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there’s a graveyard that lives within me, meant for the undead. I carry it everywhere I go. I have pink flowers, unfinished poetry and giggles buried there; three forbidden words float in the sultry air. the walls have no windows and the graves are painted shut with grief. there exists a language only grief knows. it is taught in shades of blue. it is made of silly, abstract translations: ‘I’m sorry (I love you). how are you (I love you). I thought of you today (I love you). study well (I love you). it hurts (I love you). you broke me (I love you). I’m cutting you off (I love you).’ isn’t it funny, the brutal infidelity of memories to the heart, the paradox in hurting something that’s already hurt. I still remember watching you look up at that scrambler- smiling like a little kid, and thinking how I’ll love you forever and somehow it still wouldn’t be enough. I still remember sitting beside you, arm in arm, my head leaning onto your shoulder, on our way to kottayam, thinking how bea

summers have always been cruel; with heartbreaks and fallen flowers and hot orange skies that remind me of dead goldfish. somewhere between the blur of march rains, afternoons spent  tearing up to taylor swift and autumn red bleeding in, I get myself killed. I wake up in the morning with the familiar ache of grief weighing me down. it whispers, ‘it’s not the same anymore.’ I quietly walk past it and goes on pretending to live. at nights, it finds its way back to me, like a stray dog looking for warm corners in cold winter streets. it staggers around me, chokes me, and stabs me over and over. it tells me that I cannot hold your hand again. it tells me that I cannot tell you that I love you again. it tells me that I’ll rot everywhere you once kissed me. it tells me that you’ll forget but I’ll remember it all. at nights I die a thousand little deaths.

dead moths in the dark and the white of your eyes like frozen hyacinth, your mellow arms wrapping  the fragments of my heart, i'm thinking of how i had let your fingers plunge into my flesh and untie my knots- one by one each,that is. wrinkled knots, looped up in the caverns of my weird brain, always making up some  weird excuse to think of you; of empty motel lobbies and damp kisses, and the faint click of your tongue. "sorry that i couldn't stop staring at your neck today". i had apologized half-heartedly once. "sorry that i clutched your clothes and cried to sleep when the ache of being that far from you was too much" -i learnt to swallow words that day. there are apologies better left unsaid everywhere. apologies that aren't necessarily apologies. apologies written in vein blue ink, love letters lost at the back of throats.

a cup of coffee,a stack of books,and a disheveled bed; windows painted shut and grey walls closing in on me, i tell myself that no room is unhaunted. my mother's old sarees, decrepit and dusty, lie silent on the other side of the door. they smell of heartbreaks and burning suns. i wonder how many roads did she have to walk down before she became her. i wonder how many roads i would have to walk down before i become her. my pillows tinted flesh carry the weight of my chains, except that i'm not quite sure if they're chains or poems. or my own veins for that matter. now watch me struggle to eat raw air. now watch me get asphyxiated by swallowing pain; rooted in the memories of a woman  whose eyes resemble mine.

mid-august nights, you knit waves onto my skin. I wake up smelling like the seven seas,  only to find you gone. the anecdotes you left on my body, half-written love letters at the corners and curves, they'd continue reciting your name till time ends. amidst dragonflies and cobwebs and old blankets, i'd find myself thinking about how rain fell through your beard the day we walked along an array of mirrors, each that turned into cinder the moment we passed them. your shadows would trespass my thoughts, while i sit at this desk and  scribble about the way you kissed me  the day we met, my white skirt tucked in between my thighs  and the back of my throat,aching. maybe some days i'd write about your face that day, the face after that kiss, the face my fingers traced madly, the face i'd know in my dreams, the face that made me lean towards love and longing.

i open my eyes and i'm in your arms. you smell of sweaty kisses and the familiar scent of the blue walls of my childhood home. i open my eyes again and i'm walking beside you. we hold hands but we don't talk, i can hear you breathe, our foot steps synchronized. i open my eyes again and you are inside me. your fingers trace the arch of my back as if they are searching for something your skin feels like monsoon rains and your legs entwine me, leaving me breathless and wanting more. i open my eyes again and i'm in the dark. you whisper three words in my ears. three words and the world almost ends. three words,they float deformed, in the silence around. and then you undress my layers  and kiss them clumsily again.

at 3 am there's a familiar face in my dreams. I wake up and my cold feet touch the floor. cold feet upon cold floor. I know I just saw you pass by. The same way I have seen you pass by, a million times over and over in corridors,roads,dreams and what not. the same way I'll be seeing you in a room twenty years later. there'd be people around and you'll pass by,like a stranger. I wouldn't know. but the seventeen year old girl in me would. you wouldn't stop before me. but the seventeen year old boy in you would. they'd just stand there and stare at each other's faces. she with a little jasmine in her long hair. he with a light moustache in his black tee. they'd kiss until we both leave the room, maybe they'd cry. we would take them with us, those little parts of us, but we wouldn't know. we wouldn't know that they'd still live inside us or that they have ever lived inside us. they wait until they meet again like cherry trees waiting for

Ever wondered what happened to the atoms of the lustful breaths⠀ that you exhaled deep into⠀ the perpetual hollows of my collarbones ⠀ every time we made love?⠀ were their destinies trapped in the⠀ labyrinths of my raw existence forever ?⠀ mazes stained by your sweat drops,⠀ nerves left frozen by ⠀ your touch,⠀ that’s what my body would become after on.⠀ and the atoms of your breaths entwined⠀ would travel as far as to the forbidden realms⠀ telling tales of our amore.⠀ they would float across the cosmos⠀ as unfaced deities singing sonnets⠀ that echoed our moans.⠀

ten years from now we'd be in strange places but on rainy afternoons  I'd reminisce of you. a little pile of memories in a dusty corner of my brain would rise into dry vaccums like fireflies,like stardust, like the way you laugh silent. I'd paint you in colours, teal and white you love, the weird way you walk and your melon shaped head and the infinite little things about you. you held me when nobody did like my balcony holds the amber bougainville from falling into voids, your face would sprout  in all the corners of my  shrivelled heart until there's no space any more until i stop yearning for it. You dissenter whom I love to learn tiny little things about, don't ever let go of me for I'd never let go of you.