, at the end of the day, I have to leave them locked.

The dark is haunting. The dark is full of shadows and doubts. The dark has too many misgivings. I have been told to let the dark be. After all opening that door is how it seeps out and takes over. But I have never been able to understand how I can fight something if I don’t know how far it can grasp, how big its dimensions are. Dark will own me anyways if I keep hiding from it.

They tell me to accept others people’s darkness because that is a form of how we show love. So why am I not allowed to love parts of me? Shouldn’t my dedication be towards me? Can I not accept my darkness of what it is without embellishing or demolishing?

So make yourself comfortable on days when you sit with your darkness. Hear it’s stories, knowing they come with their own set of bias’. Learn to talk without being demeaning. Use logic, use emotions or if nothing works fashion lies to put it to sleep. Know your darkness just as well as your know your light. You don’t have to love them equally, but you have to acknowledge they are present, even when in our hearts we all wish they didn’t.

After all if I don’t know my own darkness, how can I ever explain or expect other people to treat it gently? How can I teach them when to feed it and more importantly what tune to play to put it to sleep?

Love My Sadness The Same

Who are you to saunter into my loneliness

And then accuse me of loving my sadness?

I have learned to embrace what is my own.

You, with your hand full of promises,

And heart full of adventure,

Will leave with the first promise of a new adventure.

You do not know how to stay.

And that’s okay;

I accept that’s you.

But I have learned not to call those who leave as my own.

That way lies only heartache.

My sadness remains with me,

My staunchest fighter, holding me strong.

When your promises fade,

My loneliness cascades over every place those promises have touched.

They are like me.

Too often, they don’t know where to go.

So don’t donne on another name

Come to my doorstep and call me to let down my hair.

I am in no need of saving, savior.

I am not your next adventure.

I am not your shelter in the dark.

Don’t come asking me leave my faithful warriors behind

Following you to your new horizon.

If you love me,

Love me more than leaving

Love me enough to stay,

Love my sadness the same.

 

Carving Hurt

I stopped cutting myself the day I realized I couldn’t turn my body into a memorial. I could’t force it to remember pain. Bodies were meant to heal, to forget. I was meant to heal, to forget. I couldn’t turn my body into an alarm clock, a trigger warning. I couldn’t force myself to remember betrayal, and the sting of stigma. I couldn’t carve the heart ache out of me. My body was not a chalk board. I couldn’t write myself a cheat sheet to avoid pain. I will hurt easily. I will scar easily. But lessons were not meant to be hammered into the skin. Blood was never meant to be the price of mistakes. I stopped cutting, stopped hurting when I realized some hurt marks you, penetrating more than your skin. Some hurt owns you, and there is no amount of cutting to cut that out.

After Mourning

I have heard that in Islam, we are told to mourn the dead for three days.

I am not in mourning anymore.

I wear colorful clothes as always. I started wearing all the jewelry I used to love wearing before – ring, toe ring, nose ring. I make plans for the future, the future that doesn’t hold you. I can listen to all the songs that once reminded me of you without tearing up. I can call your mother and have coherent conversation about you. I can close my eyes at night without the thought of you drowning. Gasping for your last breath. Calling someone for help. I can see your pictures and not get shocked all over again. I can dream of you without dreaming your death.

I have not been in mourning for seven hundred and twenty six days.

I don’t feel guilty when I smile or laugh freely. I don’t feel guilty enjoying other people’s company. I don’t feel guilty that the world has gone on without you. I don’t feel guilty that I have something to look forward to, that I have a goal I am working towards. I don’t feel guilty that when I talk about you to someone, it doesn’t make me choke up anymore.

After all, I have not mourned you for a long time.

It’s okay for me to have a life. It’s okay for me to keep breathing. It’s okay for me to love the ocean, love the water. It’s okay for me want something for myself. It’s okay to not shape my life to yours. You are not entitled to my everything. Not anymore. If your death wasn’t about me, then my life shouldn’t have to be about you either.

The fourth day after you died, I woke up feeling as if you had died again. Every fourth day when I am suppose to start living, I remember you dying. And so I start my mourning for three days all over again.

Day One: I mourn for a friend I couldn’t save.

Day Two: I mourn for a friend I couldn’t be.

Day Three: I mourn for all the people who would never know as a friend.

I have mourned you two hundred and forty three times in these past two years.

At first, the grief was so palpable. I could feel it on my finger tips as I reached out to others. I could feel it sitting on top of my voice box, every time I tried to speak. I could feel it cut a riff inside me with its edges to make room. But the edges have smoothed over time. Grief feels more fluid, more easy to handle. I know exactly how to divert my mind every time I saunter too close to a memory. I know to time myself until the pains ebbs away. I know if everything fails, sleep doesn’t. I have learned to maneuver through my head, through my life, may be through grief itself.

I know one day I will stop counting how many times I have mourned for you. All mourning does come to an end, somewhere. If something filled with such vivacity can die, how can something so dark go on? But I am afraid of what’s after mourning.

If I stop mourning you, would it mean I have forgotten you? If I mourn you for as many years as I have known you, would it be okay for it to end? If I stop mourning, would I stop remembering? Would I forgive? If I stop mourning, do I have to start living by myself? At least in sadness, you are with me. If I cut my ties to you, would this count as leaving. Could I be the one who does the leaving?

I don’t know what comes after this. So I start again.

Two hundred and forty four.

Amorphous

Either it was the kindest,

Or the cruelest thing

He had ever done for me.

And I have yet to decide

If I should let it break me,

Or make me amorphous.

Places I Go In Search For Happiness

There is a world inside my head. A world of my making, a world catering to my happiness. Every night when I close my eyes, I go there.

In that world, I am exactly who I want to be. I have everything I need, and everything I want. In that world I meet people, all the people I have ever lost. I go up to them and talk to them – tell them everything that is bothering me. I vent out, until I find the peace that is so elusive in this real world. I see people whose names I have long since forgotten. I ask how they are doing, I tell them all that’s happening in my life.

I go back to places I have not gone back in years. Home. My school. Every time I close my eyes, I can almost trace all the places I have always loved. I can visualize walking through those roads, past my favorite restaurants and haunts.

In my world, I go back to my regrets. I go in search of making different choices, hoping may be then the regret will wash away. Sometimes I go in search of possibilities, to walk through the ‘what ifs’ of life. Sometimes I go looking for people I have yet to meet. I go looking for ghosts, whose voices don’t reach my reality. In that world, I am not limited, helpless.

Some days I go there when the reality is too much to bear. When losses cling to my bones and weigh down my soul, I go in search of oblivion. When I am sleeping, hours pass away. Sadness can’t scratch me. This world of mine becomes a bubble, protecting me from my own demons. Sometimes I feel that if I stay there long enough, may be sadness will stop knocking at my door. 

But I have come to know that’s a slippery slope. Once I start escaping there, I may never come back to this reality. There are people on this side of who needs me. So I think of them and wake up. Every morning. I fight the urge to crawl into bed and stay there. I fight the urge to stare into the distance and lose myself to my thoughts. I fight the urge to close my eyes and keep sleeping. 

You would think, fighting everyday would make me strong. But the truth is this daily fight weakens my resolve. Some days I even lose the fight. Those days I push away everything and give myself into the world inside my head. The wonderful world where I don’t have to fight. Some days I dread coming back to reality. Because coming back always hurt more than the escape.

The first time someone I loved said to me that I have depression, I almost laughed. All this while, I thought I went into my own world to find happiness. Who would have ever guessed, that the very pursuit of happiness would turn out to be a symptom of all that is wrong with me?

Homesick

She asks me, with all the innocence of her nine whole years, Are you homesick? 

I consider my answer for a moment, Yes. 

For what? She questions back.

This time I have no simple monosyllables for her. How can I explain to her what home has always been to me and how many different degrees I miss what it represents.

I want to tell her, may be, I am homesick for the place I have grown up in. That place doesn’t exist anymore. How can it remain unchanged through these years, when nothing has remained the way it once used to be? Is it fair for me to even consider asking the same of a place I love so much? I am homesick for all the people I have loved there, and in all the other places I have been to since then. If love is supposed to stay, why do some people leave? How am I to love people who don’t love me enough to stay?

I am homesick for who I used to be. A little childish, a little unaware of the world around me, taking the kindness towards me for granted. She was more at peace with herself than I ever would be. I am homesick for days when the weight of the world couldn’t chain me to my bedside, days when dreams used to be light enough to carry me through the day.

