‘Words and Curves’ by Megha Rao

After the terrible fight that leaves us broken and in parts like bread crumbs on a lonely Sunday breakfast plate-

I grab you by the chin and work your jaw until you spill all the words out-

Your tongue rolls in and out, your teeth snarl back at me like fangs (yet you will not say it, whatever walks in your mind like a phantom, because it will hurt me).

But hurt me, hurt me hard, I want the hurt.

I want the hurt badly bruised.

My hands delve into your throat and search for those words unsaid

And they come out moth eaten and unloved, trapped in infinity (I will show them how to be loved).

I dig into graves that have buried hundreds of others things you never told me-

Inside out, out inside, I am okay, and-

So are you (?).

I don’t care if you want to scream at me and call me names, all of them sound good on your lips (two harsh curves up and a wider one down that have been stitched together by you)

I don’t care if your words are cruel and brutal, I will never love you a little less-

I don’t care, I don’t care, I want you to spit it out (there should never be a word hidden secret between the two of us).

My words are yours, yours are mine

I will hinge my thumbs into the crooked ends of your mouth and turn them up into a smile (And that is the curve I’ve spent eternity dreaming about)-

Nothing you say will ever pull me away from you, so tell me everything I need to know

And if I’m hurt, it’s okay, but my hand can only reach down to your throat, not plunge into the curves of your brain

I love those curves, the only forbidden ones I could never touch

Touch me and see how badly I want to taste your words

I’ll kiss you until I get them all out.

 

 

12345678*9# :

Telephone Conversation With Yourself:

123456789*0#

Everything stares back at you (taunting you to call yourself up), and you hold the phone to your ear. You can’t identify the person you’re talking to, but what mattered anyway?

You cannot call in sick, because how do you explain to yourself that you’re depressed?

-Shattering at your wrists and brains because you’ve been bumping into walls and laughing (which somehow seems to creep out strangers), playing with imaginary friends and teddy bears (that have the same plastic stare as you) -Your soulless eyes are wrecked cities.

  1. 456.
  2. *0#.

No, they will not understand that you’ve been staring at the ceiling the entire day. They will not understand that a hand grows tighter around your throat as you gasp for air. Everyday, you show up to work, and this is what I do, too.

I wake up in the morning and I go to class. I come back and I write or paint (Sad things talk in my head and silence me. The best I could move this week was with the brush strokes). Sometimes I eat, sometimes I don’t. I eat when I can convince my body that it needs food to stay alive. I eat the air when I feel sick of food, because it’s the same old crap everyday (all the onions that I’m scared of, and lots and lots of lime juice). Sometimes I eat when I cry, when I need to break out into emotional eating.

Then I feel like my own enemy. That’s how it’s been for years- my body and my mind have always been at war (their fights end up in bloodshed, a little part of me breaks every time on the inside. I live with dying organs).

And the numbers play in my head-123. 456. 789. *0#. Please call the mental ward and lock me inside (my mind is not a safe place for me to wander in).

But hopeless writers like me, what can I give you? I have but limited words spinning in my head, words like sad, cut, depressed, cry and death. Words like I’m okay, no, I’m not (lies like nothing I write is personal, I’m not crazy).

But depression be damned.

I want you to know-

I don’t write about depression to put it up on a high pedestal. If you think doing my dirty laundry in public is only going to make it dirtier, know that I don’t do it because I am in love with it.

I am not, am not, am not.

I don’t write to glorify my pain. Let me tell you something-

The glorified aren’t the scars (mental or physical)-

The glorified are the battles that keep me going and alive.

Author’s Bio:

Megha RaoMegha Rao is a third year UG student doing her B.A. English course in Madras Christian College, Chennai. She lived in Singapore for ten years, and moved to Kerala when she was in her sixth grade. She published her first novel, Alice: The Netherworld in 2012 and its sequel, Alice: The Inferno Conspiracy in 2014.

She started writing when she was six. She used to make comic books and create characters. She loves sketching and painting, and is an avid fan of Josephine Wall. She currently blogs at www.meao95.blogspot.com

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