Tuesday 3 June 2014

Letter to a ghost - II

I will put on my serious face for now.*serious face on* (stop laughing, no seriously!) 

Hello there. Being the geek that he is, a friend once told me (without me asking, of course) about how things work within a nuclear reactor. A chain reaction is caused solely by an occurrence of a matter influencing the other - leading to an overwhelming interaction that threatens to take over. And the worst thing about this whole thing is, the more you try to control these occurrences from colliding with each other, the more they insist that they must continue to do so until they go critical.

Cut to the present day. I will bother you for the millionth time, sending stupid chat messages or whatsapp memes and usually you'd reply with a short and sweet 'haha'. Like a silly house cat excited by its conquests, I want to bring everything Ive learnt, gained and won and lay it at your feet for some sort of response. I think I declared blitzkrieg and got myself bombed to stone age right at the start of knowing you.

And now. Now I'll be sitting in a house or a temporary abode belonging to a friend like any other day, laughing at some stupid joke whilst having a few beers and suddenly you'll run across my mind, prancing about as you do with a large, crazy smile on your face. And suddenly, my thoughts aren't mine anymore, they've run out of control like speedy gazelles in haphazard directions. And I'll stop laughing randomly, which leads to moments of awkward silence and everyone staring at me because I look like I'm having a stroke.

Everything is always moving way too fast. Everything often seems too rapid and frantic to catch up with. Everyone, including me - the proverbial snail racing with the bullet train of the present, is out of time. Always. But in my mind you move in slow motion. In the quick, unforgiving world of now that strikes swiftly like the sharpest blade of a ninja before receding into the shadows, I cannot seem to grasp how you slow down time when you smile. As always, the fires of my frustration are fuelled by my inability to tell you just how much you mean to me. But i stay silent, ticking away like a clock. I dont want to suck the life out of you like a wretched vine sapping the life out of a tree, wrapped around its trunk like murderous hands around someone's throat.

I miss you like a retard misses the point. Every time I look at you, I feel like writing a new poem. I want to be your friend. Sometimes more. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, as Neruda says. I don't want to be a bridge you cross once and forget. I want to be the ferryman oaring you through troubled waters, piercing the furious waves. Like a flowery vine coiling around a tree, I want our stories to intertwine.

I want you to call me at odd hours and have me cure you of your panic attacks, when you can't seem to breathe, when you're losing your mind over your mother (who I'd like to meet very much). I want to be that constant. I want to be that anomaly. I want you with all your fears, all your scars and all your faults that made you who you are. I want you to show me your seemingly strange face in the morning so I can kiss it. I want to hold you when you feel like crying so that you can bury your head in my bony chest and do so without fear of judgement or what others might think.

I want to meet the skeletons in your closet, if there are any, and give them a bone crushing handshake. You can meet mine as well, though they are quite lame, and crush their brittle bones with a hug. I want to be your living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things. Because you make me believe in good things too, just by being there and being yourself. You said the meaning of life is to give it a meaning. And you give me joy like never before. And its too vast, like the ocean that regularly swallows us. But I'd rather linger in these chambers of the sea, riding the waves. I'd rather be submerged in this blue dream than traverse through the killing desert of my life like I do.

However here is the truth in its most non poetic form: sometimes your thoughts aren't enough to sustain me or my mind. Sometimes I need to see you for I'm a wreck without you. I know this may not be enough or sufficient enough for anything. For these are just mere words on a screen, no matter how truthful they may be. This too may just be, just another letter I wrote. I once almost gave up on writing poetry and everything else with it because I thought words are useless and they don't change anything. Our actions or what we do define us, not our words. But ive been losing my mind over you and words are the only recourse i have to brave the winds of future that blow hard as ever. I just hope these don't go in vain. But they probably will. If 'one of the most beautiful letters written in the history of words' didn't impress you, i fear this certainly wont. I sometimes feel like I'm very unimpressive by default. Like all my creativity and wordplay skills are just devoid of charm or whatever it is that attracts people. Like a flame around which no moths dance, I dont think the things i say or do haunt anyone. As Nietzsche says, I don't believe in my own ghost. However, devoid of logic, I still rage with hope everyday. There's a reason why I didn't change all the 'wants' in this letter to 'wanted'. So bid adieu to silence (haven't we had enough of the same in our lives?) Talk to me. Meet me. Here. There. Or halfway in between. If I've caused hurt with my words, i hope it heals with time. The reasons can be found and named later. The negativity can be eventually hung, drawn and quartered. I apologise I became so rabid about taking up a space in your life where you seem to have forgotten you can put someone. Perhaps even someone like me. If you absolutely don't see a reason to, you can continue to be silent and I'd understand. Otherwise, I'm still here. Same old, same old.

*serious face off*

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