How can I tell her that I am homesick because I am lost on this journey. I was meant to head somewhere different, but all the detours and shortcuts, falls and failures have set me on a different path. I am not sure where my destination is anymore, so here I am, taking each day as it comes. But some nights I lay awake, frightened, knowing that every step I take, takes me away from home.

I am homesick for the past, because let’s face it, the nostalgia of the past always makes me smile. The past was a good place to be, although I didn’t realize that until it passed away. Now I look back at those bygone moments and know, it will never come to be again. I am not just homesick; everywhere I go I feel less at home. May be I have never had a home.

Perhaps, I am endlessly waiting for something that would never be. Perhaps, I am working towards building my home, the one I never had. I am homesick for something to be. I am homesick for days when the four walls of my home would protect me, not just shelter me. I am homesick for a place where happiness would stay, not just come to visit. How can I ever tell her what homesickness really feels like?

So instead I wish in my heart, with all my heart, please, let her never find out what it is.

Tell me

Tell me, how would you describe me to the next girl you meet?

Would you call me naïve because I believed in love,

That you didn’t think exist?

Would you call me easy,

Because I helped pave your way through my heart?

Would you call me complicated

Or clingy

Because I tried to salvage what we had.

Would you call me a tragedy?

Would you give my name an existence?

Would you ever whisper it like a question,

A prayer,

Or an enigma?

Would you tell the next girl you fall for,

That I was in love with you

But you never were​.

Would you call me crazy

Or too dependent on others?

Would you say you escaped an emotional cannonball?

Would you say I chose her

Because she was made of stone and granite

With ice running through her veins.

But would you ever tell her

That when you cut me open

I bled just like a mere mortal –

Flesh and blood pumping with so much emotion

That even if you scour all the languages on earth

You will never be able to name everything I feel.

Would you even know all that about me to tell her?

Curator of Words

I have been taught words are valuable. I have been taught to say words with care, with confidence. I have been taught words have weight. And so I have lived, stowing away words inside of me, thinking their value would be lost on the outside world.

Khoma– means forgive. Amake khoma kore diyo. Forgive me.

There are things I have never said. Too often I think I have the time to say all the things I want. So I hold back my words for a better time. My mother always taught me to apologize to people every time I say goodbye to them. After all you never know when would be the last time you see them, she said. I didn’t learn that lesson until it was too late.

Bhalobasha. Love. Bhalobashi. I love. Bhalobasho. You love.

There are things I am afraid to say. Words are powerful. They can lift you up, empower you to the point where you bring out your best version. Words can also shackle you, can tear you apart. Why would you ever give someone the power to do either of those things?

Chahida. Want. Ami chai. I want.

There are things that should never be uttered. Some words are cursed. The moment they fall from your lips they turn cold, never to be fulfilled. At least, that’s the way I see it. So I sealed them away, never to be allowed to drip at desperation.

Amar – mine.

Tomar – yours.

Anantakaal – forever.

I don’t want these words anymore. Take them away from my vocabulary. Scratch them out. Words have been my cage. I don’t think they were ever meant to pile up inside my heart until I couldn’t escape their echo. Sometimes I pour myself into things I can never make myself say and then lament when they are never heard. Words are not meant to be unsaid. They are not meant to be lost between sighs and unsaid goodbyes. They are not meant to not mean anything. 

So I sit inside the hollow of my heart rearranging these shobdos. If only I can connect them together in such a way that they can make past my lips, may be they would stop leaving footprints and shadows and dents. Perhaps then, I will learn to love the simplicity of those words once again like a tourist visiting their favorite destination, instead of being curator of all things forgotten.

Loving the Lost People

Lately I have been losing people

All over the place.

I lost my best friend’s arms in Dhaka.

They never held me again

To sooth away sorrows

I could not always explain.

I lost my mother’s smile

When she sat on an airplane

And returned home without me.

I lost my friends’ laughter

Still echoing somewhere in that one bedroom apartment.

I lost the twinkle of my sister’s eye

When she moved away to California.

I lost a piece of myself somewhere between Virginia and Florida.

I can tell it was important,

But it’s gone now,

Replaced by something far less valuable.

Lately loss feels heavier than love.

Both of them are four letter words,

So how can one weigh more than the other?

I still don’t understand.

Love feels transitory,

Loss feels like home,

Like it’s somewhere I have always known.

Loss is one place I can always come back to

I can’t say that about love.

Lately I have been losing people

Like puzzle pieces.

As if, I remember the exact way

My best fried called my name.

But I have forgotten the sound of his voice.

I remember his childhood face,

But I have lost how he looked right before he died.

I have lost all the tears I have cried in Texas,

But I found peace in friendship.

If only I could put the puzzle together,

It would all make sense.

But the lost pieces never come back.

Lately I am tired of grasping

Pieces of people I have lost.

They are gone;

They won’t ever come back.

Why can’t I let go?

Don’t I know broken pieces always cut?

The jagged pieces of people are scarring me.

Lately I wonder, if I want it to hurt.

Why do I think I deserve to be wounded

For all the people I have ever loved and lost?

 

The Measure Of Regret

People always say, they think about what they want more when they have to decide what they would go after. For as long as I can remember, I have always measured what I would regret less. It has never been about what I wanted; I can’t say with certainty what I want. But it has always been about regret.

I know regret is one of the pillars of my emotions. It’s always there. When studying economics, I first learned the term ‘opportunity cost’. But I feel like I have known this forever. Life would always give me choices and I would have to let go of one thing to get the other. So the driving force of my decision making process has always been, which one would I regret more if I let it go. No matter where I am in life, I would look back at things bygone and regret what never happened or what did. The only question then became which regret would be easier to live with.

This way of thinking have never failed me. I have always been almost content with my choice of regrets. But lately what is bothering me is the negative constant in my life – this so called regret. Why could I not make choices that made me happy. Fine, content, if not happy. Isn’t happiness or contentment a positive emotion to strive to? So why do I measure my life in the negative scale, then?

I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. May be at the end, the motives for my choices don’t even matter. But looking at the bigger picture, I feel as if, these small negatives would eventually weigh me down. And may be I am just one step closer to overcoming this, by figuring out the fallacy of my reasoning.

My Mother’s Daughter

I never wanted to emulate my mother. I never wanted to inherit her innate ability to carry sadness, never wanted to learn how to mould myself to every failure of my life.

Growing up, I thought I would never regret things I could not have predicted, never look to blame someone when something went wrong. I would learn from her mistakes, not repeating them into a pattern in my life. I thought I would cherish the present, take it for what it was. I would not live in the nostalgia of the past nor hold on to the guarantees of the future. I would be more grateful, more gracious in accepting what life had set aside for me.

Of course there were things I wanted from my mother. I wanted her patience, her compassion, her ability to self sacrifice at the need of her loved ones. I wanted to be just as intuitive, as kind as her. But instead I became the very things I once promised myself I would not.

Change scares me. So does constancy. Social cues and nuances fly by me and I struggle to connect to a world where people say things they do not mean. I have trouble trusting kindness of strangers and accepting the disloyalty of close ones. Sometimes, I fear I am not living my life, instead watching it being lived. I am here, but never present.

These days I find myself questioning if I instinctively followed her footsteps, or was it embedded in me from the beginning? Did I choose this, or was I always meant to lose this fight? And if I did decide to shadow my mother, when did I start and more importantly, how do I stop? I wonder if I will ever be able to unlearn the lessons I have wrapped so intricately around myself. And even if I do, will I ever be able to learn the right lessons the next time around? After all what are the odds that I will be able to follow things that had never been set as an example in my life before?

The Art of Letting Go

I have been told the key to happiness is knowing when to let go. Let go of your fears, let go of your pain, let go of your insecurities. They all make it sound so easy, as if there a door with lock and only I have the key. All I have to do is walk up to the door, open it and let everything go.

But there is no key in my possession; there is no door. Sometimes, I wish there was, so that I could be free. I feel trapped too, with the things that have been given to me. Memories wear me out, pain leaves calluses on my hand, and people drain me out. It’s not that I can’t let it go; there is just no way out.

I think some people are meant to be the keepers, the one who hold it all together. May be the keepers are not meant to be happy. They are meant to remember, because someone must always remember. If everyone could let go, could forget, then it would stop mattering. And everything must matter.

So I sit tight with all I have, labeling them as mine, I expand my heart to make room for people who leave, I open storage boxes to file memories away, and sift through them, remembering. I do not know the art of letting go, and so may be that means I’ll never be happy. But may be some day I’ll learn to be just fine holding onto things no one can take from me. May be if I stop trying to let everything go, I’ll learn to love everything I still have left.

