Always.

I see words in circles

Of black and brown

Drowning a hopeless king

And his promised crown.

Sex without love.

When you read Sharon Olds’ poem ‘Sex without Love’—which you should—let yourself over-think. To start things off, let your romantic side out. It will tell you no, you cannot make love without love. Listen to it. Let it tell you that sex is meaningless without love. Nod. Grab a pen and make a note. ‘Future me. Never sleep with someone you don’t love. You don’t know it yet, but it’s meaningless’. If you feel like smiling, do. There. Go to the nearest mirror and congratulate whoever you see in there. You’re happy, and proud of yourself; you’re practically a new person. Your partner should probably know more about this. Resist the urge to call. But wait. Is that doubt you feel? This is 2014, after all, and to say monogamy validates your feelings for someone makes you uncomfortable.

There’s a story about a woman whose first love cheated on her. Heartbroken, she couldn’t bear to be with anyone else and so, she embraced celibacy. One day, God appeared before her. ‘Give yourself to me and I’ll grant you any wish’. She closed her eyes and spread her legs. God blinked, confused, but he took her anyway. When he asked her later what she wanted, she said, ‘I don’t want anyone to be unfaithful to me ever again’. They say she felt something itch down there. From that day onwards, if any man cheated on her—that is, all of them—they felt it too, a relentless itch that gnawed on and irritated them till they bled from all the scratching. You must be wondering why I’m telling you this story. Don’t. Sometimes, people can hear the things you wonder. Anyway, the woman’s first love came back to her. Out of spite, maybe, or maybe because she loved him still, she let him have her. But to her surprise, nothing happened. He held her in his arms and whispered, “I love you”. She cried then, and buried her face in his chest. She knew that he’d never cheated on her. Now do you know why I told you this story? Yes? No? Tell me if you do. Or just wonder and I’ll know anyway.

I bet that doubt is stronger now. Feel it. Feel it gnaw on you. But remember: never scratch. Let me tell you a secret. You and I don’t have bodies. We’re made up of spirit, of yellow sunlight and stained goose-feathers. When you fall asleep tonight, increase the speed of your fan. You’ll be blown into the land of dreams faster than yesterday. Put it off and you won’t dream till that whisper of a breeze from the window decides to carry you. There was a man once, who slept through a cyclone. He was flung into dreams so violently that he came to wakefulness from the other side. He now lives on the fourth floor with his pet flamingo. Don’t tell him I told you this. Secrets often become lies when shared and flamingos don’t like liars.

So, where are our bodies? Yes, yes. I can hear you thinking it. We’re hiding them. Ignoring them. I want you to hold me. Unzip my pants and touch me till I’m hard in your palm. There. Now I have a body, and you have hands. Take me in your mouth and you’ll have that and a tongue. Maybe then we’ll have a proper conversation. Let my erection fade and you and I will both disappear.

We’re anchored in this blankness only in moments when naked flesh hooks itself onto the other. Only when we refuse to be taken away to dream. When we’re shoulders with digging nails and throats with warm semen. Open wider, let me see it. I can feel you pulsing under my tongue. What’s that? You’re floating? I know you are. The moment of flesh is over, and now we’re light. Now we’ll fly to the land of dreams. A land where there’s more than just blankness. Where it’s possible to betray, and to love.

 

Read the poem here : http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sharon_olds/poems/19521

Fading circles.

I cannot remember a time when I did not carry you with me like my life depended on it. In the beginning you were only what you are: a couple of wristbands. But objects kept so close for so long often become symbols—things with life, colour, and sounds. It’s six been years now, and reaching back into memory is seeing the past through your mute presence. People asked me if you were my good-luck charm and I had to say no without meaning it, so that they would stop asking. People like being right. But you were something undefinable; we grew together and to say you were this, or that, was like stunting myself. You were the rains, and I gave you a name that was both the seas and the skies that swallowed it. I would run out to you in the evenings, and my lips would whisper your name to the first drop that fell upon them.

