Nameless Among the Known

by Katyaini

Ruination

  The burns that cover me are a distant sensation, surrounding a person I can’t help feeling detached from. This isn’t the first time I find myself in this haze.

  I see my hands in front of me, covered in what is seeping out my wrist. It’s red. It’s sticky. And it stinks.

  My insides stink. I’m not surprised.

  I look at the liquid seeping down with a fascination that I know is morbid. My heart is beating fast, faster than the instants I sit on my perch at the window ledge, looking at the world rushing about me, faster than when I close my eyes and dream of his lips on me.

  I sigh and close my slippery fingers around the pen and continue writing of what I feel. If I don’t succeed in killing myself today, at least I’d have this account. At least that’s what I told myself when the idea first came up. A small part thinks it’s because I want them to know what last breaths feel like.

  Midway to the third paragraph, I stop. The blood is starting to clot. I pick up the knife and put in the fifteenth cut, wincing. If the knife wasn’t as blunt, only one would have been enough. But I can’t change anything now. Getting out of the room meant the risk of waking up someone and letting that person interrupt the curiosity of what had kept me awake for past three nights- the curiosity of death.

  Finally, my vision flickers and I’m aware of the sudden lightness in my head. I look down at the notebook in front of me. There isn’t any word to add anymore. I stand up, supporting myself with the table and stumble to my book rack. Through the haze in my head, I pick up the most familiar notebook from among them. It’s heavier than I remember.

  Dragging my feet across the room, I slump back into the chair and open the pages. The story I desired is in front of me. I’m too weak to read anything, but the words are so familiar that they come to me without even trying to recall them.

  She bends over the lake, trying to see past the reflection of her superficial self—to see the reality of her soul behind the layers that hide it. But the depths of this once friend defy her once again. All she sees is the darkness, undisturbed by the violent emotions it deflects.

  Nothing seems to cut through it; no light enters it to come back. ‘That darkness, Is that all within me?’ She cries silently into the unfathomable depths and a single pearl escaping the gloom in her eyes, to meet the colossal expanse of sorrow below her, drowns—reflecting a single sliver of moonlight darkening the whole world. It seems to say, ‘Yes. You’re bound to darkness even when the whole world dances in the glory of light!”

  Xxxxxxxxxxxx

  Agony emancipates from her wrist like lava out of a fissure in earth. She gasps as yet another jolt shakes her whole being, but the tears that leave the comfort of her soul are that of relief- relief from getting free of the cold and cruel world that haunted her for centuries that was her life.

  A sheet of paper rustles as the breeze tries to coax her to an endless sleep. She smiles for the final time, a red stream flowing out of her arteries and onto the white paper.

  Xxxxxxxxxxxx

  The sunlight sneaking in from gaps in the white curtain is caught, like a deer in the glare of a car’s headlight, as the blood red ink spots it in its luster. The words that appear seem to darken all the light in world.

  “Four corners of this world,

  alone in the mid is me.

  Light surrounds all around,

  but the dark is all I see.

  I walk down an empty road,

  with an emptier soul;

  distant faces fill some spaces,

  but they never make it whole. “

  I smile and wince simultaneously as I pull the paper out of my pocket with the blood covered hand. My eyes are ready to close but I know there’s no peaceful sleep before I finally end this incomplete poem.

  I still remember the time spent under the stars, alone. How those words came to me, finally putting an end to the two year long search. I had finally finished the poem I started all that time ago.

  “I let no one comfort my wounds,

  for no one really cares;

  and no soul is ever whole,

  beneath the many layers.

  Forgotten, forsaken, thus,

  life moves towards the end;

  silent screams, unseen- unheard,

  Alas! Could they only pretend?”

  Below the final line, indented so it appears to be separate from this last piece of mine, is my final statement.

  “I am my ruination.”

  I shut the notebook down, trapping the sheet between my blood and my story, and attempt to stand up. I can’t. My wrist is still bleeding and my eye lids too heavy. My parents and brother are sleeping in the other bedroom. I can hear their breathing clearly through the noise in my head. These are my final moments. I smile tiredly as my heart jumps again.

  “I am my ruination.” I whisper as the darkness finally surrounds me.

  “This is morose.” He says, giving my notebook back. “You are depressed.”

  “You should have known that when I told you of my favorite poet.” I tell him, smiling.

  “Sylvia Plath, the Princess of neuroticism.” He says, smiling. Suddenly, a concerned frown mars his face.

  “You do know it is wrong, don’t you?” He says, stopping me in the middle of our way to the class.

  “What is?” I ask, finding the ludicrous expression of glee too stubborn to go off my face.

  “Suicide” He says and his words that promptly makes my smile fall. I gulp and pull the mask back on. Somehow, this bogus smile feels acidic now.

  “Killing yourself isn’t right, there’s nothing romantic in death.” He continues, looking at the space behind me. “It’s a path taken by those who’re too selfish to think of people who care about them. Who are too scared of fighting, who are too… weak.”

  His words tear at me. I find myself shutting down, putting up walls that were so hard to break just that first time. I hope they are indestructible now.

  I feel my throat clogging up, my fingernails biting into my palm as I clench my hands into two small fists. But as fast as the thoughtful look had come to his face, it vanishes. He looks at me with a smile turned back on.

  “Though, I know my best friend’s braver than that. Now come, we’re getting late.” He says, walking on ahead.

  I stare at his back, as he walks on, unaware that I’m not beside him. I drop my eyes to my own hand, at the black reebok wristband I had recently bought.