Where Emptiness Resides

Hey, how was your day?

Just, the usual.

Usual good, or usual bad?

Do you honestly want me to rate my day in terms of goodness and badness?

May be.

Ok, well, I guess, I just had another bad day, then.

What kind of bad was it?

You know, just a regular bad day.

I was not aware there was any regular bad days.

Aren’t most days bad? Some days just tend to be a little more bad than the others. And once in a while you have a day a little less bad. But mostly, they are all just a series of bad days.

I see. So what constitutes of a less bad day?

I don’t know – bad hair, bad sleep, bad cold, broken heart, broken dream, broken hope – all are just less bad days.

All that is just “less bad”? I wonder what’s more bad than that.

You know those days when you lie in bed from 6.30 am in the morning with the phone in your hand. The alarm is supposed to go off at 7.00 am and you just want to keep on sleeping. So you lie in bed half asleep with the phone in your hand so that the moment the alarm rings you can snooze it. Instead the minutes stretch on and you are up already without really meaning to be awake. It’s 8.00 am in the morning and you just want the day to end. You just want to crawl back into bed, clothes and all, and pull the covers until you are under it completely. And all you want to do is crouch in that darkness and think. What a wonderful feeling to be able to just think about nothing at all. Instead, as you head out the door, you hope the coffee would do its usual trick. 12.30 pm and the food you are eating is just hard to swallow. You would throw up if you had anything in you to throw up. The morning coffee does not count. But you just keep on trying to swallow the lump of food stuck on your dry throat. Water. Gulp, One down. Several more bites to go. 2.00 pm and you were saying something that you do not remember anymore. You stare blankly at the person you were talking to wondering why on earth you started talking about that. You were about to make a point. Something vital. But like every other thing in your life, it just slipped away like a wisp of thought you can no longer grasp. You have to start again. How did you end up there? 5 pm and the dinner you are eating tastes like soap. Watery. May be you are drinking too much water. But it makes it easier to eat, doesn’t it? 9.00 pm you crawl to bed, just like you wanted to this morning. Pull the cover over, but the peace you seek is just eluding you. Your mind would not shut off its chatter, keeping you away from that numbness you want. You would cry, if only the tears would come. You would read, if your eyes didn’t twitch so much and you would play some music if only the music didn’t hurt the inside of your ears. So you rock yourself back and forth, giving yourself the biggest hug your two arms can give. You wrap yourself inwards, moulding your sorrow into your emptiness hoping they would cancel each other out. Except it doesn’t. And when you finally fall asleep, you dream the dreams you wish you had the ability to forget.

What happens the next day?

You drift back into your usual bad day, as if that transition doesn’t hurt you.

And does it hurt you?

It hurts no matter what you do.

What keeps you going then?

The “more bad days” become more infrequent, you know. At least you hope so. You go on thinking every morning that may be yesterday was the last “more bad day” you will ever have. May be one day you will wake up and not even remember it. May be your days would start falling in between just the simple good and bad. One day perhaps...

Isn’t there anyone you could turn to for help?

Oh, but everyone helps. For one moment any given moment someone helps make it better. Sometimes that one moment and that one person is enough. Other days, not so much.

How long do you think you’ll survive living those kinds of days.

You know, I will survive. You’d be surprised at the human capacity of handling pain. It’s like your whole soul expands to make room for such tremendous sadness. The only thing is to remember to shrink back when the sadness is gone. Or else you are left with something worse than sorrow capturing your soul.

What could be worse than sadness?

Emptiness. Once all the sadness is gone, sometimes it happens like this. You are left with this big gaping hole and nothing fits perfectly to those contours of your soul anymore. That’s where emptiness resides.

Hear The Pain

And quiet is the world in which we live
With protests that never make it pass our lips
Silent as the tears we shed through the night
No noise to show how much we hold inside

Who says pain have to have a sound
For all the ignorant world to hear?
Who has ever listened to the suppressed sighs
That fills up the air?
Why does pain have to be displayed
To draw attention of people who never care?
And for those who dare to open up their senses
Pain is just everywhere.

Walking with the crowd wherever they go
Yet every step we have to take alone
Even when we’ve got a hand to hold
There’s no guarantee it will lead us home

Empty words from empty hearts
Fading are promises meant to last
Aren’t we trapped with no way out?
And you still seem to ask what pain is about?

Before The Walls

I knew him from the time before the walls set in. But that’s not why we remained friends for the next two decades. The thing about a friendship as old as ours is that growing up we never walled each other out. So when 32 months ago he died of suicide, I couldn’t help but question did he ever let me in to begin with?

But twenty years of knowing him never prepared me for the time he would do the leaving. All my life he had shown me friendship was staying, even if no one stayed, and never letting go. But suddenly he was gone somewhere and I didn’t know where to follow him to. There was no whisper of discontent, no signs of sorrow, and no goodbye. One day he was here telling me he would come to see me next time he had time off and a few days later he was gone without a trail.

See, we became friends way before we even understood what friendship stood for. So it made me question the very basis of our friendship. Was it really friendship even if he couldn’t let me in? Had I catastrophically failed the one friendship I held dear above all else?

Ever since he died I have been at war with myself. On one hand I tell myself that he was my friend because he loved me. He was there with me all through my pains because he cared. But on the other hand I felt that if he truly was my friend, why did he leave me like this? Over the years we have grown relying on one another’s strength and patience. But suddenly it seems everything I knew was an illusion and I wasn’t sure anymore of what we had. It scared me that someone I thought I knew so well, kept this pain so well-hidden. It makes me question sometimes if this side was truly hidden from me or was I oblivious to it all. And more importantly am I even worthy of his friendship?

Some days I want to tell his story amongst friends, people who have known him just like I have. But these days when I meet people I start the story of my life with the name of the boy I’ll never forget.

The Place Where We Meet Again

Hey, I miss you.

I know you do.

Then why did you leave?

Because I had to.

Seriously? That’s your best line?

What if that is the truth?

That doesn’t justify you leaving me.

But I wasn’t leaving you; I still am not. I just left life.

And ours wasn’t connected.

Was it?

You tell me?

May be it was in ways I didn’t understand then.

It definitely was. Isn’t that why I miss you?

You miss who I was to you…

Wasn’t that you?

It was, and it wasn’t.

I know that now, but you know, I really didn’t know then.

I know.

I didn’t know you needed me.

I hear you.

Why didn’t you tell me you needed me?

I didn’t know how else to say it.

Meaning you already did?

Didn’t I?

Did you?

I don’t know anymore.

Neither do I. You know, I am bad at interpreting gestures. May be I missed your gestures.

May be you did.

You should have used words.

May be I should have. May be I couldn’t.

Don’t you remember?

It was so long ago.

It hasn’t been very long you know. I mean if more time has passed, shouldn’t this pain heal?

Didn’t it already heal?

Does it hurt like this if you heal?

I guess you could think of it like a bone breaking. A lot of pain until you start walking again.

I don’t know what I want more – to sit down or to start running with my broken bones and all.

You know how bones heal?

Like every other thing.

Yes, but with rest and exercise.

I think I want to sleep now.

Okay. Close your eyes then.

You have to go away first.

Why?

I can’t dream with your voice in my mind.

So I am a nightmare now!

No, just something I don’t know what to do with, anymore.

…

Hey, you know, I miss you too.

Do you?

You know I do.

I wish you did.

Then?

You wouldn’t go.

I am still here.

But you are not real.

No I am not.

I wish you were…. Hello? You there?

I am already gone, stupid. Who are you still talking to? Shh. Don’t answer. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll see, everything will be okay.

Promise?

What Happened to Happy Endings?

Mr. Humayun Ahmed,

I want to know what happened to those girls? I have read again and again the stories you have written – Kothao Keu Nei (There’s no one anywhere), Lilaboti – and they all end the same. There she stood alone. But I need to know what happened after that. You see, these days, I feel like I have been left behind by life as well.

I have heard that when one of the main leads, Baker Bhai, was falsely accused and sentenced to death, the people of Bangladesh cried. They took the streets and marched protesting the death of a fictional character. Twenty years later as I sit reading, I am crying as well. But my heart doesn’t break for Baker Bhai alone. He died, a terrible death, but Mona stayed alive all alone. She lived on and on in that shell of a body and no one seemed to ask what happened to her after that? How did she live? How did she keep on walking all that path by herself?

