'This is my final fit, my final bellyache with..'
Ages on a wheelbarrow. All those numbers dumped together by a rough hand. Eight somewhere, eighteen right beside. Mother screaming, running around the house, almost crying. Five hundred rupees have gone missing. Everyone else joins in the search. No one dare mouth it, but they radiate a heat and a confidence...'the li'l one', they think. Mother cries, daughter begins to wail. Mother says 'When did I blame you?' But then how could she, given her most constricted vocabulary, have said 'But I know you did.'?
What did you do with that five hundred? I don't remember.
Fourteen is a fairy. It gets you. It drops a veil of silk on your shoulders. It flies with you. Its white, translucent, powder-blue. It's a clear midnight-sky from the deck of a ship. It's John Denver. Its. Let keep this for later. The family is falling apart. It's an evening job with a production house and they also feed you sandwiches.
"What did you think was cool while in college?"
(Utter disbelief at the fact that one could actually have seen 'Scream' and yet could not have afforded an acknowledging nod, at the mention of Munch.)
Cool? Umm it was cool to not have to discontinue college after the first year. It was cool to be the 'Miss' to three different kids in three different parts of the city. It was cool to be able to pay for a forty-page photocopy, instead of feigning a disinterest in that module all together. It was cool to be able to listen to the bunch of friends who would have a nostalgia trip over good old cartoon network memories. It was cool to have heard of those characters and those funny lines for the first time at the age of nineteen. It was cool to not have known that you are being judged and you will be, for the rest your numbers.
Love was like a loan, you took another to pay off the first one, and fell into a loop that forever packed you back to twenty-one. Much like the sea?
But the shore is the drowsiness of a graveyard shift at a call-center. It's a ravenous hunger at 11 pm. It's Kafka between calls but only after 12:00. It's a whole term paper written on the road at 4:30 in the morning, on the way back from work. It's seventeen thousand on paper. It's an all expense paid Master's degree in another few hundred sleepless nights. It's worth it. It's a lot of numbers..21 12 11 30 4 62.5
now on a wheelbarrow, one atop the other, weighing nothing.
Twenty-five is safe. All that could have fallen apart has fallen apart. This here, is the Enough that follows. It is nearly two-years with a publishing house. It is a room with as many bookshelves as I please. It is two incoming text messages in a day, both for an internet subscription. It is all the figures, numbers, debts, combinations, account numbers, balance sheets, devoured by a paycheck and spit out as irregular numbers into a wheelbarrow that keeps moving steadily onward, into a denser forest ofdetachment disenchantment.
'No alarms and no surprises, please'
(I came back to edit it. Yes)
'No alarms and no surprises, please'
Ages on a wheelbarrow. All those numbers dumped together by a rough hand. Eight somewhere, eighteen right beside. Mother screaming, running around the house, almost crying. Five hundred rupees have gone missing. Everyone else joins in the search. No one dare mouth it, but they radiate a heat and a confidence...'the li'l one', they think. Mother cries, daughter begins to wail. Mother says 'When did I blame you?' But then how could she, given her most constricted vocabulary, have said 'But I know you did.'?
What did you do with that five hundred? I don't remember.
Fourteen is a fairy. It gets you. It drops a veil of silk on your shoulders. It flies with you. Its white, translucent, powder-blue. It's a clear midnight-sky from the deck of a ship. It's John Denver. Its. Let keep this for later. The family is falling apart. It's an evening job with a production house and they also feed you sandwiches.
"What did you think was cool while in college?"
(Utter disbelief at the fact that one could actually have seen 'Scream' and yet could not have afforded an acknowledging nod, at the mention of Munch.)
Cool? Umm it was cool to not have to discontinue college after the first year. It was cool to be the 'Miss' to three different kids in three different parts of the city. It was cool to be able to pay for a forty-page photocopy, instead of feigning a disinterest in that module all together. It was cool to be able to listen to the bunch of friends who would have a nostalgia trip over good old cartoon network memories. It was cool to have heard of those characters and those funny lines for the first time at the age of nineteen. It was cool to not have known that you are being judged and you will be, for the rest your numbers.
Love was like a loan, you took another to pay off the first one, and fell into a loop that forever packed you back to twenty-one. Much like the sea?
But the shore is the drowsiness of a graveyard shift at a call-center. It's a ravenous hunger at 11 pm. It's Kafka between calls but only after 12:00. It's a whole term paper written on the road at 4:30 in the morning, on the way back from work. It's seventeen thousand on paper. It's an all expense paid Master's degree in another few hundred sleepless nights. It's worth it. It's a lot of numbers..21 12 11 30 4 62.5
now on a wheelbarrow, one atop the other, weighing nothing.
Twenty-five is safe. All that could have fallen apart has fallen apart. This here, is the Enough that follows. It is nearly two-years with a publishing house. It is a room with as many bookshelves as I please. It is two incoming text messages in a day, both for an internet subscription. It is all the figures, numbers, debts, combinations, account numbers, balance sheets, devoured by a paycheck and spit out as irregular numbers into a wheelbarrow that keeps moving steadily onward, into a denser forest of
'No alarms and no surprises, please'
(I came back to edit it. Yes)
'No alarms and no surprises, please'
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