You were there when I first picked up a pen to write. The story was for Pooja, because it was important to me that she thought I was good at something; it was her little smile, which spread from her mouth to her eyes, and the way she said ‘Not baad, Rahul’, that made me want to write more. But the writing itself was for us, and for that I wanted you with me. I made you a part of the narrative and called you Azura. And so we talked, through soft sounds of tongue and pen and paper. I wanted you to know me, so that I could too, when I told you the things I did.

I lost you so many times under the beds and the pillows and in pockets, but only once was I scared. Pa and I were going to the mill to get the wheat ground, and I knew when I bent my knees on the bike that you’d slip out. I must have paced about, trying to remember where you’d fallen. I must have fidgeted the way I do when I’m uncomfortable. I must have felt my pockets a hundred times to make sure you weren’t hidden in some impossible corner. On the way back, I scanned the road as well as I could, and there I found you, lying in the middle waiting for me. Pa stopped when I told him to and you found your place in my pocket again.

It was terrifying to leave home without you, because I was sure that it was sign of something bad to come. I remember the days when I’d want nothing more than to come back home and find you in the washing machine before it did. Still I gave you to Pooja when her grandmother passed away. She didn’t ask, but I knew she needed you more. That night when she kept you in her pencil-box instead of her hand, I hoped both of you were okay.

I would never wear you on my wrist, because in my story that would mean invoking your power. I couldn’t do that, because people are given only a few chances in their lives, and I didn’t want to waste mine. Someday, when the world or she or anyone else needed me, I would put my hands through you and rise as the lord that I was.

She was fooling around when she tried snatching you out of my hand. I clutched at you instinctively, but she’d got a hold too. I would’ve let go, but in the struggle our fingers and arms and bodies touched and I liked it. Neither of us stopped till something snap and I looked down to the broken circle of green rubber. She apologised but I could see that she didn’t realise what she’d done. I mumbled, ‘It’s okay’, and let my eyes wander over the red of her skin instead.

I tried to weld you together in the fire of the lamp lit in the little temple we have at home. I stopped when I saw the material bubbling. Then I tried to make a clasp so that the broken ends would hold together, but the pin I used cut through you. I couldn’t let the yellow band hold the green in its curve, because the green one was older and had to be on the outside. `You’d broken and I couldn’t put you back together.

I still do a few things as I used to. You’re still in my pocket all the time. I still hold you in my left hand through every exam, because I’ll fail otherwise. But she’s gone and my story lives only on the sheets of paper she’s taken. I no longer write with my hand. Sometimes, when I’m home and it’s raining, I hold you in my palm and watch the drops lick the dirt off you, but we don’t talk anymore. I tell myself that it’s because we’ve grown too close for spoken words. My excuse is that you’re in my head so completely that I don’t have words that could say things any better. But that’s only so that I don’t feel guilty about betraying our years together. You’re gone, Azura, to the seas and the skies that swallowed them, and to the raindrops that won’t touch my lips anymore.

The Lazy Man.

We must we must we must.

We will definitely someday.

Now I guess we just have to.

Not sure if we should really.

Let’s be.

If I could be all that I want to be

I think I would be a little bee

Just so I could hold you in me

In a million shades of green.

I don’t dream anymore.

I haven’t slept in the last four days. I’ve been going to bed too late because of work, and been waking up too early to meet her. I wonder what it’d be like to snuggle under a blanket right now. I can’t, though, it feels wrong. I won’t sleep at night if I sleep now. But thinking about it is making me think about other things. Like dreaming. I think I used to dream a lot. But then we went to Ujjain for the Kumbh Mela and Ma insisted that we go to every temple that we could find. One of them had a shrine to the dream-god. Ma told me that he’ll make all my nightmares go away. I hardly ever had nightmares, but I went in any way, because this god was new. I don’t remember the conversation we had—he wasn’t the snake-god to whom I’d pray that he protect the people I love from snake-attacks, or Ganapathi to whom I’d pray that I get good marks in my exams. This guy was new and the conversation was just as awkward as it would have been any stranger. I’m guessing it was really bad because I’ve never dreamed after that day. I mean, of course I dream, but I never remember my dreams. I should go back there someday and talk things out. Sigh.