Surely those stories can’t end there? No story ends so unfinished. I need to believe that because I don’t know how else to go on living in this world without hope. Right now it feels as if, my story had come to such a standstill. I refuse to live the shadows in my own life; but I can’t take control either. All the people I have trusted pieces of myself with had gone away and now I am left holding these eroded, marred pieces that don’t fit. I read in search of happy endings. But if Mona doesn’t get her happy ending, if Lilaboti lives alone, how can I find hope?

And yes, I know, writing to an author who had passed away with a plea for a happy ending wouldn’t do me any good. So in my head I am taking the liberty of writing those unfinished endings.

All those characters who had been left behind, learn to live again. They love again. They smile again. They do not forget their pain, ever. But they do not linger over it every day. They must be happy. Because that’s one thing fiction should guarantee. They all must always have happy endings.

Dark

When people ask me if I can feel your presence, I think it’s a trick question. What am I supposed to say? Yes, I feel your loss from a place deep inside of me? But no, I don’t actually feel you around me?

I don’t know of death, or dying, having experienced neither. But I know life after death. And I envy those who can say they feel their loved ones presence.

See, I don’t know what you would tell me to do if you were here. I don’t know if you would be the same person I have always known you as or change into someone new through the years. I don’t know if I am the same person to begin with either. So what would I do with the answers from a 24 year old boy who died?

I have long since stopped bargaining for your life. I know those who leave, don’t come back. But when I meet people who say they feel you near them, I get jealous. I wish I could summon your presence just as easily, if only for a few moments. I wish I could rely on something, anything of you. I wish I could say with confidence I feel you around me all the time.

But the truth is just this – no matter the strength of my friendship, you are realms away from me, in a land you’ll never age. You have put yourself in a timeless glass and all I can do is stare from a distance. No matter how much I claw the glass separating us, the barrier wouldn’t give in. The only echo I hear is our memories, now slowly turning dark in my mind.

Blue Flowers

Today I was watching a documentary called the Life After Suicide. One of the ways I cope with my best friend’s suicide, is to know more about it. I can’t bear for it to ever catch me off guard again and the only way I can be prepared is by being more informed.

Towards the end of the documentary this little boy, whose dad passed away of suicide, said something that resonated very strongly with me. He said he doesn’t have anymore questions about it, because he had already asked them all. But he does repeat his questions because sometimes he forgets the answer.

I feel like I have asked my questions as well – the whys? The hows? The where did I go wrongs? And I have reached out to other people, talked about it, but somehow I always end up in the same place. The hollow inside of me can’t find any peace with the answers. I never got a letter from him, but I guess in the end it didn’t help those he left letters with either. Knowing his last thoughts, knowing he was thinking it through didn’t help. That brings me to other questions then. What does help, then? There has to be a way it makes sense. A way for the answers to stick.

Watching the documentary brought back so many memories for me, and not good ones. I still don’t understand how he could think we would be better off without him. Didn’t he know, he made all our lives whole?

A long time ago I read this Bangla fiction, Himur Haate Koyekti Neel Poddo (The Blue flowers in Himu’s Hand), where it described this fictional character who hypothesized that everyone was born with five Blue Flowers in their hand. And then as they moved through life, they gave the flowers away to the people they loved. But these flowers were nontransferable, nor could they be returned. So one of the other characters raised the question, what happens if you run out of flowers? Do you run out of love to give out?

Sometimes I feel my best friend’s death took away one of my blue flowers forever. I’ll never have it back. And I am left with this hollowness where that flower used to exist.

May be I am blessed

I am blessed,

For I have never been to the city you lived in,

Never set me eyes on the skylines of the city in which you died.

I have left behind the city where we grew up,

There is nothing here to tie my thoughts back to you.

May be that’s why I can laugh sometimes,

Lose myself in front of a world I can only touch peripherally.

But I can’t help think of your parents.

What do you think they do as they walk pass your room?

Or your friends who cross the front of your house each day,

I am blessed I am so far apart

I can manage to forget even for a moment,

That you are gone.

But the people who live everyday

In the places you won’t ever go back to again

Are the ones who hurt the most.

I just wish I didn’t have to count my blessings this way.

21

For every one thing you gain,

There is one thing you must lose,

Or so I have heard
21.

I gained a stuff toy for my birthday.

I named her Allie Paha.

She was everything I wanted.
21.

I lost my best friend.

His name also started with an A.

I was never meant to lose him.
21.

I was free.

I was free to stay, free to go.

I was free to be and free to let go.
21.

I learned to stay alone.

The world was different from the shadows.
I have heard for every one thing you gain,

There is something you must lose.

I just thought what I would gain would equal my loss.

No one ever told me

It hardly ever happened that way.
21.

My family expanded.

My family always keeps on expanding,

Though sometimes I don’t notice.

This time I did because,
At 21,

The family that became mine

Was broken.

They lost their son

And gained me instead.

Anyone would tell you, it was hardly the same.
21.

I made friends, two very good friends.

I went out, I had fun.

I was meant to be happy.
21.

I had everything I always thought I wanted.

But the one person I never thought I would have to live without, let me go.
21 – the year I gained so many good things

21 – the year I lost the only good thing I ever cared about.

Things I never got around to asking

I always thought we had time to learn the mundane things. After all friendship such as ours muddled through the depths of our souls. I thought we would always have time to know the simple things about each other. May be by the time we would have been old, we would have finally gotten around to ask the stupid stuffs.

Now as your first death anniversary nears, I can’t help but wonder who would answer these unanswered stupid questions of mine?

Hey, what’s your favorite color? I recently heard from someone it is green. Is that true? How can I know so much and so little all at once? What’s your favorite city? Your mother told me that you used to say New York was your favorite city. Do you know I always wanted to go there. But now, I don’t think I have the courage to enter the city in which you have chosen to die. I have heard some of your friends went to the Central Park. I don’t think I can do that because I don’t think I’ll get closure there. I have never seen the Central Park lake and yet when I close my eyes at night I can see you struggling to take your last breath there. How is it possible that I know a place so intimately, a place I have never been to before?

Hey did you like staying here? Did you plan to go back to Bangladesh? Did you change your major? I remember you told me you wanted to change your major. Did you end up doing it?

You said you’ll see me on your next spring break. Hey, if you were alive, would you have come to see me? I really wanted to see you. I never asked you to come and see me before. You see, before last year I didn’t have a place I could call my own. But last year, I finally had a home. Of sorts. And I wanted to see you so bad, talk to you face to face. I wanted to hold your hands and say thank you for giving me hope.

Hey, did you ever you blame me? Was there anything you wanted me to do for you? I never told you this before, but you were the one of the two people in this world I would have done anything for. The other day when I told your mother this she asked me why I never said that to you. I couldn’t tell her then that I didn’t have a contingency plan for our friendship. I didn’t know there was a time limit. I didn’t know I would never get to say goodbye. I’ll always miss you. Know that, okay?

Your mother says it’s okay to talk to you even though you are not here. So these days that’s what I do. Hey, is that okay? Is it okay to not let go yet?

Broken Kaleidoscope

Hey do you know remember that day? That day, we spent hours looking through the Kaleidoscope making up stories of the future?

The other day while thinking I have nothing of you, I found that Kaleidoscope lying at a forgotten place. I picked it up and looked through the patterns until I had to look away from the memories that started to stare back at me. As I turned it around to lock it away once more, I saw the broken glass on the other side of the Kaleidoscope. How could it have a broken glass and yet keep making these mesmerizing patterns? Shouldn’t the brokeness distort the beauty?

Do you know, lately I have been thinking, I have become a broken Kaleidoscope myself. On one side I am broken along the fault lines – not shattered, but broken irreparably – while on the other I form patterns. All those who look at me see the beads arranged so meticulously, not knowing the cracks only mimics the glass. They don’t see that I am just a soul filled with broken mirrors, dazzling people by reflecting a sheer array of lights.

I have learned since your death that people see what they want to see. Nobody likes to focus on the fault lines of their soul. May be you didn’t either. I liked to think that when you looked through the Kaleidoscope that day, you skipped all the landmines of sorrow and focused on the distant future, a place where you would be happy. As for me, I never learned to look far in search of friendship. May be that’s why when I picked up the Kaleidoscope again, I focused on the cracks closest to the surface. I don’t see the intricate patterns of beads anymore; instead, I keep trying to find a piece of you to anchor myself again.

Water

I have taken to blame the Waters again.

Didn’t the Water know who you were to me? I have whispered my heart breaks to her often enough that she should have known me. Showers, rainfall, ocean – I have poured my heart out, told her all my sorrows, my secrets. So how could the Water take your last breath away?

