garimadhankhar - Tumblr blog

[garimadhankhar]

Oh to love and be loved - to be consumed by light.

[Yves Olade, from Bloodsport; “When rome falls” || Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge || Andrew Garfield, talking about Emma Stone]

[garimadhankhar]

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘here are our monsters’, without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”

— Jacques Derrida, from “Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms,” in The States of Theory: History, Art, and Critical Discourse (via existential-celestial)

[garimadhankhar]

One of the most precious memories of us for me is the moment when we were standing really close, surrounded by so many people, just looking at each other without saying anything.

I had forgotten the world for those few seconds.

I remember your eyes looking into my eyes like you want to drown into them.

I remember thinking how I can never let you sink because of me.

Now, I do admit that my fear of being the one pulling the trigger was the reason why our relationship had choked and died.

But back then, I didn't know better.

I was always trying to be the cruel one because I loved how it made you look more gentle and your gentleness has always been my muse.

Somehow I forgot how you needed my softness too.

Romanticism is a funny idea, it makes us talk about dying for love but not the guilt of the ones left behind.

You are gone and I'm left with my own guilt and memories.

I had romanticised the idea of us which was why I wasn't able to accept the flaws in the beauty of our relationship.

We are now two individuals trying to determine if we have moved on from each other or not.

Trying to determine if the songs of our playlist remind the other one about what we had or not.

And I don't know about you but I still am trying to figure out if you are holding that last string till now or not.

Lying in bed, thinking about you has become so common that it has started feeling like a daily ritual.

The seasons have changed a lot since the day we met for the last time and somehow they all reminded me of you.

Like how spring reminded me of your enthralling laugh that made the world more beautiful.

And the colours of summer and autumn reminded me of your eyes.

A mixture of green and brown like a leaf stuck between these two seasons.

Your eyes, warm like memories, old like roots.

They always made me feel like I belong there, like I can be rooted there without feeling stuck.

It's winter now. And the chilly surroundings remind me of everything about you, of the whole of you because last winter your existence in my life was the source of warmth.

[garimadhankhar]

My sadness is loud today.

It's screaming in my ears and I'm trying to stop it before it becomes the only thing I'm capable of hearing.

It is shaping me in its own way and I have no choice but to be molded.

I am changing everyday and it is hard to ignore that these changes feel more like death of parts of me rather than the growth of them.

I am becoming autumn, making the versions of me shed their clothes until they are bare.

Until they are naked.

Until there's nothing left but the memory of having something that was enough to cover up the greyness I feel like my whole is drenched in.

My mind is becoming a graveyard, everyday there's a new grave to dig and then fill.

I have buried so many people by now that it has started to feel like an exhausting chore.

What does grieving feel like when grief becomes your habit?

With graves, there is an issue of memories too, I don't know how to deal with them.

I am haunted by my own memories and I'm too scared of losing anything more to get them excorcised.

All I can do is wait for them to make peace with the demise of their present.

Even though it wouldn't really matter because new memories are always coming, there's no limit to them and peace usually only comes when the conflict is limited.

And for tonight? Well, for tonight I am ready to settle with some silence, I need it like emptiness craves emotions, I'm too tired of the howls to hear anything else.

[garimadhankhar]

1. My heart is a hunter making feeble attempts to become a prey for once, to be chased by someone, to be hunted down.

It wants to be a victim for once, so that it'd be able to get through without feeling that insatiable guilt that keeps feeding on it until I start feeling hollow.

The feeling of getting empty is becoming heavier now. How do I stop it?

2. My heart is a splinter. Sometimes it is there, stuck in your skin, not ready to come out even when you make every effort. Other times it's just left there on the surface, touched but not capable of piercing your skin.

Now though it wants to be that unforgettable song, the one that stays in the back of your mind, ready to come out, waiting to be sung. A song that accompanies adoration. But somehow this pitiful organ doesn't recognise how out of tune it is most of the times.

The longing to become a melody instead of something that hurts you is hard to control but how do I learn to be in rythm?

3. My heart is the hailstorm, always dropping, dropping, dropping in the hope that someone would catch it but people usually prefer to cower away from it.

It wants to be a cloud, suspended in the air, looking so soft, so whole. So free. Making other people envious of it, making them long to reach it. It wants to be adored, stared at by people.

I'm hopeful the storm would turn into a cloud one day because I think that would let it be free at last but how do I tell it that sometimes things that are out of reach are left alone?

[garimadhankhar]

“He had wondered why she liked books so much, and if it had anything to do with why he liked spaceships, because they could take you somewhere far, far away.”

— Marissa Meyer, Stars Above [The Lunar Chronicles #4.5] (via catmint1)

[garimadhankhar]

In my poems mostly I am either destroying someone's life or I'm being destroyed by life but then comes you, you with your magnificent mind that always seemed too small to keep us all in.

You are sitting in front of me, singing songs,

I stare at you for a bit long and realize that there's not enough left inside of your skin to reflect anything instead of that petty lackness.