Stop.

Please stop making me write. I don’t know if it’s healthy.

Because every piece must be something that I’m proud of, something that people are impressed by—it has to be perfect. And I don’t think I can produce that every fucking day, so please, stop making me write. She thinks that I have it figured out, that I think of it as something that I need to conquer, and maybe that’s true. I must conquer it so it doesn’t overwhelm me. Because I don’t think I’m ready to let it take over me. I’m happy now, and you know that. I’m happy with the things that I write, and I’m comfortable with people reading them. But the insecurity hasn’t gone away completely. You should have known that by now. I read what she writes, every day. She clothes her memories in words in a way only she can, and it’s perfect. Sometimes it feels like she was always aware that someday she would about things. And maybe that’s why she held these memories so safely in her mind. Now she just dusts them, and puts them down on to the paper. It’s both beautiful and scary.

I don’t remember anything. The memories I have aren’t mine, and I’m afraid to reclaim them. Because I’ll never care for them. I’ll never fuss over the words to tell you that the first sunset I saw was just as golden and sad as in the books. I’ll treat the memories like the strangers they are.

So, please, please stop making me write. Because the present has nothing. Things are beautiful only in the past and I don’t have a past. I was born in a moment when the world got to tiring to fight against. I understand that you want to be a better writer, that you want people to read and be impressed by the things you write, but it isn’t right when you make me. It has to be natural, it has to come out of moments that want to be written about. You’re doing it for them, now, and not for us. Soon we’ll be creating moments to write about. Well, I guess that’s when you’ll finally become a writer.

I’m sighing, and I know you can hear me. Please stop making me write?

Of being Old

What is being old? she asked me today. I didn’t know what to say. How do I tell her, she who I think is the oldest of us all. She should know what it is. But she has forgotten.

And that’s what it is. Being old is forgetting. Forgetting worlds—the worlds we’ve been to, and the worlds we belong to. We can never forget who we are; underlying everything, we know. But we forget our worlds. Worlds that held meaning, worlds that held memories. Worlds that held us. All that remains is a haze, a feeling of having seen too much too quickly. We feel stretched. It can’t be any other way, seeing how our minds, our selves are scattered through ages.

But being old is also remembering. Remembering having been. But it’s remembering through a fog. Memory is in a constant battle with itself; to destroy itself, to stay eternal. It escapes from us and slips beyond our reach, into the past. It knows how fickle human life is; it doesn’t wish to perish along with us. We remember memories of feelings, we remember having felt, but we forget the feeling itself. Memory taunts us. It beckons to us to come and to claim it. And we run, afraid. Memory stands on the border of Now and Then; it waits for us to reach it. We do. It holds out its hand and takes ours gently. I imagine it looking into my eyes like a lover, a terrible sadness in them. She’ll smile at me knowingly. We’re doomed to part, she’ll whisper wordlessly, and slip into Then. And that’s all we have really—that touch, that look, and that moment. Memory in its slipping lets us remember, just as it makes us forget.

Passing through worlds is a strange thing. Passing through worlds of different ages is stranger still. What continues in this passing? For worlds do not share anything with each other. It is what is beyond a world that continues. The soul, the mind, the eyes, all those things that Remember. Forgetting is forgotten in the void between the worlds.

Those with Death go to a place beyond memory. They remember and forget only inside a world, not beyond it. The Undying, however, live to Remember, carrying the burden of an incomplete, Forgotten Memory.

 

 

(this is a post I’d uploaded a few months back)

Letting go.