I have studied that our bodies are made of Water. So how could she kill? Once, we breathed under Water, didn’t we? We didn’t always need the air. So why couldn’t we do the same again? Why couldn’t our lungs adapt to it, instead of being soaked by it?

I know, you are chiding me, thinking why blame the Water? But something has to be responsible, right? Something has to ease the guilt I feel every day. If it wasn’t my fault, if it couldn’t have been your fault, then who do I take my anger out on? No, Water didn’t take you away; you gave yourself to her. And I am just mad that she didn’t turn you away. Instead of brushing away your sadness, the Water took you in and stole the last bit of air from your lungs.

No Art to Fear

There is no art to fear that I can show you or tell you about. Being afraid is not pretty, or simple.

Fear sets you on the edge without dropping you. You are there everyday, every moment holding your breath, knowing things change in a moment, not knowing if or when they ever would. Fear blocks your perspective, colors the way you observe the world. Not all fear paralyzes you though. Sometimes it sets you on automatic motion where you go through days and watch life pass you by.

Fear is like the fire. It can warm you, it can consume you, it can turn you into ashes. Fear can chase you to the end of the world. Fear can make you stay in the same place always. Some fear in set not in your heart, but in your bones. They engrave into you, marking you a known territory. Some fear seals your heart. It puts up a wall of your making, but not in your power to break.

Sometimes fear becomes adrenaline pushing you towards things that make your heart beat fast. Of course fear can be good. Of course fear can tear you apart.

But if you want the truth, once you let fear control you, you are no longer your own. It is as if you are sharing yourself with something else. Something that takes up most of you.

So I don’t know how to put my fear into words. I don’t know what face to put on my fears. I don’t know how to contain it or how to let it flow. So for now I sit with my fears. May be someday I’ll unravel it completely. May be it will always be a mystery. Who knows, may be one day this fear of mine will be my comrade. But for now it haunts me. What would it like to be not afraid again??

A Fair World

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that I keep writing to you while you never write back. It’s not fair to me to remember so many things and yet forget the ones that matter. It’s not fair that when I hear my phone ring, for a moment I wish it was you. It’s not fair that this morning I woke up not thinking about you. It’s not fair that I have to make the calls you should have. It’s not fair to your mother, your friends. I don’t know what their relationship was to you, so how do I mimic it to fill their void. It’s not fair for me to try, knowing I won’t succeed. Nobody had filled your void in me. It’s not fair that I am alive today and you are not. It’s not fair that you picked a path that we all know is there and yet never tread up on. It’s just not fair.

Life is not fair. Time is not fair. Memory is not fair. Why can’t I bring to mind memories of us? Why can’t I think back and remember old times? Songs? Places? It’s not fair I can’t go to those places anymore without thinking of you. It’s not fair I am afraid to go in some places. It’s not fair for you to leave me. I am not used to walking this alone. It’s not fair because I am stumbling, falling and reaching for you. But beside me there is nothing but the air. It’s not fair because you never told me that if one day I fall you wouldn’t be there to hold me and give me balance. It’s not fair, because even now, I think any moment you would catch me. But I just keep falling.

It’s not fair because I am afraid of the fall. I am scared of the hurt, I am scared of being like this. I am scared of living life, scared of taking a peaceful breath. I am scared that once I let myself go, something else would hit me and send me flying like this. It’s not fair because I don’t deserve this. It’s not fair because these days I am always scared.

It’s not fair that I didn’t get my goodbye. It’s not fair that you didn’t think about me. I have known you, always, yet it wasn’t enough for you to remember me once. It’s not fair that I have to live with that for the rest of my life. It’s not fair that you have labeled me a failure in my own eyes. It’s not fair because once it wasn’t like this. Once I was happy, and I thought you were too. Once this was simpler. It’s not fair because now I doubt anything will feel so simple again.

It’s not fair that I didn’t know. I didn’t know when you thought you had enough, when you thought you were giving up. It’s not fair that for twenty four blissful and bleak hours I didn’t know you were gone. It’s not fair that I couldn’t sleep once I heard no one could find you. I passed that night worrying about you, praying the worst had not come to pass. It’s not fair that from the moment I heard, deep inside I already knew it had. There was a fear in my heart I couldn’t explain. It’s not fair how I had to find out. It’s not fair that when I Google about you I find out every detail of your dying. It’s not fair that I can’t forget even if I want to. It’s not fair I can’t Google our past. Friendship. Memories. Get togethers. The times I have called crying. The time you trusted me. It’s not fair.

And if none of this is fair, then why do you get to go away and why am I still here? Why did you put me in this forever? Forever was supposed to be about the good things. Forever love. Forever friendship. Forever happily-ever-afters! So why is my first forever your death? It’s not fair because this is surely not what the promise of forever should be about. It’s not fair because now I am scared of forevers. It’s not fair because that’s the one thing I’ll always associate with you. My forever friend. Forever dead.

Nothing can ever make this fair again in this unfair world you’ve left for me to walk upon.

Finally Free

Hey, do you think time could really stop?

Sometimes I think that if I run into you somewhere I would have never expected to see you, time would just stop for me. In that stilled instant, I would take my time to see you. See how much you have grown, changed. I would study how time had ravaged you, how responsibilities had folded your spine. I would learn to read the calluses on your finger, frown lines in your forehead and the words you would suppress.

And then, once I am done looking at you, time will pick up its pace once again. I will look away and walk ahead, finally leaving you behind entirely.

Hey, do you think if we ever meet again, time will stop for me to be finally free?

The Letter You Couldn’t Write (Part I)

I know the lure of friendship. I know you are thinking it means we open our lives to the people we call our friends. But sometimes it happens like this. We open our lives, our smiles, but close the doors to changes in perception.

I’ll always be your hero. The one with all the answers, so I didn’t have the heart to tell you that I was haunted by questions too. It not that I didn’t trust our friendship or think you wouldn’t be able to understand my problems, I just didn’t know how to word out my restlessness.

To me, you will always be that girl, the one who had all these amazing stories inside of her. That little girl who meticulously collected Barbies, whose parents indulged her childish whims. You will always be the girl afraid of loud noises, fights and confrontation. I still see you sitting in the balcony holding your hands to your ears, because of fight next door. You were to be protected from all the harshness in the world. So even now, it is hard for me to bring darkness in your life.

To me, you will always be the girl who had to grow up all too fast. You were the girl whose dreams came true, all at the wrong times and turned her life into a nightmare. You were the girl who did everything right and yet her ending got all screwed up. So even now, I don’t have the strength to tell you that I am about to hand you another tragedy to add to your life. I can’t tell you, over the phone, you did everything right, yet I am about to die.

I would tell you though, you will go through it and come out on the other end – alive. Because that’s who you are. You don’t know any other way to live. I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had that in me. Sometimes though, it’s not enough. Being alive and living are two different things and I don’t know how to do one without the other. So don’t think of me as if I am dying. Whenever you think of me, think of all those times we have lived. Remember the laughter that keeps ringing in my ears, even now as I sit down to write. Remember the long rickshaw rides, the setting sun and the promise of friendship we have made to each other. Remember to call my mother, especially because she wouldn’t expect any calls from me. Tell her all the things you would have told me. Fine, if not all that, tell her stories of the past. Tell her the stories inside of you. Tell her about me. I know she would never forget, neither would you. But speak of me, because every time my name falls from your lips, I’ll live a little longer again.

Don’t peek into the past in search for reasons. Do not color our childhood, our memories trying to decipher the point from where it all went downhill. Don’t blame yourself, live in guilt or shame or pain. I wouldn’t want you to do that to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up thinking what you could have said to alter this course of my life. I would never give you this burden. So live. Live enough for the both of us.

Because the true lure of friendship is promises. Promise me, you’ll be okay, you will get through this and keep on holding on to me. Promise me, you will be a friend enough to know when to let go. Once, you had said to me that I was your anchor. I guess it didn’t occur to you that anchors have to sink all the way to the bottom, before it can hold anything else in place. I promise, even as I go down, I’ll keep anchoring you on.

Assemble The Pieced

They look at me and ask,

What phase am I going through now?

They do not wait for my answer.

Instead they start reciting all my phases so far –

First it was sorrow,

Then there was my angry phase,

After that came the regret.

They do not pause to let me speak,

For that I am grateful.

I do not know what to tell them really,

What should I say?

I do not have answers.

I do not even know whom should I phrase my questions to.

He was my best friend

And I don’t know why he had to go.
So on the second day I started writing to him.

I wasn’t expecting him to reply

But I needed him to get me through this.

Somehow, anyhow.

On the tenth day I stopped playing the scene of his death in my mind

Before I went to sleep.

