Of one such GOOD BYE

The yellow leaves
Sweet October breeze and the people on the road..
All following a pace.
I take a sip of my coffee and start counting the letters I have written for you.
*

You could have come back and felt my trembling lips.
I forgot your taste.
Or how your smell lingered around me..
The mixture of cigarette smoke and men's perfume.
Or how your touch felt like.
There were times when I didn't want to talk about it.
There are things we shouldn't talk about.
Things.
You.

*
I am 22 and I feel greyish old
The funeral sized silence
Waiting for empty nights to reply
Or words to tumble down with your voice
As a lullaby..
Im still not wise but reddish annoying.

*
My mouth now reeks of nicotine and alcohol.
Turned out to be a drinking song
With rum and shots and memories of love
Or
What I would like to call it to be.

*
Reaching for my pencil to scribble down the last good bye
Tearing apart the strings that held us
And the inter dimensional love that ate us.
Brown bread.
Honey.
3 am and your broken baritone was enough someday,far away.

*
You are there over the hills
My favourite paraphrase.
Soaring in between those soggy lines that I had written for you...
Kisses.
My legs pushing yours.
Little pictures.
In love.
Till I hoped.

*
22,still
Old.
Grown
Drunk.
Out of love.
Counting days..

Can you still hold me?
Or can I?

Till Time

There are gaps when you see a perfect shadow of a tree on the street.
The gap like little boxes to be filled in with colour by a child
Its strange how they fill the boxes incessantly with only a set of 24 colours
Reminds me how I failed to use them all but still felt I needed more
A whole goddamn box of colours couldn't fix up my childhood.
Because I needed a rainbow of 100 colours or a goddamn magic moondust.
Or the light through a prism creating a bloody spectrum.

I let the colour of sunlight with dust fall on to your face
I let the light fall in without any reason.
I liked the way you smiled.
Probably I 'like' the way you smile.
I let the normal change
Change because
I never wanted normal.
Never wanted perfect.

Probably I wanted the worst.
Wanted the worst verse in my mind to
Happen
Like it's never about the light always.
Like it's always about the edge in the dark.

It's how I always spilled the edge more with colours when I was a kid.
Probably
It's always how I wanted problems.
It's about strange tinge of red yellow purple maroon etc etc..
Or only something that makes up the dark in the spark with you.

Only if we part/Remember this.

The last night had been long.
Long enough for us to think about you mouthing 'I love you' but failing.

Typing and deleting.
*How do I 'feel' while 'feeling'?*
I wish Google could answer that.
On the nights that made us google words
Words.
Words to fall in love.
Words that could make mountains.
Words that made little love notes.
Words that helped me find YOU,my favourite metaphor.

Tell me we could have spilled coffee instead of mistakes that day
We could have kissed more like the powdered paints on my floor.
We could have.
We didn't.

I have written Little letters to you in my head
Sending it without letting you know.
Tell me,can you say 'Love'till you start hating the word?
The maps that your skin made.
The laughter that we shared.
The ashtray that I gave you.
Can you break them all till I could smell the brokenness within?
Tell me, could you just tear apart the newspaper that had notes for you and come back with jiggling laugh I love?
Tell me,if you could smell me in colours and leave me while kissing with smoke filled eyes?

Call it a disorder
Or the dysfunctional 'L'word.

I have seen Autumn and loved the word more
When it comes to 'Fall'.
Im trying to figure this poem out in the dark
Reading the empty holes in my mind.
Im trying to make the last verse taste like the pungent something pouring on my tongue.

The last verse
For you.
Call it me or us.
Maybe sometimes the silence in between
the over punctuated conversations
It was us
Trying to figure out the word with four letters.
You 'feel' it or 'love' till you 'hate'.