I don’t know how an egg comes out of a shirt for me it’s probably because it’s white and ever since Ujala came on TV everything white has to be shirts and has to be about stains and maybe that’s why I’m thinking of a misplaced washing machine that we never had and yet it stands near the white cemented well that we had where I’d hang out every afternoon trying to see if ants really drown so I’d get a bucket full of water and conduct my experiments all the while trying to peek next door and see what the Tamil-Brahmin aunty was doing and when I didn’t see her there I’d look up and see the skies opening with a blue which I don’t think I’ve ever seen it outside of there under which would be the clothesline that my father had made out of wires and I knew exactly where the insulation was off so as to avoid cutting my finger on it or not get the washed clothes dirty on but that wasn’t what the terrace was about it was about the walls of the houses that surrounded mine because they were bigger you see and mine looked like a tiny sparrow that nestled into their ninety degree angles and that’s what that house is all about I guess childhood and being small and seeing smiles which would make me forget the tears and the fights which almost always threatened to break the gates and escape into our neighbour’s house which wouldn’t have been the worst thing because you could always hear them arguing too and sometimes it seemed like it was only the cows on the road who weren’t angry with each other or at the world even when people hit them or shooed them away and didn’t give them food and they just walked on the concrete road with their hooves making a sound that now only boots on marbled floors make just like in UB City which had pots bigger than all the pots back home in which were Pa’s darling plants that he didn’t fail to water every day even if he forgot to say a nice word to my mother or to me or my sister who wasn’t home then I think because she had college somewhere and came home only once in a few months and there would be new fights and maybe I should stop talking about fights so much because you think that’s all people in my family do but that’s not true they do other things which I don’t know now because I’m in another city and it’s nice here even though I missed them the first few months and I’m looking down at my fingers as they type now and I want to play FIFA although not on the computer because it’s shit that way and I wonder why Nilkhil always does and did I tell you I had a bird that I had rescued and fed on the same dining table where Nikhil and I and others played FIFA all summer it was a mynah and I found it with its wing broken and foot injured because its nest had fallen off the tree when someone cut it and didn’t see it and its dead sister but I did and I had to take it home because there were a lot of cats around the place and I can never see anything else in pain without feeling horrible myself and I’ve often wondered why because I remember having this conversation with myself about how I had a terrible conscience which always made me feel bad about the things that I had done and I guess that’s what consciences are supposed to do if indeed they are an actual thing and have a purpose but that doesn’t matter right now because I have forgotten what I was thinking when she touched my hand and asked me what’s wrong but nothing’s wrong it’s just that I’m not letting myself do anything but type and think and those are two things I wish I can always do because I think that I have a good voice and I want to read out to my kids what I have written and it would be enough if they thought their father had something about him that they’d like to tell others about and here I am making myself immoral by wishing such things just like everyone wishes themselves to be eternal in some sense but no really I wish to write more and get better at writing so that people would say things like ‘he was a brilliant writer’ and somewhere in the world or elsewhere I would smile when the winds bring me those words and their sounds and maybe it’s unfair but I would maybe think to myself that I have done something more than just water the plants.

Black

I missed the strand of everything
As it disappeared into the wind.
I wish my fingers could hold you longer
Without taking away your smell.

Distance.

I’m standing at a window, looking out. My elbows are resting on the grill; my fingers poke the mesh outside unthinkingly, and for a moment I see the mosquitoes that they’re taunting. There’s a swimming pool right below, and a building beyond it, identical to the one I’m in. It’s completely dark, except for the clubhouse halfway up, where a couple of ladies are practising their dance routine. I didn’t see the water reflecting the light from it, I didn’t see it running over the ripples that the night breeze was breathing onto the pool’s surface. A couple of kids are playing football on the driveway on the right. Their voices are loud, but not enough to drown the silence that was growing between us.

I told my father about her today, and he laughed. He doesn’t think I’m old enough to be in a relationship, let alone be in love. Of course, I knew that’s how he’d react. I’ve known Pa too long to not know the distance between us. But in that moment, in that excitement about telling him, I’d forgotten. The laugh brought me back to my senses, though. I didn’t tell him anything about her after that point; he didn’t deserve to know.

