Guilty Nothings ('Happy Birthday')

...

These
Girls
And boys are
Ghosts. They meet me every day
And go home and die and reanimate
Before they meet me again, tomorrow. 

They whisper in my right ear
Drunken soliloquies, and
We pretend that each is another
And satisfy ourselves.

...

The sunlight on your leafy
Veranda was real. It burned a tattoo on

My right forearm as I lay with you, down
On your veranda, as
We scandalized your neighbours.

The broken metal chair on that
Veranda was real. I used to look
At it while you undressed
Your fears for me, sometimes; sometimes
You'd undress your ears and naked,
They were so shy. They
Used to surface, and peek out at me (sometimes)
From underneath
The sea of your hair.

Your childhood clock
That hung from your bedroom wall was real.
I took the broken chair, and
Flung it against your
Bedroom wall, and it hit your clock and
Time burst
Into a million pieces of
Old plastic.
And we smiled and held hands
And later, on your bed, measured out the rest of the day
In each other's heartbeats. 

Your glass-walled eyes were as large as
Cigarettes, as
They watched me roll a tube of herbal
forgetfulness;
And soon it was done, and we 'borrowed'
Your father's lighter, but the flame
Was inside us.

And I would steal
Coloured bottles from
The glass cupboard, and
Dilute my blood to the
Soundtrack of your nervous laughter,
As you delighted in vicarious
Guilt.

And naked you were the day
We smoked the drowsy stars on the
Quilt of your parents' bed.
And we both exploded.

The quilt caught the charred feathers;
They floated on the quilt before
They dissolved into nothingness
And we dissolved into nothingness
And nothingness dissolved with us.

And for an infinite second,
The mind stopped. The pale

Fear that like fire feeds

Off the crosses of our lives

Died like Christ, and was replaced

By a benign vacuum (nought).
We only
Heard the ticking of the
Bedside clock, and
The snores of your dog, as she slept, and
Each other's ventricles as they
Pumped away dully; like an ancient
Beast who has forgotten why she
Exists.

A damp scent lay heavy, as a reminder
Of the fate of requited love.
You wore the quilt like a bridal gown
And we galloped away into an all-forgiving slumber.

...

How can this much happiness be immoral?

...

I remember your 18th birthday. I remember looking at you from across an over-priced-pasta laden table, while you laughed like a demented penguin at some joke our friends made. I smiled and mouthed sweet nothings at you, and you giggled and darkened to the colour of your dress. I remember how afterwards at your house I reclined on your bed as you washed up in the little washroom adjacent your little room and your mother cooked biryani for us and your father played with your overweight Labrador retriever. I remember thinking that right in this moment--within the span of this infinite second--I was safe inside the bubble of my happiness. I was happy.

I am happy. 

Happy birthday, Dani. I hope you like your gift.

Dadaist

I just realized. I can do anything. Anything. Anything. 

I start with this blog post. I have never posted anything except poems/stories which on re-reading sound like someone put honey powder in a glass of water and swirled it all around. That changes now.

I wish you could feel me. It's so... liberating.

I could make up a metaphor-like simile which makes no sense, and claim that it makes sense to me. And then you would think hard, and realize with a whooshy sigh that it indeed does make sense, and that I'm right. Except that I'm not.

Why does this blog exist? 

Hi, you. You, who are reading this. Why aren't you talking to me instead? Send me an email. Call me, definitely. Discuss the span of your mind until the day wakes up. Are your thoughts linearly independent? Do our basis vectors match? We should be friends. Hi.

Cat.

Doughnuts

Dawn.

Veins of gold and
Thickening copper running through the pre-pubescent sky.
The subtle pink of newness
Turns darker and darker; 

Pigments into a gruff, unshaved maroon. 

Already the sky has flecks
Of colloidal white in its countenance; the
Salt-and-pepper of my morning eggs.

Stay, the morning.
Why do you hurry so?
You and I are both young,
Yet you seem so eager to
Attain grey maturity,

Move on, but I
Clutch onto my black hair
and un-ridged
Brain.

Time has not yet left its grooves
On my face, though it
Presses harder
Each day. 

Stay, yet.
While the dissolving dreams yet
Funnel through my narrowing consciousness,
Never to return again, yet always
Familiar.
While your touch melts still, like body butter,
Upon my left knee, where you casually
Brushed against me, just (it seems)
A few seconds ago. 

Your floating crystalline-pink perfume
Shall condense on the center
Of my tongue as I
Walk to class, and
You shall exist
In every disappointed quarter-take. 

You shall
Inhabit my liquid daydreams, slip
In and out like a fleet-finned dolphin,
Whisper creamily
In my left ear, demand
My present in return
For your affection.

Stay.
Just a few minutes ago (it seems), you
Nestled against my chest,
Your burntchocolate hair straying mischievously
Like a monkey
Of its own mischievous accord
Onto my desert face; my eyes record
Feverishly your index finger's movement.

Your nervous giggles that
Collide and rummage at the back
Of your throat, and tumble
As my left hand
Snakes across the ridged plateau of your
Back,
As we burrow into my too-small bed.

And we lie on the sleepy sheets, and
Eat metaphors like doughnuts.
The pale yellow crusted with snowy white;
The centre of mass floats
In thin air and
The sweetness gives me bloodthirst and
It shall kill me. 

Stay.
Your spirit flies like a madwoman
Every time the yolk of the morning
Dribbles in and pools in oblong splashes through
My calcificated blinds and
Onto the non-stick floor; flies
Thousands of miles
Across the ocean.

Stay.
But it's all right if you don't.
I shall meet you again
After tonight, in the interstices
Between sleep and wakefulness.

And we shall dance and play
And laugh and sleep
Under a guiltless milkmoon
That never changes.

...

Yet every day
I wake up from the loving
Of the night, it seems
Your heart beats a little less,
And your breath is a little less moist
On my yellow mouth.