Denial

I painted my window pane with blue and red few days back,
For no particular reason when I smoke my daily bit of Classic that I secretly steal from my father's pack of cigarettes,I feel those colours talking to me
The dogs keeps on barking constantly around 3am and I'm left alone with my thoughts and rants.
The tattered houses and the street lights are more peaceful at night.
My ashtray is technically full and I have to hide it from Ma everytime she comes to clean my room.I have been doodling way too much about myself and keep on forgetting about the people concerned. Is it just me or the circumstances that I feel so aloof?
Staring at the wall constantly for hours imagining about starts colliding,cream dough,dolls that I lost, traffic lights drifting and an imaginary someone pretty much sums up my life.

I hate to say that I miss you because I don't or maybe I do because you out of all people used to listen to my rants carefully.
Those wistful eyes,weird laughs and tiny idiotic jokes used to fill up the gap easily.
My puzzle piece that used to fit.
And now with each dawn changing the day I rant alone and preferably write it down..hoping some day it might reach you in some way.

Trouble

I wanted to find a place by the sea where I could sleep on lavenders,
Where the starlit sky and constellation would take up all the time.
I ll keep aside my cellphone in a jar and pour out my heart full of wine.
I have always wanted to be the muse.
The muse to your poetry or songs or anything that made sense,I wanted to breathe in between the lines you wrote.
I still long for the letters unwritten or written to just get saved in the draft box.
I wished for a petal and your handkerchief that reeked of love and innocence.

The streetlights and asphalt,
The pink sun and bubble wraps
The ice cream sticks and yellow wisps of smoke,
Your smile and everything else
Its all that I wanted when the daffodils were dead.. because honey you are the trouble that had me.
The trouble more like wind or waves lashing against my feet,
The trouble like my sinking legs and the sand.

Rewinding my old clock

Its strange how you left, remains as a faded memory and the person you leave for specific reasons keep talking to you without even talking..

The hard part is remembrance.
The weird part is I was nothing but yet was something to him,lately.
Time,
A bitch.
Im always late and this time too..
But this being late saved me. Probably it's better to remain far away and miss than get close and get ruined.

'Kabira'

Freud said that there are different interpretations of a dream. Its been a while that I hardly remember my dreams but there are such rare times when some dreams just carve scars minutely so that it stays and STAYS for years or so.
But this dream is much like a film sequence.

So it was a nap dream about a past figure who appeared in his weirdest way in this dream. It was a construction site later and before that a coffee shop or some kind of a shop with old green coloured checkered table cloths spread over tables and smooth timber chairs to make it look like a 'place-where-we-come-to-eat'.There was an old man sitting right beside me but it took 5 mins for that face to change into 'someone-I-knew' when I looked at him.
I remember pulling his cheeks and nagging about 'Why don't we talk anymore which ended up with a sorry for no reason'(as usual).I even remember his quirky smile and the cuddle before he gave me his plate full of chicken or something to eat.Hah! I ate that shamelessly.!!
The construction site came into the scene without any context and it's pretty dreamy weird. I saw us sitting on the edge of somewhere of that site and a fat old man climbing down the rods with a bottle in his hand trying to turn his head hard to look at us. We were having tea I suppose and there was 1 feet gap between me and him in the way we were seated. The man asked us once  "What are you doing here?"
I remember us smiling only or just not paying attention and suddenly a woman drops in who too somehow was there I suppose.
The man after a while asked all of a sudden " What is he like to you?or what are you guys"?(in bengali) ( 'O tomar ke hoy')
I remember this part so vividly..
I smiled again and said "We don't know what ARE we" (Amra ki theek janina.. amra erom e aachi).
We both looked at each other then and smiled.
The woman  who was standing there in a peaceful way added .. "I understood that" (with a smile like a goddess).
Its still so vivid..that I want to see her face again,want to hold her and cry for a moment without reasoning.

I remember after that getting up to leave and he remained there ,seated..turned to see me with a look 'One-last-time-same-as-before'..
While leaving I saw a familiar face looking at me and leaving hurriedly..I don't know who's face was it,but all I remember was that I heard somewhere far away from our place a track being played..a faded tune

'Kaaisi teri khud garzi naa dhoop chuney naa chhao,
...
Kabira,maan ja'..

Probably this means nothing,probably for one last time deep inside I wished for a dream telepathic situation.
Or for one last time I sensed an ending without a goodbye..