I have this feeling right now that if I were to slip away, suddenly, quietly- and just disappear, it would be a while before anyone would notice. (The parents would notice, of course).
I feel like I'm back in the sixth grade again, the new kid for the second time.
It is a strange, strange thing to feel this inconsequential, this replaceable, this nothing. I wish (and have been wishing for a while now) that I was someone else. Someone with a different life, a different brain, different thoughts. This is not a plea for attention, or sympathy, or even whining. I am not about to walk into traffic (ever). I am not falling apart at the seams or coming undone, or anything dramatic like that. Just detached observation. All I seem to want to do these days is sleep and possibly disappear into someone else.
I feel... nothing.

Let Us Say Goodbye

Let us say goodbye then,

You and I.
Let’s walk away, and begin to forget.
The kisses, of course,
And the remembering -of firsts and quirks, a handful of dates.
Let us put behind us our secret knowledge,
And all those times you dropped a kiss on the tip of my
nose.
The first time I ever wrote a love letter, I titled it ‘This is not a love letter’
And put it in caps, to emphasize how much it was not a love letter.
Let us obliterate the memory of that;
Leave it to electronics and circuitry,
And the people who will stumble upon it one slow afternoon at work.
Let us erase the last traces of
That feeling in my chest when you laugh,
And how you call me 'bitch' with great affection.
Let’s rub away at the kisses
Till their last vestiges are wiped off the corners of our lips.
Let us kiss strangers till their tongues take away the electric of
Your tongue on my lips
And my lips on your fingers,
And your fingers playing a riff
In the dark.
Let’s forget the time you kissed my damp eyelashes (surprising yourself),
And pulled out the sting.
The world will not cease to turn,
And nothing will have been lost.
Except- a few brief hours
Where my hand on your chest was yours.
Nothing except laughing hysterically as we plotted murder,
and talked over each other, trying to win.
Nothing but staring at pixelated smudges on screens
Till our heads ached.
Nothing except the wind on our backs as we ambled home,
A happy tangle of limbs.
So you see it would be easy.
Let’s not make a fuss now.
Let’s not ascribe this affair undue importance
So the stars did not align for us
(They don’t align for anyone, you fool.)
The gods did not send any angels our way
(We never prayed for them, you see.)
Everything fades after a while,
Even memories, even pain, even something that came very close to being
Love.

Disclaimer: Having gotten a few 'DON'T scare me like that you freak's, and incredibly sweet, incredibly worried emails, I feel like this is necessary. So, for the record, nobody has said goodbye to anyone. This is fictional.

Postcard evening

It’s like there’s a part of my brain that always has you on its mind. There’s a corner that’s always tuned to you. Once in a while I remember it, and I look at it, and there you are. Right now, typing this, I’m sitting curled up beneath a red rug that I have ‘borrowed’ from the roommate for the time being. The roommate is hardly ever home, and her cat is beginning to love me more. Already he follows me around instead of her (it’s because I actually feed him). Anyway, I’m curled up on the air-mattress, as comfy as you can get on an air-mattress. The giant tabby cat is curled up, pressed against my feet with his back facing me. He’s quiet, satisfied, and he flicks his tail from side to side, erratically, like he’s keeping time with the music. I only just realized that the tail is a muscle a few days ago. It’s one of those things you know, but don’t know. So the tail is a muscle, like certain other things are muscles.

Here is what I do sometimes: I go to Grooveshark, and I click on you, and I click on ‘play station’. It’s a comforting thought that I can play you like you’re a radio whenever i want. Right now ‘Crush on you’ by Springsteen is drawing to an end, the tinny sound through my speakers, turning my room into an old-time cafe with a jukebox. I like having this option to play your station. It makes me feel safe, and warm- the way a fire in the fireplace makes your soul feel warm, as the flames leap up and lap at the wood. 

I want to write you a letter. “Dearest”, it would start. I want to write it in curling handwriting at the back of a post-card. but i won’t because I’ll forget, and we talk too much on the phone anyway, and where’s that letter I was promised? 

I’m reading ‘American Gods’; it’s interesting. It’s nice, this feeling of being wrapped up in a story. I’d missed it. I’ve missed you. I’ve forgotten how to kiss you, but maybe I’ll rediscover it when we meet. Through the prickliness of your ‘stache, or perhaps not. 

‘Whiskey in the jar’ is playing now. I’m going to get back to my book.

In fragile things

Who’s to say what happiness is?

I could never have predicted (despite all the predictions I made)

that you would be so close.

That you would nestle – like the word last read in a half-read sentence-

deeply, firmly, lightly embedded.

I play with chopping blocks,

and fixatives.

With resin.

Bloody hearts may lie strewn across my spotless white bench.

It gives off the faintest smell of formaldehyde

(-makes me light headed sometimes,

but nothing to compare with – no matter, that’s sop.)

And who’s to say that happiness cannot be found

In the rustle, as pages brush their bodies against each other for a moment,

In the middle of a story-

About October telling stories,

As February-fussy, timid- sulks,

and April sucks her dainty fingers clear of innards,

while May takes her side.

And I, I dream at the back of my mind,

About a wondrous, terrifying August.

On an evening, where the skeletons of trees look in through my window,

as I sit inhaling the hot breath of my brown-slatted-heater.

Fingers stained with chocolate that arrived in the mail today

(near a month too late).

Bearing solemn, sincere advice on a background of blue,

it brought with it the hope of a new year.

I listen to a pink moon sing,

And curl up by my heap of warm, fresh, laundry.

Who would have known that we would come to know

each other, from half a world away.

Through tangles of invisible wires,

and calling plans that rob us blind.

Who’s to know that happiness lies here?

In fragile things.

Shubho Noboborsho

Bengali New Year comes at a time when I'm desperately in need of a clean slate. Redemption, the possibility of making good and starting over. Here's to a second chance to have a brand new sparkly new-year.

Shubho noboborsho.

P.S: I'm craving kosha mangsho like mad. If good fairies do exist, would they please drop by with mutton and mutton jhol'er alu? 

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” - Anaïs Nin

Indeed.

oh please let's just be (ir)rational about this and intellectualize everything, for fuck's sake. i mean that's how you go about life, isn't it?
a half bottle of chardonnay and several slices of cheese down, followed by some sort of brown mush that came in a microwaveable bag that claims to be punjabi eggplant curry. internlife ftw, no?
just when you're floating around blissfully, you get shot down by some perspective. dear face, say hello to ground. it's been a while.

also: if you guys see this, congratulations to speedpost and buchu for a probable-two year anniversary. i mean congratulations are definitely in order for buchu managing not to mess this up, and speedpost managing to bear with. okay, enough mush. may you waste some time for many more years to come.