The Other Side of Sunlight

"That's so fucking cute man, can you do it again?”

“No.”

Sunlight. Someone’s already having a conversation with the jukebox and we’ve misplaced our symmetry a while ago. It’s the final Wednesday and our inhibitions stretch out under the table as we lower our necklines and raise our voices. I find my girls in the chaos but fail to lose my drinking face. You pick up on it faster than I can control. We spot a random, decide he’s Frazer’s snoop dog and cheers to Jai Hind. We drink to Rags boobs. We drink to growing up. We drink to having no future. I know what you’re upto but just this once, I let it go. Still, I catch you smirking.

“You didn’t cut your hair off,” you say accusatorily.

“I’d look like an alien.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Would.”

“Show me.”

I’m high enough to make a fool of myself so I pull back my hair and you choke on your drink. This means war. I leave you for the dark side of Sunlight and like a hero I run across the bench, bang my head on the big ugly tv and pose for a picture. When I come back to you, I’m wincing and there’s a small gash next to my hairline. You take one look at my face, plunge your hand into the ice bucket, wrap cubes in tissue and hand it to me. I’m laughing. You check for a bump but I tell you I’m fine. They’re playing ‘Time of your life’ by Greenday and everyone sings it with full feel. When I look at you, you learn forward and brush my cheek with your thumb.

“That’s ice water.”

“I thought you were crying.”

We're so young and beautiful. The energy we play with is brighter than this room and I want to stay here forever. Drunk, on edge and spilling over with stars.

There’s magic everywhere and magically, obviously we’ve been caught in its web. I feel real but this feeling, it’s called growing up and just for a minute I wish it would give it a rest.

Just so I can go home and mull things over.

Instead I shrug off my old cape for Sky.

Dramaturgy

I'm sitting in college under the arches, the cold in my bones, chai curdling my veins and like a ninja you spring out, grab me and say, 'I just got kicked out of class, we're going for a smoke.'

I don't even like the smoke guy. But it's cold and you look pissed as hell so I follow.

I don't really know you but then again my mind has always been mutinously myopic and I never map friends of friends because the coordinates get too difficult to control.

We run outside and I say all the right things about attendance. We cross, you save me from a speeding car and I fight the urge to laugh at how easy it is for boys to play Superman.

The smoke guy doesn't sell to girls under a fail misconception that it will save us so you buy me a menthol and mint without even asking. I bite back surprise, you remembered

The pavement calls to me and when I sit down you don't hesitate. This is what I absolutely love about boys, they see nothing wrong with getting dirty.

'I like your name.'

'I hate it. My brother and sister are named after Gods, and I'm named after someone who worships God. Yay.'

'So you're real.'

I blow smoke spirals and ask you about your city, about change, about acid and alienation. You tell me stories instead. I curl up and let your voice do the talking so in time I can spell out the subtext, the rasps, the curves, the connotations. It's different. When you look at me, I pick up where you left off and you listen.

We're three smokes down, I'm on a roll about subjectivity and robots, the real world, happiness, the Beatles, Bombay secrets, painting people, the mafia, and you're still listening. I'm not thinking.

We count yellow cars and you laugh at all the right places. I'm wearing an ancient sweatshirt, no kajal and a very strategic coffee stain. I look like a 5 year old but you don't seem to care.

'I don't like her.' I say pointedly about someone walking past, on our fourth trip to the smoke guy.

'Why baba?'

'I don't know, bad vibes?'

'But do you know her?'

'Aww yeah you're one of those no judgement, acid has broken all the walls in my head types.'

'Acid is for safe places and unless you know someones story you can't play their game, right?'

'So its an endless circle of grey areas? I know what you're getting at but sometimes its easier being pissed off and juvenile. To judge and jail. The vicious circle. I don't want to go around giving chances,' I'm holding my breath so I turn away breathing out slowly.

You watch me for a bit then say something completely unexpected,

'Punch me.'

'You're insane.'

I watch you watching me and this could turn into one of those viral video games on pause so I punch your palms until they turn red.

You're stronger than I thought.

When I'm done you give me a real hug, chin to head, toe to toe, your forearms fighting the warmth into me.

Only strangers trust in tandem.

When we cross the road back to college you literally pull me forwards by the scruff of my neck to escape an errant driver.

'Ay man, why do you keep saving me?'

'Because I can.'

