Aryaman Kakkar's Archive

The darkness is swarming stars.  The charger's light is barely there, a sandy strip islanding in a blackened sea but the ceiling fan and ink blotted lights emerge through the waves, their bodies rippling with the tide. I know some would call that swarm ‘dust’, but if only you could see the galaxies now.  Sometimes the way I see civilizations where others see themselves takes its toll. The dull throbbing of my head, begging to let sleep out makes them pulse and harmonise - aether against my breath. The room is cold from the AC on full and I think back to the post that said lonely people take hot showers for longer just to feel someone on their skin. The shivering is a part of it.  The doorways are sunken just enough to let other worlds peek through and to be stared at in return. Entire mindscapes of spells and death are climbing this tower of burning chairs and dreams to conquer and say, “I've done it for the night. I've put him to sleep.”  I can't tell you that the f...

Shivering, my skin breaks into arches and delicate curls of these invisible replications.  The doorways and mosaics of all the tombs I have explored, the forts I have visited in a time long after their conquerors left.  In the cold,  in the summer flares, this naked covering of mine sinks like water around oil. It is  cracks and words and canyons of memories, they glow softly in the light. This tsunami of remembrance is a welcome destroyer and I am standing still with my bare feet on the blank marble floor, wishing there was some truth to it all. My arms, my spine is littered with crusty healing cuts and bloody black holes and I'm trying to remember what my body wants to forget. It seems cruel that way, to have to look in the mirror every time I go on these archeological expeditions and see my own mask staring back asking  “Why? Why do you want to know? Isn't it enough that you are plagued?” The emptiness does not answer. Waves lap against the shores of sinking ...