One Last Trick

Dear A,

Lately it has become quite like this, whenever I say your name it is followed by – my best friend who died of suicide and with whom I am not in love with. See, this would be humorous if we were both alive and I was not fending alone to defend my friendship with you.

I heard this poem about these two poets who explained why they were the bestest of friends*. See, if you were alive, I would have made you listen to that poem. You would have smiled, and we would have jokingly agreed to make this our theme poem to friendship. Any time, any one kept asking nagging question, we would just play the theme poem out!

The thing is, if you were here, may be I wouldn’t have to defend my friendship to begin with. We have always known each other’s place in our lives. We have never had to vocalize, never had to determine the boundaries of friendship. We have instinctively known that boy-next-door grows up to be the best friend, and not the love interest. Always known, that best friend was not a gender description. So, if ever came a day where we would have to explain what our friendship encompassed, it wouldn’t feel like a burden.

But the thing remains, that you are not here today. You are not here to laugh at a society who will only accept one label between a boy and a girl. You are not here to mock, to not have a care about what everyone else thought and said.

You, not being here, has made suicide not an abstract concept, but something more real. You, not being here, has made death a loss like I have never known.

A, I really don’t know how other people perceive of how I speak of you. But these are not what I would have chosen to say, to defend, if you were alive. I would have instead talked about my stupid tree hugging best friend who loved nature… but didn’t know how to swim. About how you mispronounced McGonagall’s name in Harry Potter until you saw the movie. About how you would sit and play with me and my Barbies and you had to have a villain in your plots. About how you needed to pack eight different pair of shoes for a summer in NY. About how you were a brilliant writer.

Our friendship was never meant to be a battleground, yet today, I feel exhausted. How do I turn this around? How do I learn your grace in turning this into something I can laugh about? Tell me A, teach me one last trick.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esgfG3BoAPc The Theme Poem to Friendship!

The Art That Is Yours

The art of writing for years
Is that you convince yourself, words matter
You think someday,
Someone will run their fingers over these scrawled phrases
You think, it will open up a door
Or passage leading straight to your heart.
You think these words will save you,
Because someone will read RESCUE
Instead of poems.

My darling, you are wrong.

You never want to be freed.
If you truly wanted help
You would write less in metaphors,
And more in pleas.
Only one person can decipher your conundrums
If only she would put down her pen
And look at the image
Of the girl in her words
She would know,
The only person she has been writing these to
Has been reading them all along.

You are not of this world

I am five years old and my mother looks at me, with the tenderness of a mother’s eye and says with an endearment, ‘Tui ei duniyar na – You are not of this world.’ I smile because that means I belong somewhere else. A world more exotic than just this. May be I am of the stars, the constellation and the open skies. May be I belong to deep oceans and endless forests. May be I come from folklore – the possibilities of not being from this world is just endless.

I am ten years old and I have long since perfected the art of being alone. My mother watches over me, as I sit playing with my dolls. She shakes her head and whispers mostly to herself, ‘Tui ei duniyar na – You are not of this world.’ There is a world, she knows, inside of me. A world that doesn’t require other people to bring me happiness. A world that centers around my family and my one best friend. A world with this own gravity and orbit and moon. She doesn’t try to pull me out. What’s the point? I am happy, aren’t I?

I am eighteen and I carry my pen and paper with me, scribbling away words I do not speak. I am not of this world. I don’t know how to accept the bad with the good. I don’t want to embrace the failures of our times as facts of our time. I am not of this world, this world so cruel. This world that wants and wants everything from me, but never gives anything back. What am I supposed to do this world?

I am twenty four years old and my mother looks into my solemn eyes and for the first time she shakes her head regretfully as she says, ‘Keno tui ei duniyar na – Why are you not of this world.’ She doesn’t say the rest. But I have long since learned how to fill in the gaps. This is what she means – Why hasn’t the world made you stronger? Why can’t you accept death as a part of life. Why is it that only you are different. Don’t you know what happens to people who are so different? How will you live in this world when you don’t belong here?

Ammu, hear me, I am not of this world. You have never taught me to be. I don’t belong to this sadness, this transiency. I do not belong to silences and complains. You, who have always polished my wings, never taught me when not to fly. I do not know how not to believe in the best of people, how not to give second chances, how not to take a leap of faith. I do not belong to lies and half spoken truths. I do not belong to calluses and disappointments.

I belong to words that are spoken with honesty. I belong to vulnerabilities and taking my armor off. I belong to tears and grief. I belong to hope beyond what this world is capable of giving.  This heart you have given me beats with the woes of this world. This life you have nurtured me into makes me bleed out my pain. You have always seen all the possibilities of not being from this mold. So why are you trying to fit me in a place I don’t belong in?

I still dream of a world in the clouds. Of castles and dragons. Of love and adventure. Of friendship and forgiveness. I still believe there is more to life than just this. Can’t you love enough to believe in those possibilities with me, once again?

Distance

Distance may not just be the miles

But the phone calls that were never made,

Things left unsaid.
Distance may be the time it takes

To hold their hands,

To brush away their tears.
Distance may be the way eyes don’t glow

At their sight anymore

When feelings don’t show.
Distance may not be the mere miles

But all that lives within that space

Where no one ever stays.

You could have been that girl

Love is of course the best place to start writing

For how can a mere heart hold all that you have to say?

But Love is also the easiest time to stop writing,

You have things to say, but no words anymore.

You grow older,

Replace paper with people

You forget the pen

And pack your favorite lipstick instead

That’s not love for you; that’s life

And you are happy without the words

You are happy not writing about why you no longer believe in love

Happier not trusting others to keep their word

Happy to just exist in moments

Fairy tales are best left at home, under pillow cases

And kisses that curl your toes are tucked away in dreams

You are all grown up now and love is just another expression

And poetry is for people with things to say

And you have concerns of your own

Problems to which there are no solution

Relationships that are more like entanglements

You don’t have time for paper

Paper didn’t heal you then; paper wouldn’t make you believe again

So you forget to hold your thoughts

Time is of essence

And you stop to write, stop to love

It’s time to open your eyes and live again.

One day you get a glimpse from behind the glass window of your car

Of a small cafe by the road

Where young lovers crowd

You see a girl sitting at a table

She’s writing away all her sorrows

You could have just easily been that girl.

But you chose to toss the diary out the window

And walked out of that cafe so along ago

So you sit behind glass windows in cars and to drive to work

And think to yourself, you could have been that girl.