@aakritisitaulaa

"You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry."

~ Frida Kahlo

when i turn off the lights

I'll not run but stand there

so the ghosts can take me

and wipe away my tear

oh how i dare to be that

i should be scared instead

but that's not me

and i will rather choose be dead

when the ghost comes near

i will ask it something

are you real.?

or are you too pretending.?

"i am too heartless", I'll say

but with skin and bones

and you're void darkness

like everyone knows

yet i could feel you shivering

just as frightened as me

you and i are no different

we are tied, even when we're free

~august/fictionflaws

Claudia Rankine, Citizen

you touched me when i was the most unpure. you cleaned me when i was stained with their words. i've been drained like the waste and wandered between depth of ocean. water took away my thirst but it couldn't pacify the burn that was rising inside me. i drank all those dews, every morning, all midnights, just to live. they were poison, i was dying. and i couldn't figure out what was wrong with me until i was laid on my death bed. all of the people i have seen in my life till that day came to see me but no one ever, not even once, tried aware me of all those thorns that could have pricked my whole. i am still sinking and i will forever do until i reach to the end. i am thankful to you for washing away my bruises but i could never forget that you were the one to drown me. you let me sink till my lungs were filled with water and there was no place for air for me to breathe. i was gone and dead.

-Aakriti.

~sink(water).

what doesn't kill me makes me want to die.

the night sky reminds me of you

The Letter to Nobody

Dearest,

It is cold today. After a week-long heat wave, the bay area has cooled down. It even rained the other day - what a treat!

The rain has clarified the skies. I didn’t know the blue of the Californian skies could be any bluer. But they could. They have: And they remind me of home.

I am inundated with assignments. I read most of the afternoons. I don’t remember my eyelids being tired this way. This tiredness is new to me, as are the golden sycamore leaves, the souvenirs of autumn. My first fall in the US, tired from reading stories all day long.

Fall.

Such a terse, poetic name for a weather.

You were startled by my admiration when I first admitted it to you. I suspect it struck you as incorrect. In a way, you were right.

Why should the spring buds admire the fall? Why should they indulge in the promise of death, decay, falling?

Fall. 

It is relaxing just to even pronounce it out loud. My muscles groan. In the distant skies, the clouds have thinned out into round patches that look like doily. I smile. I always wanted to learn crocheting. I know I never will. But I will look at doilies and I will look at doily-looking clouds and tell myself I wanted to learn crocheting. Why do I do this? Who am I lying? And I am not even lying. I would like to learn crocheting but only if life was a little longer than it is. I shift my gaze back to my screen. Words. I love them. 

Rustle. Why do I have to be distracted like this?

A swarm of desiccated sycamore leaves. It is cute that they always travel in a band. My windowsill is their nestling place. The specters of autumn. 

Is this a goodbye? Are you here to say goodbye? 

I say goodbye out loud. The leaves receive my idiocy with solemn indifference. 

Indifference. You pretended but you couldn’t be half as indifferent as these leaves. 

I never understood why you, with all your appetite for the unknown, should be threatened by the admiration. But admiration is threatening. In old french, it means to regard the person in awe.

It is threatening to be regarded with awe. What if we couldn’t live up to it? What if our existence contaminates someone’s pool of awe? Will we be able to live with so much guilt?

I understand you better now. Now that you are gone.

You indeed disappointed me. You faltered when it mattered the most. You betrayed my trust more than once.

Strangely enough, life is setting up a reverse drama for me. I have a far younger boy approach me with the admiration I had for you. And I feel burdened. I try to tell him that this is stupid. And it is. I know it is, because I have been stupid. But he persists. He brings me tea and chocolates.

I am waiting to break his heart. But that is the only way forward. Doesn’t mean I didn’t care for him. I want him to fly higher.

You are dead. Every day, life teaches me how/why to forgive you. I forgive you. One carelessness a day. You were also petty. Just like me. None of us can rise higher than our fears. At least, not all at once.

I forgave you this today - your suspicion of me. 

- bhushita

sun went away

to rest in paradise

stars in constellation

and moon held the sky

i painted them

in black and white

held them within me

away from human sight

-august

maybe someday soon, we'll be there, together, forever.

-August.