Your eyes look red most of the times now, I think it's the blood trying to say 'look, look I'm still in here, still surviving without changing my colours'.

Or maybe it's the alcohol trying to show us that it has totally swallowed up your entire body and that redness is just a sign of violence you make your body go through every day.

I don't like it. I don't like seeing alcohol creating a whole kingdom inside of you because it reminds me how you are never going to be on our side during the war.

War, I had learnt what it really means from you, I remember you had been saying something, screaming something, just trying to prove yourself right, I remember standing in front of her, with my hands ready to stop you when needed.

I remember wondering how do warriors get through this ruination and enter the future without leaving a piece of them behind, caged in the eye of the storm.

Once when my teacher was telling us about different wars in history, I had thought 'oh I have lived through one'.

I had thought 'oh I am living through one'.

Sometimes it feels like war has become the way of my life.

I walk on it even though I know about the destruction it brings.

I prepare myself for it every day, I prepare myself by excluding people from my life as it would result in fewer casualties.

I prepare myself for your betrayal by betraying my own versions.

I prepare myself for the moment when no amount of preparation would be enough.

You are still singing songs, raising your voice as much as you can.

Smiling whenever we make eye contact.

And I wish I could seize this moment.

The moment when our eyes meet each other's and smile reflects the peace we know isn't going to last long.

I wish I could leave my whole being here, the place that feels like a refugee camp for the storm affected people.

A place where you are with us.

[garimadhankhar]

"I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to."

- Khaled Hosseini

[garimadhankhar]

The quietness falls between us like the curtain falls between the audience and performers.

And just like the audience knows that performers are there but just hidden, you know my words are there.

Just hidden.

You look at my trembling hands and say it's okay.

It's okay.

But we both know that it isn't.

It isn't okay to be okay with being hidden.

My words sit on my tongue, waiting to be hurled out, to be thrown at you.

Sharpening themselves just so they would be able to harm you, not too much, just enough.

Enough to let you know that I have been hurting also.

Enough to tell you that your pain doesn't stop my pain from coming and breathing its air in my mouth.

Your actions made the ground slip under my feet.

What do you call it when there's no ground beneath you? Falling or flying?

I am tired of imagining what's going to happen next.

Would I hit the ground and lose everything in the process or would I keep flying and leave everything behind in the process?

We both wait for our capabilities of speaking up when needed.

But my words fall back in my throat when I don't say anything for too long.

They travel through the pit embraced by the darkness and hit the rock bottom.

What is more agonizing than feeling your sentences break inside you, feeling your story being burnt by the acid churning inside you?

I want to say that I hold onto silence because I chose it, because I wanted it, but we both know that it isn't true.

Silence is all I have to rely on.

She sits on the pieces of my words and says "here, here I am, child, hold me and I'll hold you back"

I close my eyes and thank her for at least knowing what I want and take her hand in mine.

You see it in my eyes, you see what I have chosen and sigh in relief. Or was it resignation?

[garimadhankhar]

I imagine myself sitting on a floor surrounded by fire, I imagine myself trying to console my heart, saying "it's okay, it's just fire, it's okay, it's just another metaphor for purity"

Purity.

You see, I hold it in my trembling hands, claiming to Gods that I did everything they asked, now I want to live like I am flying, like I'll never get tired of flying.

I ask God if they'd let me fly.

I don't get an answer so I take silence as one and jump off the cliff in the hope that I'd sprout wings before hitting rock bottom.

Silence.

How many times do I have to write about it to make my words enough for it, to make my words pay for the debt they owe it?

How many times do I have to make it become my God because sometimes there is nothing more powerful, because sometimes it is what I find everywhere instead of God?

How do I not make it a monster because sometimes I get scared of its power and because it is the reason why I am falling most of the time?

There are days when I feel like my silence might speak louder than my words, that my silence might give me power but nothing can give you anything unless you learn how to properly take it.

Power.

What it is if not a product of fear and illusion?

How can I feel powerful when I look so crushed?

How can I not feel powerful when I am standing even though I look crushed?

Somedays I try to think of Medusa, I try to decide if she got blessed in the form of power in the end and is shown scary because that's what power represents or did she get just another vulnerability, another evidence of a choice being taken away from her.

Blessed.

Whenever I look at my maa and she smiles at me, I feel like I have been blessed by the God she always talks about.

You see blessing for me isn't about gaining something, it's about being able to keep what I already have.

I pray to God to not curse me every time I pray for the safety of everyone I love.

Love.

Once a favourite poet of mine said "Love should've been enough, someone without a heart might say" and they were right.

Love is necessary but it is rarely enough.

I have loved him my whole life and I know he loves me too in his own way but a few days ago I realised that the respect I once used to have for him has been replaced by something like disappointment.

And loving him has started feeling like a burden now, a burden that I don't know how to deal with.

Burden.

I don't know what to say about it except that I have been trying to not make myself feel heavy because of me.

There are these absences in my heart that make everything go heavy and I don't know if it's possible to let go of this burden.

