IceAndBlood

05.03.21 Dear R, Like shooting stars, They plummet from the skies, Till it’s all over.   I just made it up. I was thinking of myself and you and maybe of the pain shooting through my legs, stomach, my arms, hands, chest and brain. Reminded me of shooting stars. Remember the last time, we saw shooting stars from your roof? Suddenly, it feels so strange – like each and every part of my body is dying to touch one another. My own body feels alien to me. As does my life. As if I no more belong to myself. Like all other times, this time too, the fridge looks bleak. Not even a piece of godforsaken bread. The desert-coloured stickers popping off the handle and the scratches looking like abracadabra on the refrigerator door – it’s a surprise I didn’t notice them before. Strange, huh? How you think you can fill up that enormous void within yourself with loads of food and tons of chocolate! How it seems as if the darkness will melt away, with the chocolate melting on your to...

“Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow Bloom and grow forever…”                                   Every day I walk out of my complex, I see a man with dishevelled hair and ragged clothes, scribbling on the path desperately, with a tiny piece of chalk. Faded pink. In big, bold letters. Letters I can make no sense of. I see his clouded eyes, blank and lost, as if nothing in the world matters to him, except perhaps those letters. I look at him with horror, pity or maybe, disdain, and keep a safe distance. Recently, something has changed in me. I look at him with empathy. I stare and I wonder. I wonder and I stare. What if I too end up like that – deranged, deluded, lost in an alternate universe? What if there is no question of ‘ending up’? What if I too am one like him? Lost in a blank space with nothing left to bank on? Strands of disobedient dirty hair fall over his eyes. He picks his pace...