17th September, 2021

Your smile is beautiful, he says. We've talked and exchanged bodies for the last year, and I've never seen more than his wolfish smile, his ecstasy coating skin and washing over me like the smell of mildewed leaves. He refuses to tell me his name, about his life. A perpetual stranger in mind, he notices the new blots and scars on my torso and thighs. He asks, care flooding his inflection even though I know he will never acknowledge it. Perhaps my words are the musings of a man who remains a lovesick boy. Reading too much into each tilt of the hands, seeing words and promises that have never left the birthing ground of my fiction but stay ready to jump from my tongue.

 

Irony is a strange thing; he has been the longest relationship I've never had and he hasn't held me a single time. Never seen me cry. Never seen my face as I would imagine what his thoughts would be when I would foolishly utter 'I love you’.

 

His spellbinding was never his own doing, rather random threads forever fraying and hanging from the edges of things he doesn't really mean. Me always the witchy boy, lover of myth and smiter of gods, would gleefully weave a trap for myself. Who else could these clues be for?

 

He rings the bell as the screen lights up, my heart petrifying and melting in the same instant as if his words and distance somehow have the power to affect me. Training myself comes in handy here: he's a stranger, he is the one you told about the truth of all the false stories you share of your conquests. He is the one who talked you down from ledges and snot-decorated pillows. We are so thankful.

 

Please receive my gratitude in the form of this distance that I am thankful for everyday. At least the elements between us keep me from falling too quickly, too naively. Such a boy I am that I believe daddy waits on the other side of the chasm I bumble around the precipice of.

 

A constant telekinetic game of pulling myself away, pushing myself closer . . . To end it would mean to lose him. He would find someone else to be detached with, and I would be left here, feeling the new scar that adorns an already decorative piece of cardiac tissue.

 

The thing about wearing your heart on your sleeves is that each time you slash wrists it never bleeds. Just carries the mark of the men who thought they could cover the wrists with ties and render me blind with blindfolds, so that they would never have to recognise the affection that the blindfold would absorb and keep. Feed on it like a starving rat who keeps me blind, its only purpose. Here is your new perspective on 'love is blind', hark its heavy bangs as it bounces on the dinner table. Demand an answer for my insolence, get it over with! Tie my wrists again so that you would never see the scars your eyes made with each disappointed gaze. It burdens me no more, rather moulds itself to the cavities that exist in the tenderness of the scars, and thrum with mistakes, symphonise with tragedies, sing with heartbreaks. You have never heard my songs of sorrow because you see me dancing to them in air devoid of melody.

 

Lunacy is easier to diagnose than heartbreak wouldn't you say? And not just the lovey-dovey kind. The kind when a friend just stops talking, adding to the scars and you are left wondering what happened? The kind when mom and dad can no longer recognise their child and the chasm widens, parental issues rising from the pit as impaling spikes. Each kind of relationship that ends without any means of closure; we believe breakups are confined to romance. Messages left on read don't extend to friends or cousins. Ghosting is a trait gifted only to the strangers we let into our bodies.

 

Friendships scar different. On top of the ribs that knew their hugs, palms calloused and torn with high fives and games of red hand. Paper cuts from all the games of monopoly, taash, and raja, rani, chor, sipahi. The blindfolds come from games of tag and not sex, the  ropes on my wrist from friendship bracelets. Look at the colours that tie my arm to a history that refuses to be forgotten, the markings not hidden under swatches of cloth. They used to be promises. Used to be tethers for favours. Used to be tethers saving paper kites from the truth of a monsoon.

 

Used to be. We used to be. Used to be something, used to be like us. To be the best friends, siblings, and lovers of the movies that on some level, we wanted to be. 'Wanting' to 'wanted' is a change.

 

And change is forever.

 

-        I guess that was goodbye.