Let go.

How do you let someone go after you realize that that person was never here in the first place?

How do you let the phantom fire of grief know that you have been completely consumed by it now and it's time to go?

[garimadhankhar]

It is fall again and I can't help but fall into the abyss of memory and think of you.

Ocean Vuong writes "how sweet. that rain. how something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet"

Oh, how I just wanted to run to you after reading this and tell you that I have never wanted to be anything but rain for you, rain that you wanted me to be.

But sometimes it is hard for me to surrender, and to fall, I had to surrender first.

I loved you like I have always loved that feeling which is more of a sign of the beginning of winter that you suddenly get one day after waking up, I loved you in a wishful way, wanting you to stay because moments with you were better than any spring.

But such feelings, such signs can be quite fleeting. They flow away and what get left behind are nothing but the shadows.

I ask your shadow to smile at me but all it is capable of showing are the traces of tears I had heard of on our last day.

It is heartbreaking to know that I was the one who had shattered your heart.

You see I have always had a habit of bursting the balloons of reality just because I am not courageous enough to face the fears it brings and you were my sense of reality like Patroclus was Achilles's humanity.

Achilles and I, both couldn't save what we needed.

I have lost you and now I don't know how to not lose myself in dreams/in nightmares.

I needed your reality to be a companion of my imagination.

To be something that would remind me that I'm not alone, that I cannot be lost because I'm not alone.

Now somedays I feel the loneliness sitting on my heart, I hear its voice, singing songs about lost people with such sickening joy that I start feeling nauseous.

It sits on my heart like it owns it.

I want to get rid of it but sometimes it feels more me than my own name.

I still think of you whenever I read anything about handwritten letters.

You gave me letters and with every word I had carved you on my bones like a witch binding someone with a spell.

You see, I had tried to bind you to me.

You see, I knew I had to carve you permanently on me before I'd let the fear of transientness ruin "us".

But I couldn't.

The spell didn't work.

Somehow I forgot to be your rain and became the thunder, thunder capable of burning everything we had built with such profound delicacy.

The carving tool became the knife used for stabbing and the spell turned into something like a curse.

When we pour enough negativity into magic then it becomes a power that can decay anyone.

I had to stop so that this power wouldn't decay you and me.

Now only the incomplete sentences are left.

I see you now flowing away, smiling and laughing, blooming, and I realise that you are finally okay with not staying and somehow this breaks something inside of me.

Is this selfish of me?

Is this selfish of me to acknowledge this breaking?

[garimadhankhar]

Dark Side of Longing:

Eduardo C. Corral, “Autobiography of My Hungers” • Pavana Reddy, Where Do You Go Alone? • Margaret Atwood, Excerpt of Speeches for Dr. Frankenstein from Selected Poems 1965-1975 • Moomin (1990-1992) • Amir Khusrau, “Ghazal 249,” In the Bazaar of Love: The Selected Poems of Amir Khusrau • Mark Doty, “The Death of Antinoüs” • Yves Olade, “Béloved”, Slaughterhouse

[garimadhankhar]

I don't know what it is that I'm most scared of, loving or losing.

The first day you entered my life, you asked to be embraced. I tried to hold you in my hands but you were too delicate, too gentle. My calloused hands were too rough, too cruel.

I let you go.

Without letting the desire go.

Desire to know if I'd ever be able to become soft for someone who might be able to know what to do with all the cruelty that I throw at him.

But yearning shouldn't stay for long enough to be turned into something like longing.

I couldn't let you make me long for you.

I couldn't let the sadness that gets generated by your absence become grief. Become my ruin.

So I wrecked us.

It was easy to pretend that pretending doesn't come with the loss of your gentleness.

It was easy to pretend that I wasn't leading you on the path of the destruction of the idea I let you weave in your mind, an idea that you always seemed to adore so much.

And it is easy to pretend that I don't really know what I'm most scared of.

I might be scared of love in some ways but it's the loss that I'm most scared of. It's always loss that dictates my every action. Rules over every bit of me.

Fear doesn't just tell you what to do or not do, if it's given enough power, it grips your cells in its fists and controls every bit of you and my fear of loss sometimes can be so palpable that it feels like it's going to stand up and push me off the very cliff I always feel like I'm standing on.

And love lets it feed on herself.

Love disappears slowly in order to create loss.

I couldn't love you any more than I already did when I first time told you I love you. I couldn't let you be one of the reasons why my fear is getting heavier and heavier as days pass by.

I couldn't let my fear turn into terror.

But I did anyway.

I loved you more.

And terror came into my room like my best friend and started consuming me.

I wrote a poem about this consumption because I didn't know how to tell you what's happening and you said it's terrifyingly beautiful.

I couldn't help but smile sadly.

I thought it was time to cut the strings that attach us when I heard the first crack in your chest, I knew it for sure when you said it's becoming unbearable.

There's no other way to make things bearable if they have already become something that we cannot bear, we can only leave that thing behind. I had to make you leave me behind.

I hope you have.