Love letters to myself

 Its okay. You are not everything they think you are. They think you are kind, good, maybe even happy.  

You know the weight of your lies, how many beds and swords you have conquered, how many nights you  have lost wishing for something that will never come. Stop searching in other poets what you can write  for yourself. You are not the filth you were. You are what they say: sweet and a little bit meetha15. You  can stand outside while it rains and clutch your notebook as if the rain - as it disguises your tears - will be  inspiration for you. You are as sticky and persistent as red wine on white cotton to talk to the people you  know, the ones who can see that something in you is slightly off  

kilter.  

It's fine that you stay in their houses and make pancakes and laugh and talk till two and you're not  thinking of sleep at all.  

It’s okay.  

You are as lost and listless and apathetic as you think you are. There are downsides and upsides to  everything, and you can see every side of this four-dimensional maze of perspective, of sides so objective  it’s like flipping through pages in a book to know what ten people think under the same sky. You can  float, not fly, but you are quiet. You think you need your space because the wrong people are parasites  crawling on your skin and in your brain and you prefer the solitude of the night to scratch  

and itch  

and bleed into the marble. 

It’s okay that you not spend time. They can't raise you the same way their parents raised them, they were  all born for different times but you flipped the paradigm to create your own micro realities of empty beds,  growling dogs, and the same thirty-four songs on repeat not because they are all you listen to, because  they help you sleep. Please don't leave me here. I don't know where my heart is16. I don't know what I’m  going to do with these beautiful thoughts in my head: 

The divine rage of the gods as a driving force in Oedipus by Sophocles / 

The effect of the Lavender Scare on the community / 

The discarded essay ideas that were on my desktop less than an hour ago. Oh look there goes my will, my  love, my life. I am so careless with everything I own and everything I have. If I have money in my pocket  I will always spend it to the last paisa. A phone in my hand, I cannot stop looking,  

looking, 

looking for love, for warmth on autumn nights and free days because there is nothing better to do in these  holidays.  

Yes, I do care about my future but apparently not enough to care about what I’m going to work on  tomorrow or  

day after or  

 the day after that or  

 the day after that because oh look  

 there goes my will, my life in the  hands of that knife I carry in these hands. The sharp edge caresses these hands, these palms in my  nocturnal timetable and I throw these kitchen blades like daggers hitting a target on the plastered wall to  train, to defend myself from every rugged man, thief or misguided paedophile that comes off the  highway. But we all know what the knife is there for right? Because nobody in their right mind would  caress such a sharp beauty. There I did it again. I called bloody instruments beautiful.  

It’s okay.  

It’s okay. You can sometimes bathe emerald specked blades with rubies. You can go on not bathing for  days because the dirt makes you feel the same, constant, it petrifies you. You can go on swigging glass  bottles of coke in the sunrise halls like it’s some sort of intoxication you pray will sate you. It’s okay. Not  everybody knows this side of you so for them, it’s just words being rattled, tattled, spread off of a  teenage, dirty, unbelievable mouth from on top of a footstool.  

It’s okay.  

You can go make chocolate pancakes now. You can go have salami on a Tuesday. You can scoff at the  pandit that performs the rites. It’s okay. They would never gape at you. It’s not their thing you see.  Challenge them to say anything, they will always retreat behind gossip and dark talks, the family feuds  they perpetually perpetuate.  

Spit venom when you can.  

Spare some for me, will you? 

Love me not,

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