You see, I finally figured, even if he was the last thing on my mind

I couldn’t will him into my dreams.

On the eighteenth day I stopped hovering over his pictures,

Pictures do not speak.

On the thirtieth day, I realized

He did not write to me.

He left letters to others but not me.

Why not me?

Where did I go wrong?

When people ask what do you take with you out of a burning house,

The answer is simply this – yourself.

I know he was doing what he felt was best for himself

He didn’t stop to think of all the other things he left in that burning house;

He left our friendship, in there somewhere.

Sometimes I wonder

Was not saying something, saying something after all –

That I wasn’t important enough, friend enough to him?

If words were my link to him,

Did he not have at least some words for me?

On the fortieth day I told myself,

I needed words from him to absolve my guilt,

To hear from him, I didn’t let him down.

May be that would make me feel like I deserve to be here.

On the sixty eighth day,

When I got cooking burns in my hand

I started laughing,

Because I can never cook.

He could.

I do not remember the taste of his cooking, though.

The other day I was talking to his mother and she said to me

That when he died, they still had the dinner he cooked in the refrigerator.

How was it possible that something he made was there,

And he wasn’t?

How was it possible that our friendship was there, and then it wasn’t?

On the ninety ninth day, I was so furious.

So angry.

How dare he just die?

He didn’t die alone.

He died with a piece of all of us who loved him.

Who gave him the right to kill that piece of us?

It’s not his fault he died,

I think someone said it wasn’t mine either.

I believed her, but then I almost didn’t as well.

On the hundred and tenth day, I cut my bangs, all by myself

Something had to make sense

There had to be some things I could still control,

Some things still within my grasp

Even if it was something so mundane.

On the hundred and thirty seventh day

I couldn’t stop crying.

What was the point of working so hard to stay afloat

He didn’t see something worth fighting for,

And if he, with all his dreams, couldn’t hold on,

How could I, with my vacant eyes, keep going?

Today is the hundred and fifty fifth day.

I have known him all my life

Except these hundred and fifty five days.

It’s scary to think one day,

There would be more days I have not known him,

Than days I have known him.
So I don’t know what these days are called

I don’t know how anyone can wrap these emotions into phases

I don’t know why anyone would want to either.

I don’t understand how anyone expects me to get over this pain

He is a person, not a pain.

I don’t know how to tell people,

That I have difficulty referring to everything about him in terms of “was”

That when someone asks me about him,

I choke on the words “best friend.”

I spell death with the syllables of his name,

I spell friendship, life, sorrow just the same.

This is not a phase I would tell them,

If I thought they would listen, would understand.

All these broken pieces of emotion somehow assembles into this new me.

Sometimes I would tell them if I thought they would listen,

This new, damaged me frightens me too,

Just a little.

But most days I am trying my best to just fit into roles

That don’t fit anymore,

Hoping someday these phases, as they would like to call them,

Would make sense out of me.

Sorrow

I wear my sorrow above my coat

Hope it will keep me company in the dark,

I never wanted it; I don’t wear it right

But you gave me this sorrow to remember you by.

So days go by and I don’t take it off,

If this is how you wanted, who am I to ask?

If this was your gift, how can I refuse?

This sorrow is now all I have left of you

You did not die that day

The first time you forget his death in days,

Don’t berate yourself for taking a moment for yourself,

After all you did not die that day.

When you laugh, the first laughter of joy,

Don’t pull the sorrow of your heart to your eyes,

It’s okay to find reasons to smile,

For you did not die.

And when you hear a song that reminds you of him,

Do not rush to numb that ache in your throat.

It’s okay to hurt when you come across pieces of him

Without really expecting to,

It’s okay to feel melancholy sing through your veins,

After all you did not die that day.

When his name comes up in conversations,

It’s okay to not want to say his name out loud.

It’s okay to get angry when people get their facts misplaced,

It’s okay to stand up and defend actions you still do not understand.

He knew you would champion him,

So he left this fight to you.

If this is your fight, then imagine what his fight must have been.

Allow yourself room to doubt your ability to fight this,

But remember his trust in you.

It’s okay to feel helpless, sometimes,

Because you didn’t die that day.

And as long as you shall live

You’ll have to take turns to be happy and be hurt

You cannot close yourself to the pain or the pleasure,

He wouldn’t want you to do either;

You did not die that day, he would whisper.

The Language I Do Not Speak

When I looked at you, I didn’t see bewilderment staring back at me. May be that’s why we became friends. For the first time I saw myself reflected through your eyes. We knew, perhaps even then, that although the world saw us as different, we were both the same. So when day after day I showed up at your doorstep, you not only welcomed me, you became a part of my bizarre world.

You made sense, when nothing or nobody else did. You made a place for me that didn’t mock my very existence. I was quiet, shy, bursting out with stories I didn’t know how to tell. You didn’t play sports. Once I was telling you how at school when I have to play, I recoil from an oncoming ball for the fear of getting hit by it and instead of the laughter that I had come to expect, you looked at me as if I wasn’t an enigma. You knew what I meant. You have been there.

Your world had always been inside of you. So was mine. But in retrospect I guess you never did allow me into your deepest thoughts. Even with me, even with everything we had in common, you were still alone.

I grew up knowing you. You were the center around which I built everything. But you had no gravity of your own, nothing to hold you down and pin you to this crazy place called life. So one day you just left. I guess I was never expecting to you just leave. I have become so used to seeing the world with you, that now it feels unreal to be that weird girl again. You have left me behind to roam through these alleys of life, knowing I’ll never fit into the “conventions” again.

When people ask me if I loved you. I just can’t explain that even though I didn’t love you romantically, I loved you with all I had. They all look at me as if I had lost it when I phrase is like that. But the thing is, if you were here, you would have understood. May be that’s why it hurts so much. I never thought you wouldn’t be here to translate all these thoughts of mine so other people can understand. It feels like you have condemned me to live life knowing, no one will ever know me like you. They won’t understand my thoughts, my words, my actions. They won’t know where I come from or where it is I want to go. It hurts so bad because once you get used to someone listening to the language you speak, it’s hard to live in a world where no speaks that language anymore.

I am no longer angry at you. I am trying to understand the words you have left behind. May be you felt no one understood your words too. So I am trying really hard to listen and interpret the language of your heart. But the silence you left behind is echoing only the sorrow I carry in my soul.

Friend,

Friend, he calls me. But I do not look back, for that is not who I am. No one had called me that in a long time. In fact it’s been so long already that friendship seems ill-fitting on me, like something that does not belong to me. So I do not wear it.

Friend you are lost, he says. This time I am willing to bet he knows what would make me turn towards him. But I do not oblige. I know I am lost and I will remain lost. I have been condemned to roam through this life lost by the last person who called me a friend. So I walk around, lonely and lost, knowing I am lonely and lost and doing nothing about it.

Friend let me guide you back home, he whispers enticingly. But home is the last place I remember. My home was with my friend. He left and took it away with him. Now nothing really makes me feel the comfort of home again. This time I want to call back and reply, there is no home for me in this world. But I do not engage. I do not talk. I am no friend. So I keep walking away.

Friend, he speaks softly, almost inaudibly now, friend let me help you please. I want to turn and ask him to give me the weight of those four words. H-E-L-P. I want it so badly. But if I had known to help, may be my friend would have been alive.

Friend, I cry out within my heart, you are all the friend I have ever had. I am lost. I am lonely. I have no friend. No one to help me. Was that your last thought as well? 

The Call

He had a beautiful name. His mother once told me that she loved how precisely I enunciated each syllable of his name. I could not explain it then to her, that growing up, there was nothing more beautiful to me than the name she had granted him. Because when I called him, it was a call of friendship.

Children grew up and made friends, but friendship grew up with me. He lived next door, three years older than I was, his company went back as far as my memory went. It did not matter that social norms indicated I play with dolls and he played with trains. Every afternoon, we would sit across from each other and learned to build tracks on which our lives would one day unfold.

My mother has all these amusing stories of us, most of which I do not remember, no matter how much I sift through my mind in search of them. I do not remember crying if he went somewhere and wasn’t available to play with me when I was four years old. I do not remember the rainy days, the nostalgic incidents that still make our parent’s smile. My memories begin with him on that balcony on Road Nineteen. I remember sitting in the shades of the creeper plant that covered most of the netted balcony, as he dug out something he had planted in one of the potted plants. Apparently when he became bored, he buried things there, thinking one day it would all turn into hidden treasures. I remember that when our mothers would sit and drink tea, resting their feet against the railing, they would not let us sit in the crook of their knees. And I remember being seven years old, moving blocks away into a new apartment, for the first time realizing I didn’t know how to make friends. His was the only face I knew and the concept of walking up to a group of people to introduce myself seemed alien. Didn’t friends knew each other all their lives?