I wonder what it would be like if I could’ve told him. I’m imagining how different that phone call would have been today. The shy smile when I told him, “There’s this girl I like” wouldn’t have left me. Maybe he would have teased me about it. He’d have asked me if she was pretty. I would have told him that she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve seen. He’d have asked me more: what’s her name; where’s she from; is she smart; yes? Then why’s she with you?; it’s good that she writes too. He would have wanted to know everything. Then maybe he would have gotten serious and asked me if I was sure about her, about the feelings I have for her. He would’ve threatened me, saying that it doesn’t matter if I’m his son, if I break that girl’s heart, he’d come after me with a gun. Maybe he would’ve cared. But no, that’s not my father. That’s the man I’m going to grow up to be.

I can’t blame Pa. I can’t blame any of them. They grew up in a different time, in a different context. But that’s what makes it this so difficult, I think. It’s not simply that they don’t understand, it’s that they can’t. But I wonder sometimes if some part of it was their own choice. I mean, I turned out this way despite them having brought me the way they were brought up. I wonder if any of us are aware of these choices in our life. It makes me sad to think that I’ll never be able to talk to them about these things. In fact, I’ll never truly be able to talk to them about anything. They’ll never really know who their son was.

I want to tell her that I’m sorry, for my family, for dragging her into this. But it doesn’t make a difference, so I don’t. It’s okay, little bird, they don’t know I write either.

 

Light.

And then the ink dried over the faltering words.

Bluejay.

Bird’s bird.

Lines.

 

Some lines never fade,

Some you wish wouldn’t.

I hope this ink stays a while,

Just to hear me say your name.

Touch.

Some birds just steal your heart.

Breathe.

There’s a throne at the end of the world, and it’s not for a King.

The End.

I’ve been writing about writing a lot. I see that every time I add the same tag ‘Writing’ to my posts. It feels like I need to. I need to say the things I think, so that I can hear them myself. But now I’m scared that that’s all I can write about. I don’t understand why that scares me. Maybe it’s because I know that eventually I won’t have anything left to say. I fear that pause that I know will come, when I sit down to write again, and find that I have ended writing about writing for myself. It feels like I have reached that point already. This is the end. But you can always write about the end of something and stretch it out for a while more.

I wonder if my writing matters. If it lives. It makes me happy to see people follow my blog, to see the likes and the comments. I’ve understood that it’s important that I write to be read. I cannot just say that it’s enough if I’m happy with my own writing. But I cannot simply for the sake of others, either. I know that I will lose the honesty that I have found in writing.

My fear’s growing. It feels like I have said many of these things already.

A few weeks back I was talking to my friend about something I’d posted. I was standing there, ready to leave, but then she began talking, telling me that she’d liked it. I found myself grabbing a chair. It was a new thing for me, to have someone talk to me about my writing that wasn’t an assignment. I was also surprised by how natural it felt. This is what it should be like, I told myself.

She had taken time to read, like others. But she had also kept what she had read; she had remembered my words. I wonder how many of the 34 followers I have now remember what they read on my blog. I don’t know if my writing has that power yet.

I talked to that friend again, today. I went up to her, thinking that just like that day, we’d discuss my writing. “I read what you write. Everything’s going well”, is what she said. It made me sad to think that she doesn’t keep my words any more.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m just at that point where I’m wondering how I’ll be remembered as a writer. If I am, that is. It’ll be an incomplete identity if I remain a writer without my words beside me in people’s minds.

 

Rocks.

I wonder if artists ever die. I wonder in how many other pictures these drawings live on in, in how many memories and forgotten moments. I wonder why the hands that drew these chose rocks for canvas.

Sounds

pouring out from bloodless wounds, words threaten to storm, these skies, these winds, these days. through half-closed eyes I feel. a flash of letters from within the clouds, revealing, for half a moment, a frozen sigh. still. unechoing. will you let me cry, or make a sound, if you’ll carry my voice, then drown me, Words, I am yours.

Must. Write.

I must write today. I owe it to myself and to my writing. I’m rather pleased how it has been improving of late. I’m also very surprised, because I always thought I was a brilliant writer; that the things I could do with words was impossible for anyone else my age, and that I was a special child. The moment of disillusion didn’t hurt as much as it should have because it was around the same time that I actually started writing well.