  I stretch it up with careful fingers, peaking under it, at the white bandage. Sure enough, it’s still there. That girl in the story is still me.

  “And hey,” he calls to me without turning, “I haven’t forgotten about that guy you mentioned, the one you dream about. I’m not letting that slip this easily.”

  I laugh aloud, wincing internally at the piercing fakeness but suppress the urge to cringe outwardly. He need not know. No one needs to know.

  “Ruination, that’s still me.” I whisper to myself, catching up to him and we make our way to another normal school day. It's true, what they say: my own words are enough for me to be understood.

  They Say I don’t talk

  There’s a kid in me. You’ll be shocked. I know.

  “So many hits,” you’ll wonder. “And she still dares to live!”

  But today, I proudly announce. The little girl still lives and my faith, trust and self-respect remain alive in her little form.

  You made me see so much… it all still makes me feel like hiding under the blankets, behind the curtains, whenever the memories torment me. To refuse the light from entering my vision, to stop it from making me see all that again, and again.

  My biology teacher says humans evolved from animals through a million years’ drawn out process. You reversed the process Dad; you turned into an animal in blink of an ey
e.

  You hit me across my face, but it somehow slashed my heart.

  You dragged me across the house, pulling me by my hair. That, in some unknown way, wrung out all the sympathy in my heart.

  You made me crawl and beg, for myself and my dreams. It killed every drop of respect and affection I had for you.

  My head hurts. My face hurts. I don’t have words for my heart. But, in the most ironical of ways, the group of girls whispering among themselves in the seats beside mine still makes me laugh as I guess the meanings in their giggles.

  It’s been half an hour since I walked out of the house this morning, the latest bruise hidden behind the hair tumbling out of my pony-tail. I’m hearing but not listening to the droning voice of our history teacher talking about the French Revolution. I’m smiling as I write, even as tears blur my vision.

  There’s a kid alive in me….

  From the Depths of Darkness

  I grew up five years with your every single slap.

  A decade every time you kicked me. A century every time you locked me up in that windowless room.

  And now, I’m dying because I grew up too much. All that Alcohol was for twenty one above, all those cigarettes for an adult. But wasn’t I already millenniums older than that?

  Bitterness erases pain. Did you know that?

  The teachers said I was a gone case whenever I neared unconsciousness in school. I was tired- so broken mentally and physically that it was impossible to keep track of things going on in the real world. I slept in middle of classes- nights had started to scare my sleep away. They all said I was ‘bad influence,’ others should keep away from me. It would have been better if they had listened. Better if they had kept away.

  The day I got suspended because no one believed that the guy needed his head rammed against the metal door to bring sense into him. Because no one believed that Soumya, the topper with an average of 98.87% would even care to touch me. And then, I was Sameeksha, the anti-social freak who was hardly passing in her school assignments. They said I was jealous, just pulling him down because I didn’t have it in me to raise myself to that level, and the sarcastic laugh I gave them put a seal on the suspension slip.

  They didn’t believe me, and neither did you. I guess, you also had a justifiable reason- I never was the daughter you wanted, was I?

  Do you remember your reaction? Do you remember those knife edged words? I do.

  You said I’ll end up in a ‘ditch in one of those dark alleys.’

  Did you mean this place you’ve sent me to, Papa? It’s too dark here, too much so to see if this is that ‘hell hole.’ It’s like I’ve been thrown to a totally new dimension. I'm breathing but it doesn't feel like it.

  A chill has settled in my bones, rending me incapable of producing any warmth in my heart.

  I want to live- to go on. But this numbness has taken the ire out of me.

  With all the love my soul can muster;

  your one and only, good for nothing, daughter.

  Good Bye, whoever you thought you were to me.

  As the curtains fall

  The moon of her life sets with the rising sun and I, like a dethroned devotee, look on…

  She really was like the moon—smiling and guiding others on even when surrounded by Darkness herself. She was my ideal, the one person I truly aspired to be like. But now, what?

  Today, I saw her light get eaten by the dawn. Today, I was abandoned for the final time. The sudden rigidity of her hands was all the warning I had and it was painfully inadequate. All the caution in the world wouldn’t have sufficed for the pain that the dead look in her eyes inflicted—eyes which made me see the light in dead of the night. Not with the one person who took me as her family when my own people abandoned me.

  I hadn’t believed it when everyone said she’ll leave me forever. Had I believed them and let go of the hope, she wouldn’t have left me, I think. Hope is a cruel thing- you take its support, it snatches away its hand; you let go, it clutches your neck with its sharp nails and brings you back to the surface. The scratches remain forever, but any wound would have been better than this spear through my core.

  The nurse shakes me out of the comatose state, to remind me that my deposit for the room expires today.

  I smile wryly as I get up. If only the reservation had saved the one person it was done for. I reach out of hand to close the lifeless eyes but the witch in white stops me again.

  “You’ll need to pay the discharge fees for the body.” She says—her face a blank mask.

  I can’t help a dry chuckle escaping the pain in my guts. I snatch at the pair of gold earrings hanging from my ears- the same pair she had gifted me a month ago on my birthday.

  She ignores the blood dripping from the golden metal and takes them from my out-stretched hand.

  “The body will be sent to the registered address, you can accompany it if you want.” She informs me, shutting the door behind her as she goes out.

  When I get out of the hospital, the truth hits my tear-stained face like a knife on an open wound.

  The protective curtains had fallen with the cool and comfort of the night. Now, harshness of the day-lit world had to be faced. What remains to be seen is whether this day’s end will be mine too.