Friendship, he taught me, was the ability to slip back into each other’s comfort zone, despite how long or far we were from each other’s lives. Even though we met less often, had different lives, we went so far back that these never kept us apart. I remember the first time I got a cell phone and I could talk to him anytime, from anywhere I wanted. These phone conversations bridged whatever differences life had thrown our way. With him, I could laugh at my foibles and family dramas. Friendship, he taught me, was acceptance. When I told him I loved the rain, he didn’t ask me why. The first time I walked alone on the streets, he didn’t state the exact reasons a fourteen year old girl should never walk alone in our hometown. Once I called him because I wanted to ride on the rickshaw. He traveled all the way across the city to sit next to me. He bought me jhalmuri (Bengali snacks) and walked with me around the park, as I explained how much I craved the mad rush of adventure. When I invited him to join two of my other friends on a trip to the mall, where he was mercilessly teased for being the only guy present, he became friends with them. And one day when out of the blue I invited him to my friend’s solo dance performance, he showed up with a smile and his signature humor. I realized that day that I only had to ask, and he would be there. Always.

As I was preparing for some educational milestones, he had once said to me, think of it like a maturity test. That’s how adults gauge how old we’ve become. I remember one day he popped out of nowhere in front of my math tutoring and we spent one whole hour just talking. He gave me a small stuff toy bear, that I have yet to name, for friendship’s day and as I walked out of the building, without going to my class at all, I realized how much  his present meant to me. When I had said to him that I was scared to disappoint my parents, he had explained one day I would have to learn to spread my wings. He laughed when I said I never shopped for myself and laughed some more when he saw me serve him food. According to him, I was a chemistry lab (so much for being cautious with food), electronically illiterate (still guilty as charged) and a bookworm (he was one too!)

When I moved to the other side of the world, he was the first person I called. Never had I headed towards something without hearing his counsel. He knew, I was getting my adventure, knew the fears I didn’t voice. He gave me a card about our past, a book for the journey and a blank piece of paper to write things that made me happy. The first thing I wrote on that paper was his name. A year later when he came here, he brought with him pieces of my life long gone. I recall he would call me every week to hear me complain, never giving up on me. He believed everything would be okay for me and sometimes his beliefs were enough to give me hope again. Friendship, he taught me, meant showing up again and again, for he never left me alone.

He was there for every call, every email, every broken dream and a whisper of sorrow. Now I wish, he knew, I was there too. He died. A month ago, he took his own life as he sunk into a freezing lake, leaving my world without so much as sigh of goodbye. He didn’t know how to swim. I wish I could go back in time and teach him the basic trick to stay afloat. I would tell him, see it doesn’t take much. You just have to stop fighting so hard to stay on top of the water. It’s all about a little balance. I wish I could teach him to drive through the treacherous crossroads of life; that way he would know where he was going. I would murmur to him, it’s all about reading sings and following directions. You have taught me the same all my life, so how could you not know? I would tell him, the phone works both ways you know. You just have to pick it up and say the word; you see I never left. Now it seems I am the only one holding onto a call that no one seems to answer anymore.

I still love stuff toys, handmade presents, cards, books. I still look for hidden treasures he must have buried along the way. I still find them tucked into corners of memories I didn’t seem to think I possessed. Sometimes I feel he didn’t leave me enough, and other times I get overwhelmed by every moment we shared. Friendship, he taught me, meant life. I wish I could breathe my friendship into him to bring him back to life again.

His name meant the forest. When I call him now, it seems my call is lost in the vastness. I still keep calling though, knowing he won’t answer back, knowing he perhaps can’t hear me, knowing some pleas are forever lost in the wilderness. But when you know a name from the bottom of your heart, you cannot, not call it anymore.

What good is?

If I couldn’t save you,

What right do I have to say I can save others?

If I couldn’t save you,

Who would I rather save?

If friendship was beautiful,

It was you who made it as such

If life seemed bearable,

You carried so much of my burdens.

But if friends don’t save friends,

If you thought I couldn’t save you,

What good’s saving?

What’s good without you?

I can’t make friends again,

Knowing I can’t make a difference

If I don’t make their life a little better,

What good are friends?

If my memory did not appease you,

Convince you not to take the step.

If my friendship couldn’t make you call me,

What was the point of me being there,

When in truth you thought you never had me?

If I couldn’t give you a reason to live,

What good is a smile that we shared?

If couldn’t make you love life,

What good is the world you left behind.

To My Forever Friend

You have always defined friendship in my life. You were the first kid, the one next door, who I played with. I have heard of all these funny stories of you and me, about how I would sit in front your door if you went anywhere and didn’t play with me. But my memories of you do not begin there. I do not remember much of those days. Except a flash here and there.

Remember how every evening our mothers would sit with their feet resting on the front porch railing and drink tea? We would pretend we were under a bridge. My memories of you begin in Road 19. Years later, I recall telling you one day I would buy the apartment I used to live in. Those were carefree days indeed. Do you remember you had said to me that you would buy the apartment next door? I was foolish because I believed we would both live to see that day.

I did not know how to make friends, but I never felt the need to either. You were all the friend I needed. Even when we moved apart, no longer being next door neighbors, studying in different schools – you remained my friend, my first friend ever.

My childhood begins with you. What I understand of friendship begins with you. I have never been the one to make phone calls. You, on the other hand, never failed to keep in touch. When I left and came abroad you gave me a card, written in every corner you could, about how you saw our friendship. You gave me a paper painted blue and purple with water color and told me to write down the things that made me happy. You said it was for my blue days. I wish I had given something to you as well.

Your words carried me through the most heartbreaking period of my life and then when you came here, you brought pieces of my life long gone with you. You dealt with my complains, my tears and never failed to show up every time I needed you. I, on the other hand, thought you knew I was there. But you were always protecting me, weren’t you? Protecting me even from your pains? I am not that weak, you know? I could have handled it. But don’t you worry now, I still got your back.

Please be careful. Don’t walk to close to the water. Don’t think you have no one – I wish you could read minds, so that you would know these are my thoughts. I wish right now, I could capture all my memories and put them on paper, so that nothing can take it away from me.

I guess now I really ought to go out in the world and look for a friend. But let me sit with these thoughts a while longer. You see, I have never been very good with goodbyes. I once read something of Sarah Dessen’s that goes like this, But I’d long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren’t guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all. 

So I am not waiting for your letter, of a moment where I can hold proof you were thinking of me. Because if I can never say goodbye to you, then how can you do that same? You will always be my forever friend. May be not a phone call away anymore, may be not in this world anymore, but in every memory, every thought, every boy who has your name, you would be there. Years into the future, when I get my apartment, you would be the boy next door. Every time I have something to share, you would be the first name on my lips. Because goodbyes were really never my forte.

I am still smiling; You are finally at peace, aren’t you?

Box of feelings

Someone teach us to free our feelings, because we do not know how to live like that. We do not know how to word our feelings out, or express them through action. We are stuck wanting someone to read our silences. But silences are unreadable. We do not know how to think positive, because really, what is truly positive? We know that the negatives accompany every good thing and we are afraid. We are so afraid to let our hopes soar. It doesn’t take that long to fly, but we know when hopes crash, everything breaks into pieces.

Call us cynical if you must, but what can we really say? We do not use cynicism as our armor. Please don’t think so. It is but our savior. As long as we know something will go wrong we will not end up shattered. We call it the reality.

So we need someone to teach us how to let go. We need to learn to love, to dream, to be an optimist. But optimism is not something that we are familiar with. We need to trust in something so bad. We do not know how to let all our thoughts show. Instead we pack them in boxes, wrap them in fairy tales and tuck them away.

Now that box is lost and we need help to find it again. Someone please help us find it again. That box holds so much of us. But we do not how to ask for help. We do not know how to say that we need support. We do not understand how we can find someone who sees us, even without the box of feelings in our hands.

So please. We know, it is hard to find people you cannot see, hear them when they don’t speak. But our eyes are speaking, our hands are speaking. We are asking for help. Will you help us to find ourselves again?

World’s Away

It feels funny to realize that all the people I once grew up with are forever going to be world’s apart from me. I wish it was just the physical distance. But in reality they are a world of opportunities away, possibilities, lifestyles and choices away.