Hello stranger

(But you didn't have to cut me out

Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing

I don't even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger

And that feels so rough)

I dream about you every night. Last night you called me from your mothers phone and when I answered you made fun of my hello and begged me to come back. (My mother wouldn't like you, you'd said. I'd shrugged, the fact that you didn't like me making me indestructible) I wake up and the sky is blue again. I step out of bed (I hate my bed, I spent endless nights there making shadow animals with your voice in the background), wink at the mirror and then it hits me. (I'm over you. You forced me to like someone else. I wanted to throw up when you'd said that but you didn't care enough to see me weak. You wouldn't even stay to watch me leave) I double up fighting to breathe the pain like Tyler Durdens fist through my ribcage. Breathe breathe breathe, I tell myself, you're going to be fine. (That's a lie) I sleepwalk through a really bad omelette my dad made for me (Shanti's on holiday and home doesn't feel like home) he tries to add salt but I snap so hard I almost bite his fork off. I shower and pull on an ancient tshirt, my FY jeans and leave, my hair still in its post shower ponytail. (I look barely human, you'd love it) There's traces of kajal but I feel like a refugee, my eyes lighter, my heart heavier. Thank god for sweatshirts. My class smiles at me but leaves me alone. I think sometimes, I exude grief. (I'm a stranger that smells like me) What scares me is that no one would notice the difference. (Only you knew me no no no that's not true I have friends but there are days when all I want to do is call you and cry about a boy who broke my heart)(stop it, don't go there)

I've been holding my breath now for 22 days and counting. People tell me it will get easier with time (they're lying) they tell me it was my fault (its true) but what I don't tell them is that all the time we were together I detached as many time as the black keys on a piano, so I'd be ready for this eventuality. (I am enough)(You're lying) I always told myself I didn't need you, I had my people I had my places I was on my own planet, you were just an alien. (How easily we convince ourselves that we're safe) Somewhere, somehow, something went horribly wrong. You believed me and here I am unable to believe it myself. (Fuck) Its heartbreaking. (Let it go let it go it's going to be fine) I spent months trying not be emotionally dependent on you I guess I got over my robot phase because all I feel now is hurt and its the rawest kind. I don't want anyone else. (He comforted me one night though and that turned into something else but the entire time all I could think of was it hurts more now. It was sweet but the aftertaste made me retch)(What a stupid little girl)(She's just scared) I would give anything for you to call me sing talk about some show you've been watching hyper as shit take my case get worked up over imaginary threats soothe me in that psuedo posh voice of yours where we dissect life theories and give me more attention than my parents ever did. I miss you. (I know you miss me) I used to know you. I don't anymore. Now you look the same and smell the same but I can't touch you. I won't call you because I'm scared you'll disappoint me and find out I'm not as special as I used to be. You can't expect this to come easily. (I spend minutes every hour holding myself together)(I will not cry)(You're not angry, you're not sad, you're scared. You're scared you've lost someone special and when you're old enough to know better you're scared you'll never forgive yourself)

But if there's anything you taught me is that I'm prettier with my walls down so next time round I'm going to walk in fearless, but it won't be for you. You're going to get a white wall because I don't know what you're thinking anymore. You can't love someone unconditionally then make way for someone else.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I don't need you to tell me I exist.

I exist.

You were my pet, now you're a person, but I was never a tree.

(Now you're just somebody that I used to know)

Esidarap

I've been fighting feeling all my life. My layers so separated from the real world that I almost forgot what it was like to lose. I could've lost you. You could've painted me black instead of purple and orange, shades that have always been misunderstood. But instead here we are, so intrinsically twisted that sometimes I think I could be any shade you want just so you don't see the shadows shifting beneath my skin. I'm so sad, smalls. You try to shake it out of me but the sadness is in my bones and I'm just so scared. I'm scared you won't come back to me. I'm see that you've scavenged a shield for future fights so you can stay strong and untouchable but it's just not as much fun, is it?
I cried because I've never been loved with a heart so big before. I'm empty and disoriented and I could blame you but would you save me now? In all honesty I don't get why you should. I've been told that Superman only turns up if there's someone worth saving. And if you left, I'd have to figure out how to save myself but I can't even sleep with all the lights off and sometimes I talk to the ceiling and battle silhouettes with my sheets and you know I have you on speed dial lest the monsters come for me so don't go.
I don't want you to pace yourself, to space us because I'm not fighting you anymore. Then again, I don't know what I want. But you're white and I'm every colour but and you started off being my safe spot so now when I choose to live a little on the wild side I'll have to relinquish you.

When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach so
She ran away in her sleep

I could want you. But my mind plays games with me and my dreams are darker than you are.

Darling this time if you break I promise I will fix you, with twisted straws and superglue.
Because only superheroes deserve superglue.

