They may call it madness, an affliction of the mind, a condition that needs repair. In truth, that is just one of the many ways they admit that they are scared of the world you see. They know they will never know the completeness of absolute surrender. So listen to me, this madness within, let it slowly own you. Let it spread its roots into the very fiber of your existence, every thought you think. Let it pump blood, let it breathe air. Protect it and nurture it. Give it shade, give it sun, wash it in the truth of your 3 AM tears. For what is madness to them is just that last flicker of life that keeps you alive in ways they will never know.

Fall in love with this madness, for it will kill you otherwise.

What would you remember of this night when you don't remember me at all?

Of this night, I will remember how painful it is to say goodbye even when it is a promise to meet again tomorrow. I will remember how difficult it is to live these moments in the knowledge that very soon, I will have to trust memories to keep them alive. Do you trust memories? I don’t. They have a way of moulding slices of our lives into little bonsai shapes that protrude where it hurts. Like, they will relegate the bit where we ended up saying the same things at the same time, not once, but twice in an evening. They will play up the bits where my presence was a shadow on a lane that didn’t belong to us. They will tell me nothing about the joy in discovering that you click your fingers with your thumb and the forefinger. This night will revisit in flashes of your smiles from the past that had for long sought a way out.

Of this night, I will remember how I sat next to you and quietly looked out of the windows at all those brightly lit streets. How I let you into yet another piece of the world that I will never again be able to reclaim.

Of this night, I will remember a stranger who found the warmth of a home by the stairs of a doorway.  

Acceptance

You have lived half your life and never really understood it. You have read about it, pretended to understand it and made a neat little bunch of quotable quotes. Then one day, you learn about it anew and you realize that nothing you thought you knew about it has prepared you for it. It reveals itself in slow doses every hour, every day.

Acceptance is lying on your bed, sobbing and throwing up, and wiping your face with the bedsheet as the cat outside keeps knocking on the door.

Acceptance is calling a friend, pleading for help and then hanging up midway.

Acceptance is fighting with the washing machine, punching it on the sides and willing it to quieten because the sound causes your stomach to churn.

Acceptance is sitting out in the sun and breaking down. It is lying under the quilt and breaking down.

Acceptance is battling the see-saw of your moods; it’s delirium one moment, and fear the next moment. It’s control followed by a spiraling fall.

Acceptance is making light of everything because faking is easier than confronting.

Acceptance is adding up your life in episodes and wondering if it could have been any different.

Acceptance is asking the one you love the most to walk away because you don’t have the answers she seeks.

Acceptance is praying that she never finds herself like you when she has come this far.

Acceptance is letting the mask slip and coming undone with your grief.

Acceptance is living through it all and yet somehow willing yourself into living another day. 

Acceptance is fool's courage. It is setting out again, giving yourself another chance.

How do you speak about grief? Isn’t it silent by constitution? You can only live with it, like you would live with a person. There are days when there is too much of them and then there are days when they are just a passive presence. Age catches up with grief too. It might outlive you or die before you. Only you will know about it. You can attempt to talk or write about it but it will only reveal what happened. How do you put into words something that is an absence of everything, yet potent in its feeling? Language relies on words and words are deficient in that they mean something specific. You could grind meaning into a fine powder, put it in a capsule and you would end up with a word. Grief doesn’t have a meaning. It is not even permanent. It doesn’t have a colour and being opaque, it doesn’t reflect anything.

Here is what I understand. Grief is this nebulous presence, taking on forms that we can’t trace the contours of. You just have to trust that it is there and is up to something. There is no running away from it, there is no curing it. Accept it. Live with it. It will choose its farewell. Don’t look forward to it, there is no telling when.  

There is no truth. There are the lies that hurt and the ones that don’t. There are the words she speaks and the ones she keeps coiled up under the tongue. Have you wondered why you have never felt her tongue through the kisses you have shared? For you to lock your tongue with hers would mean feeling the acrid burn of words that have stayed there so long, they have turned toxic. You only have her lips, the lips that move to let a taste in. But it’s the tongue that knows ecstasy, knows the hot from the cold, the lover from the whore. It is what lets you in to her soul.

Know this, you have only earned her gratitude. You have only touched the warmth of her being. The passion that stirs her, you know nothing about. For you have only kissed her lips. The lips only leave marks, the tongue leaves its taste and scent. Do you see those marks on your shirt? That’s all you have. As lifeless as a crayon smudge or an ink spill. The marks of pretty shop-front lips.

It’s the tongue that craves and brings one home. And you remain an outsider, wanting in on the many worlds within. It’s a long wait ahead. I hope you have salvaged enough pieces of your heart to break. For break, it will.