I’ll never grow up to think like them again. I’ll never see the world through their perspective. I’ll never walk the same path as them. Even if I end up in the same room, I would still be different. They would only be responsible for their happiness. But people here rely on me for their happiness. Their responsibility is to study, dream and accomplish something in life. My responsibility is to earn for my education, dream only within my abilities and keep swimming until I sink. I hope to reach stability before I sink. They get to be only twenty. I am already twenty and sometimes it’s hard to catch the irony.

There are times I am so jealous of them; there are times I am so proud of myself. And then there are these times when I stop to compare myself to them. Just because we started at the same place, doesn’t mean we will end up that way. So I close my eyes and pray that someday these differences be worth nothing.

Promise of Forever

Forever is an empty promise

Something I won’t ever believe

So if you love me, truly

Don’t promise me forevers

That aren’t yours to give.

Just give me the present instead

With its imperfections,

With unpracticed proposals,

And half wrapped gifts.

The random things, like –

Hand holding,

A night spent speaking on the phone

About apparently nothing at all.

Read me a poem,

Your favorite one will do.

Write me a letter,

Sing me a song,

I won’t care if its off tune.

But don’t promise me a forever,

Because that would make a liar out of you.

The Lie Of Comfort

I could tell her it will be okay. It always is. Instead I look at her and say, I know how you feel. I could tell her in ten years it wouldn’t matter. It never does. But instead I tell her, I know it hurts a lot now. She looks at me with so much pain in her eyes that I think, he isn’t worth it. Nobody ever is. But instead I find myself clutching her hand and saying, I am sure while it lasted it was worth it.

I don’t know why I don’t tell her the truth. It is on the tip of my tongue, but that’s as far as it goes. The moment I open my mouth all that pours out is …comfort.

I used to think comfort is warm hugs, and cup of hot chocolate or just a hand to hold. Don’t we all connect comfort to being physical comfort? So why didn’t my comfort take the form of a handkerchief or a hug? Why did it instead take turn to be a series of lies? Words aren’t physical, aren’t tangible. So how did it still reach out to calm her?

I wonder now, what is comfort really? Is it a buffer that holds the world at bay? Is it the numbing feeling? Is it the healing? Where does lie fit into it?

May be comfort is not undermining someone’s pain, but acknowledging it, even if I don’t agree with it. May be comfort is accepting flaws in others not as flaws but as part of them. May be comfort doesn’t have to be a physical support, but an emotional one. May be it isn’t just lies when I say them to her. In that instant, when I tell her those words, they fall from my mouth as lies but reach out to her ears as comfort.

I still haven’t figured it all out. But just may be, I am a little closer to it.

Empty promises

How do you hold people to their promises?
Words on a paper can fade,
Rings on your hand don’t fit like they used to,
So can anyone tell me, how do you make it last?

You said, I won’t ever have to be alone anymore,
But you left, and now I don’t sleep anymore.
I don’t cry, I don’t call; I don’t wait for you at all,
But the nights keep coming back,
Reminding me how empty promises can be,
And every night seems harder to pass.

Loved me forever, didn’t you?
I never knew your ‘forevers’ are this short,
Now that forever’s over,
This eternity of being alone, doesn’t seem to end at all.

How can I trust something like this?
Pit hope against hope, dream against dream,
How can I unsee how empty promises can be?

The Used To Be’s

Sometimes I scroll down the social network page and look at all the people I used to know.

There’s the brother who played sports and stayed away from girls when I left. Now he calls me for advice regarding girls. There’s the picture of my extended family, all huddled together in the frame that holds faces I haven’t met yet. There are the people I used to know in high school. Some I have always talked to, some barely said enough words. I see them married, engaged to people I don’t even know. I see some of them making plans that I never got around to hear. I see pictures of how they look and try to find a similarity I can trace back to.

And sometimes I can, but those don’t happen very often. Often I just reach across the screen and touch the pictures, the messages, the stories they share and wish to know them once again. Instead I fist my hands and pull away, close my eyes and stop to wonder. It doesn’t matter anyway. Lives go on and that is true for me as well.

And then I wonder again, do they think the same thing about me? Do they look at my picture and see someone different? Do they wonder if I still sound the same, smile the same, cry the same? Do they feel that my life had taken me so very far from them that the only thing they can do now is gaze at someone who used to be?

But then, I guess no one likes to word their grievances. So we all go back to our social networks, scroll through endless names and go on pretending, avoiding how very separate we have all become. Perhaps even forgetting, the very things that once connected us all.

Certainty

Does it ever feel like, to you, that certainty is the square root over negative one in your life? The infamous imaginary number? Something you need to calculate the all solutions of life, but which, in truth, never really existed. 

So often in your life you are certain some people are meant to stay, some things are bound to happen that you plan your days in accordance to it. But remove that certainty and whole equation falls apart. It’s like you are working on a problem, holding something constant, but suddenly the constant changes and becomes the variable and all you are stuck with is a bunch of symbols that has no value. All your efforts gone, your hopes vanished, you are left with pieces that hold no solution. You have to start from the scratch hoping to find something else you can hold as constant, as certainty.

Because face it, without some certainty nothing can be proven.

To some the certainty becomes religion, to others it becomes family, friends, morals, the system of justice, anything. Something. For how are you expected to face life with no solid ground on which you can stand? So you blindly believe in fate, destiny or whatever you call it, to lead you on wards.

But it all comes down to one thing doesn’t it? – there can never be certainty and without certainty there can be nothing.

Home

Some people say home is a house. To some its a place or person. And some believe its a sanctuary. I don’t really know what the word home means to me either. All I know is, I want to go there so badly.

I don’t want just a roof sheltering me at the darkest time of the night or from the midday sun burning my skin off. I don’t want four walls to protect me or imprison me. What I truly want is a world. A world where other people’s concern wouldn’t leave me restless, where hurtful words wouldn’t dare enter, where the worst part of the story is in the middle and the ending is always the best. I want a world where I can close my eyes and fall asleep, where waking up feels just right. Where I don’t have to be obligated to others for letting me stay on. I want my space.

Someday I think, I will earn a lot of money and I will move into my own apartment and that will be my home. But can money truly buy what I seek? Is it even possible to achieve it? Alas, who can answer it, but me?

If I ever get to that home of mine, I may find the peace that’s been hiding from me for so long. Or may be I won’t. But at the end, is the search even worth it?

The Others

The world in which we live is flawed. People cry, people go hungry but the others don’t care. The others can smile, can eat; the others can waste food. The others can afford luxurious cars to go to their high rise apartments.

We all talk about differences. Do you know the biggest difference? Our world is divided into two: us and the others. No matter where we are, what we do, it all comes down to where those others are and what they have done. The others are the standard against which we measure ourselves. The others have all, and we have none.

So who are these others? Anybody, other than us, is others. Right?

Is it a surprise then, why we can’t appreciate what we have? It seems as if we only think of those others when we want something. We never think the others don’t have what we have. We don’t think of others when we are being grateful. We never think, to someone else out there, we might just be one of the others.

Why don’t you let go now?

When we’d promised to write to each other, did we really think what would happen when we’ve run out of things to say? What would happen when the scribble on a piece of paper fail to leave even an imitation of what we’ve once shared? Will you read the words I write and know my heart is not in it?

I still feel so much, don’t get me wrong. But words are not enough strong to capture the moments I want to share with you, to keep the sadness at bay when you’re not around. Paper doesn’t comfort me. It doesn’t torment me. It doesn’t give me joy. Your letters don’t reach inside my armor. I read through each of them several times, trying to scrutinize and discover a trace of emotion it ignites in me. I feel like I am reading about someone else’s life. I can’t hear your voice reading out the letter to my ear any more. And when I sit to write, I just can’t make myself real enough for you. Every word I write sounds so fake to me. Does it seem fake to you too?

Do you realize in your absence I’d become a girl you don’t know anymore. Do you realize when you come back, you wouldn’t be coming back to the girl you’d left behind? I try to connect who I used to be to who I am now. But no matter what, it never seems enough.

Sometimes I get the feeling you’re holding back too. You are changing too, aren’t you? Do you think I’ll recognize the you in you now? I wish I could halt the change when we first met, holding ourselves closeted in a time frame when we were together. But it doesn’t happen like that, does it?

Someday I hope you’ll realize why I didn’t reply back this time. It’s not because I didn’t write. I just couldn’t explain to you how it works. I am sorry it didn’t go as we planned. I am sorry I can’t put up with this farce and lie to myself. I won’t send this one, just like the others I have written since your last letter.

You see, I am setting both of us free. You had already left, so why don’t you let go now?