Our happy ending

It isn't exactly a fairytale

No poison apples

No glass slippers

No witches 

No fairies

No Exiles

With seven kindly men

Albeit a little 

Vertically challenged.

And alas!

No Prince

On a white horse

To ride with 

To the waiting castle

And our happy ending

It never has been a movie

No scripted lines

No dance sequences

No perfect hairstyles

No sensual songs

In the summertime rain

In some lonely ruins

And alas!

No hero

To fight alone

The bad guys

Just for me

And our happy ending

It's not quite picture perfect

You and me

Some laughter

Many fights

Perhaps a toddler's

First masterpiece:

All indistinct

And alas!

You don't catch me

But I pull you down

And together we lie

You and me

And our happy ending.

Farewell notes

If we were too look at it closely, life is but this massive, unending anthology of short stories. In some we are protagonists, in some antagonists, in many just a small side character and in quite a few a digression. Our tales have been penned down, interwoven with those of myriad others as we share our pages with so many others. 


You and I, we shared a story. You know we share, though you may not know it well. I am sure you despise it by now, and still I shall tell it to you one time. We may have lived the same story, but it ended at different places for us.


For you our story ended the minute I walked out on you, for me it still goes on. Do you remember the look of consternation, of guilt on my face when I walked away? I know you didn't, you couldn't have. Trust me though, it was there: both the guilt and the pain of leaving you behind. For months I'd cry myself to sleep and wake up to an undifferentiated blur of time. It took me forever to forget you, but forget you I never did. Memories of you were like this precious miniature painting, priceless yet full of guilt as it stolen. I hid you in my mind behind a lot of exaggerated baggage I collected since I left you. Ever so often however, the wind would blow away the dust and I'd have a clear look at our story and fall apart. It has been too long, and I got another shot at happiness. But I cannot let anyone replace you. It's not just guilt but the pain of considering you replaceable that scares me. What I fail to stand by and play my part again like with you. I doubt I can take this anymore and so I have decided to fade away. No one shall ever replace you, you are my first and only. Today I make sure of it. I end this story hereof, of us and of me so that no new characters are written.


If you ever come across these words, just remember I loved you. I just didn't have a choice. I loved you so much that I make you my only story.

Exorcism of an Unforgetting Heart

Flashes...
Memories...
Your laughter
That smells
Of wet earth
And dreams
With an acrid tinge
Of hopes gone by


I have never missed you,
Never got the chance
But I wish I did


You're a jigsaw puzzle
And I hold every piece;
Only the grooves have changed
They fit no more.
The line have faded,
The colours run into each other
A grotesque image
Of the face before.


We sit together
We reminisce
We have no new
Memories to make.
Time has washed you away
In all your fluid grace
While I sit
On the clumsy boulder
Of a wistful life;
Babbling
To the bits of you
I have clung on to
Like a parasite.


Blow away in the wind;
Be gone.
Your eyes
They are still the same hazel
But they have forgotten to smile
When they see me
Be gone
So that I too can forget
that treacherous smile

From the Diary of Mrs Shakespeare

Bill’s latest screenplay is apparently brilliant; has to be, Chris didn’t seem too happy about it. He says Universal Studios are a sucker for lapping it up like this. But I am sure it’s great, his screenplays always are. He has such a way with words.

Well I should know; I fell for him now didn’t I. I’d been warned and scorned at. He was so much younger, but then again he did have a way with words.

He would charm me with his words and I’d let him. Oh what a fool I had been but what was I to do: he had such a way with words. Such a way that he had me knocked up in six months. And alas all that scorn and all the warnings and for all his way with words, marry me he had to. But such a way with words he had, that he had me believing. He told me his talents needed him to be in the city, his creativity needed the space to grow, and he needed to go. He would miss me, but I had to stay back. It was best for our little Susanna. I agreed.

He was right. All his screenplays have been successes. You can guess by the new girl in his arm every week. (They aren’t surely with him for his looks and they are all too dumb for his way with words). Maybe he’s good because he saved all his human insights and empathy for his screenplays. And there is also his way with words. It always got him out of our arguments. But then again it was his lack of originality that started them in the first place. He never could come up with an excuse ever, the sheer brilliance of which would make me forgive him.

 Originality, well now that’s something I had in the marriage. I may not turn a word like he does, but I sure can turn a story. How else do you think I got him to pay child support for Hamnet and Judith, when he wasn’t even around at that time.

Bangles

Pixie dust,

Dream debris,

Shards of hope

Molded in

Foolish optimism.

They prick,

they scratch:

I bleed.

I still wear them proudly

Jangling on my wrists

Broken Heart Pieces

Alone and barefoot,

Numb with cold

Walking over

An hourglass' lost soul

I stepped on some

Broken heart pieces.

The pain took time

To fool the guarding numbness

And be known.

But it wasn't the pain

Of trampling

Some heart's shards.

I had been so busy

Keeping it safe,

Far far away,

I never noticed

You breaking my heart

And walk away.

The Epitaph reads L.O.V.E.

I can see love dying.
I can hear its last ragged breaths, smell its rotting essence.
I can see love dying; these are my hands that strangle it.


It was premeditated. Each aspect had been carefully planned, there was no scope for errors. The suitcase packed, money withdrawn from the bank, the cab ordered. The escape route was in place.
Her hand shook as she picked up the pen to write the farewell note. She repeated the mantra, her friend and fellow conspirator had given her, "I will not throw away my life", over and over again. She hated herself for doing this; for running away from her husband of six years. But so much had changed over time. 


They had been in college when they had met and gotten smitten with each other. A whirlwind courtship had been followed by the wedding two months after their graduation. In those initial days they had been so in love: they had seemed to live on sly glances and covert caresses until they made it to the privacy of their bedroom at the end of the day. Then they'd make exquisite love. These days they got back from work, ate in silence and moved to the bedroom. He watched the news, she read and then they both fell asleep.
It wasn't as if he was cruel. He never hurt her, not even a harsh word. It was the politeness bordering indifference that got to her. She did not want to spend the rest of her life stuck in this uneventful rut. And so she was leaving. It was all planned. She would stay a week with her friend, the co-conspirator, while she worked the last week of her notice period. She had put in her papers last week itself. And then she would take a long vacation, travel the world, catch up on some of the excitement missing in her life. If only she could get herself to write the farewell note.


The doorbell rang.
It was time, the cab had come. Freedom beckoned, but she stood transfixed, still clutching the pen. All she had to do was scribble a goodbye and walk away from this monotonous, mindless motion of life. She just stood still. She couldn't do this. She had loved and lived with a man for six years, she couldn't walk out on him and on their love. There had to be another way, one that didn't need their marriage offered at the sacrifice alter. She would talk to her husband. They would work it out, maybe take the vacation together. She had to give their love another chance. She sent the cab back and went inside to unpack. Her husband needn't know about the temporary lapse in her judgement.

***

She heard the front door open, her husband was back from home. She decided to greet him at the door. It was then that she heard the voice, unexpected and all too familiar.
"Thanks to me she would have left by now. We don't have to worry about any interruptions tonight"
She walked into the hallway to find the husband and the friend inextricably entwined.

I saw love die.

I heard its last ragged breaths, smelt its rotting essence.

I saw love die; they buried it next to me.