I’m discovering new things these days. Like being happy with my own writing. In an honest way, that is. You see, I was more than happy with my writing back when I was the Special Child. I remember this one time when we’d gone for an inter-school fest for something they called the ‘Surprise Event’. When we got there–my friends and I, as a team–we saw that the competition was a writing one. I beamed, like Noah must have, when he saw the tide coming. My true calling had been evoked and I would shine through as the Messiah that I was. Of course, I’m exaggerating now, but I like to do that to my older self for being an idiot. Anyway, I shooed away my teammates and sat down before the blank sheet of paper, pouring my talents onto it by the gallons. I was sure we’d win. It’s a writing competition. It’s me. Those were my exact words to them. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t make to the next round. I’m telling you this now because I see something very interesting in the relationship that I have had with writing. Back then, I’d make it a point to say, “No, no. What I’ve written is shit”, simply to have people say something nice. Over and over. There was something so…dishonest about it. A self-deprecation that I knew I didn’t believe in.

I’m happy now because I’m honest with, and about, my own writing. I can finally say “I like what I’ve written”. But it has also brought new questions. Sometimes I feel like it doesn’t matter what others think anymore, that the fact that I’m happy is enough. But it’s more complicated than that. It would be better to say that what I write doesn’t change every time someone says something about it. It remains. The next bit of writing, however, thinks about what was said, and tries to better itself. I’ve begun to see writing as growth. And I know I’m growing with it.

 

You again.

You’re the sea, little bird. Words, lines, voices, they can hope only to trace your outline.

 

Afraid

It feels like I’m returning to writing, now. I haven’t let myself write the last two days, simply because writing had become something else. It had become too much about seeing my notification button turn orange—about getting a new follower, or finding a new comment. I’m not saying that I don’t want that to happen once I post this, but at least I’m not writing for the sake of that alone.

These days I’m afraid of a lot of things. Of not knowing what it’s going to be like two years from now. Of not knowing what I want to do, or half-knowing and then worrying if I’ll be able to do it. Most of all, I’m afraid that I’ll want nothing from life. There is such a thing as being overly content.

Today, I want to write about something else, though. Something else that scares me. Something beautiful. Poetry. I’m afraid of poetry and what it doesn’t do for me. I’m unsure while reading it. I’m reluctant about writing it. There’s a space somewhere and it isn’t distance. It’s strangeness. An unfamiliarity that cannot breached. My words refuse to fall into that space, and the words in that space refuse to come to me. We look at each other from either side of a glass window, unfeeling.

It’s funny looking back, because writing began with poetry for me. We were doing something by Tagore, and to keep myself from falling asleep, I screwed around with his words and made something of a parody. My friends found it funny and that was encouragement enough for me to do more. Soon, I tried making my own rhymes. It was easy, then, in the way that everything is when you begin for the first time. Even reading poetry was easy. Because it was school and metaphors where nothing more than literary devices. They never escaped the page.
Poetry is different now. It has been ever since I’ve joined college. It has changed even as I’ve understood what it is with other people. Slowly, I’ve come to realise that I never knew poetry, that I never had the words. I think it is this disillusion that has left us feeling like this. I feel ill-equipped to read it. I could let my eyes take them, or my voice, but these words refuse to say anything. It is the same when I’m writing. My words are quiet. I can get them to rhyme, but not to speak. There’s a certain lethargy. There’s a silence on both ends, and it’s disheartening.

But I cannot let go just yet. I love poetry even more, now that it scares me. There are moments when I’m just taken over by something. I run for a pen and sit before the blank paper. Sometimes that’s all that happens, but that’s okay. At least the feeling’s alive. We’ll get to know each other again, Words. Someday soon. And then we’ll weave the same magic that we believe in wholly, even if it’s only us who can see it.

You

Smile always, little bird,

This heart is glad when you do.

No name will hold you as well,

Than when I called you ‘Sunshine’.