Sleepyhead

Tell me a story, okay? you say, your voice husky with sleep.
Okay, I say, layered in sweat and blankets, cold rain cocooning my capillaries. I'm this close to curling into a curve but you're waiting so I weather my voice for you.

Once upon a time there was a little..
Cat called Felix, you interject softly.
There was a little cat called Felix alone and scared in the middle of a deep dark forest. He found a path scarred with breadcrumbs and walked his way to a house made of cotton candy. Inside he bumped into a bed too hard, a bed too soft and one that was justt right. He was an insomniac and wasn't used to sleeping without a voice in his head so he searched for comfort and lay his paws upon a big ugly laptop, a mini and a macbook pro. Happiness. Young and hungry he stumbled into 3 bowls of maggi, one too big, one too small and one just the right amount of soupy. Just when he was done licking round the split ends the room went cold and 3 dementors glided their way in. The papa dementor was pissed, the mama dementor was really pissed and the baby dementor was just plain hungry. Together they attacked him and sucked out his soul. The end.

You're silent and I think I've put you to sleep when out of the stillness you say, you know what would've been really cool? If Felix produced a Patronus and ninja-ed the dementors away and ate the house of candy.

I want to grab your hair and kiss you but instead I settle for, look at that, you chut, you complete me.
You're the sun to my moon and sometimes I traipse through terraces in the hope of getting a little bit closer to you, when I can't find my Edge. You're the glow I know like the back of my mind and if you don't want to kill the cat, i'm not complaining.

Who doesn't love a happy ending?

I used to be the same

You don't trust me. Then you go and get me rainbow straws. It's a hit and run with you, I never know when I'm knifing you into neat little pizza slices. But it's usually a boy, it's always a boy. Slash slash and a little bit of oregano. You choose to see what you want to and so do I. I'm sorry, I never meant to, but once you start it's kinda hard to trace your way back..unless you have breadcrumbs in your pocket. But all I've got is a blackberry that winks at me when you're not looking, quicksilver fingers and misgivings about myself.

It's me again. I soaked your Blood, Sugar tshirt that night, but you wouldn't let go. It would have killed me if you'd left. The irony, right? Blood on his shirt, tears on yours. If only we'd had a little bit of Magik. I told you you wouldn't understand but it was the first time a person died like the dreams I have of dying. Unpredictable, straight through the heart, I lost a life, my family man who knew more than I did about the way the world works.

I want to be happy, but I sleep too much. If you could I know what you'd say, "You're alienating yourself again" and i'd shake my head and yell at you but my toes would curl and i'd fight the urge to break things. I'm sick of so many situations but it's a bitch to separate my world from theirs. To merge it with yours. Sometimes, it's all submerge and slow feet, denial and dream fogged eyes.

16th Jan, 2012

It's unfinished but even then I was unhappy.

I was never happy with you.

Teenage Dream

Sid Vicious I have so much to say that sometimes it sparks its way up my throat like leftover emotion sickness but I don’t want that kind of attention the hold-her-hair-back-she’s-throwing-up kind I like being my own secret but then you came along and ruined it and before I knew it I was throwing up every night sometimes softly the words rushing into each other so you wouldn’t catch them even though you don’t catch me when I fall you’re the drop-her-because-I-trust-her-to-pick-herself-up kind and guess what I think I like it even though I’m paranoid and have the strangest dreams and build bubbles that trap me and tease me and think too much and I’m scared I am such a scared person and I’m just scared that bad things will happen to me I’ve had such an easy life smooth untouched lucky and spent most of it just waiting for the good things to disapparate one by one I don’t know where this comes from or why I flip out silently inside my head and why sometimes when I hug my mother I feel like I’m hugging her for the last time how my room has a blue wall and looks perfect in the light and I know one day ill miss it how I might lose my sister and I might not miss her how I don’t chill enough with a brother who I was crazy about and is growing up too fast for me to shout STOP I’m not ready to grow up and every year feels like I’m counting down towards dying it pulses through me I’m used to it now maybe this will explain why I hate getting older why I’m seized with fear when I watch people die its almost an underneath the skin obsession where I’m waiting I can't stop waiting this is just a heads up to how I’m a little bit not normal and I don’t know how to deal with this this waiting but I’m hoping you do so far you’ve been stellar but 2012 keeps getting closer and even thinking about it makes my heart shut down for a second but luckily for me I have you and you make my heart skip a beat and tell me we’ll build unbreakable walls as opposed to bubbles and no tsunami will ever find its way past us because we’re that strong interlocked so don’t go because in a way you’re one of my countdowns too I love you.