Spiderweb

I’m trying to write. I’m trying to figure out what writing is to me as I try. Does writing come out of a moment or do moments come out of writing? I’ve felt both, I’m afraid, and therefore I do not know. I have written out of moments, where I was feeling that which only words can hold. There’s relief at the end of such moments, from a certain unburdening. There’s content knowing that the discomfort of thoughts isn’t lost, only preserved. But I have also had moments where I lost myself after finding the words. Where I was not separate from them, where I sunk into their midst. I call it ‘drifting’. I don’t know if that word says enough. I don’t know if any word of mine does. But that’s okay. If it tells you, even in the slightest of ways, that I often lose myself to those very words that I call mine, then it’s okay.

I’m trying to answer the question, but I know I can’t. It’s like I have traveled over these curves over and over again, and made myself a circle. I cannot tell which is the beginning and which the end.

After reading Artists as a product of Memory, a friend of mine told me that the things I was trying to say weren’t clear enough. That there were a few moments of clarity, but more often than not my ideas were loopy, simply returning to where I had started. I knew that, of course. I think on paper. Writing doesn’t come out of a resolution, or out of clarity. Writing is tangled. It’s a web of thoughts. Why I weave them, I do not know. Maybe it’s because I can come back to it and see my muddled thoughts stretched along these settled words. So that I can lose myself in the maze, without ever getting stuck.

Just wondering

I wanted to tell them to move out of the way. I wanted to tell her. I couldn’t help it, of course. Gravity to me is what money is to human people; or power, fame, chocolate—I don’t know. I just know that I can’t resist it. Why should I be feeling guilty anyway? I mean, not that I don’t feel bad about killing her—it was horrible seeing the kid’s face afterwards—but why should I be feeling guilty? I didn’t even know I could be. Maybe it’s because I’m in a movie, now. Everything has to have emotion, no? I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want them to kill her through me, either. I tried telling her, you know, I screamed, saying not to try and push me up the hill. It’s not that I didn’t want to go with them, though. I did. I mean, I heard someone talk about the kid making a rocket towards the end and making the rains come back. I wanted to see that. That would have been a nice thing to feel again. Sometimes, I think that there’s too much water below and not enough above. But that’s just me. Anyway, since these days human people only speak their own strange tongue, she didn’t hear me. Yes, yes, it is strange how they’re deaf to the tongue they do not speak. I should remember to ask Moss when she comes along this monsoon if they hear her still. It’s those oars, I tell you. They have ruined everything. Terrible things, telling me where to go always. You probably don’t remember the days when they weren’t around. We weren’t this hollow either, then, or at least that’s what Oak once told me. We just…fell. I mean, there’d be big storms and all, and there’d also be lightning and then we’d fall. It’d be silly if we fell simply. But I’m straying from my story again. Maybe this is why they made rows. Sigh. She didn’t hear me. I felt the blood, you know? As my tip sunk into her flesh, I felt it. Blood’s strange. It has an odd taste; it’s salty, like the sea I haven’t been to. But unlike water it stays. I felt it sink into me, and I knew I was stained. I wonder if seawater stains too. I also wonder why I’m wondering so much these days. Human people leave nothing untouched. They’re making me wonder. I’m sorry I keep talking. It isn’t often that I find human people who can hear me. What? You want to know where I am now? Exactly where they left me. Or exactly where I took her. I was too heavy for them to take along—both the kid and the family, and the people making the movie. It seems as if human people leave their conscience for other things to pick up, sometimes. I don’t blame them for it. The leaving behind part, I mean. We would have fallen anyway. They took us down and shaped us. I don’t know if that gives them the right to leave us behind, but they have, so it certainly gives them the power. It’s not that bad, really. It rained here too, when the kid blew the sky apart with his rocket. It felt good after having felt nothing but land for so long. But now there’s water only from above. I dream too, now. Where did those in the old stories go after they fell? They just floated, without oars, in the right direction. Am I talking faster? No? Okay. Water knows the best, Oak said. “Let her currents carry you, child, the sea is your death”. I cannot, unfortunately; Earth holds me too tightly to her bosom. I shall just lie deathless, wondering.

(I tried writing from the point of view of the boat that killed Ahlo’s mother in the movie Rocket)