by Khadija Rupa
of avoiding and detaching;
when you are tired
of coming and going;
when you are tired
of running and running;
look back.
Where you left me—
you will find my dreams standing.
Restart the life,
with them have your new beginnings.
How?
It wasn’t,
a story,
I wanted for my life.
The girl whose
favourite characters
are always—
the kind ones,
the girl whose
every novel
ends with—
happily ever after,
the girl whose
book covers are always—
the world of fairy tales,
how could
she be
someone’s mistake?
A Rootless Wanderer
My eyes, my two eyes wide open; with their blurred vision, their wetness, their unheard voice, I touch the entire sky. The feeling I get when they move together to the right, the difference I see in the left part of the dawn sky—I wonder, if the colours are entering into my dark eyes, or if I am the one who is sending all my colours to the whole dark world outside.
I touch the mountains, of the earth, of the ocean. I touch their rigidness, their waiting, their calling; my eyes wide open, in awe. In prostration I hold the entire universe’s weight not on my knees, not on my toes, not on my forehead but on my two squeezed eyelids.
My hands never touched the words that crushed a whole heart of mine in between. My ten fingers, all calm; my palms, fearlessly straight, but my eyes touched it all. They touched the salty-pain, the heart-floor, too, the time I was a new-born. They touched, and touched and touched and when my eyes gradually close, I wonder, if I pull the entire world’s darkness into them, or if I give away to the world—all my light.
………………………………………..
Your smile is unbelievably beautiful, he muttered somberly into her ears. I can feel how terribly you keep falling apart behind it.
A Hope That
Hurts Most
Love is a separation
where two people believe,
they would be together
once again where
end meets forever.
Love is waiting,
till the last breath.
And sometimes,
even after that. free@symbianize
Happiness
Every time I am told
something is going to come true
the way I wished it,
I wait holding the whole universe
within me.
The moment arrives,
strangely everything
gets postponed
and I wait again,
never losing hope.
Until later I hear,
we are sorry,
your happiness—
has been cancelled.
Generous Grief
Every single thing,
every single person
gives so little,
even when I request more;
please some more.
When the turn comes,
for grief to give,
it overflows
my life’s shore.
The Universe
Through my Window
(The Second Type of Loneliness)
I wake up in the middle of night and my own bedroom feels unknown. As if I am somewhere extremely far—like on the end of the Solar System where there is no gravity and I can see this immense planet slowly rotating on its orbit without any support right in front of me. I am so close to it that I can even hear the creepy sound of its rotation…and it’s almost deafening me.
And there are moons, so many scary, massive moons. Like five hundred moons. Some stars are so different from what they look like from my planet; they seem so horrible that if I touched them I would instantly burn to ashes. And some are like a black spider’s infinite white toes—just as tiny as I used to see from Earth. But from here, everything feels more real. So real that I tremble. I suffocate. I have no air to breathe yet desperately convince my heart to keep beating. And I scream, hoping someone from Earth will hear me and wake everyone else saying—Guys! I heard a cry, someone needs us terribly.
But I am so far. My legs already heavy blocks of concrete. The thoughts of never being heard, that no one will ever come to know where I am or what I am doing, that even if I try, I can’t go back to my own beautiful planet—make me lose my balance and I fall. And I am rolling, I’m still rolling. I want to stop myself, hold myself tight with my two hands but then I realise even there is a place within human hearts where forces like gravity—don’t work. I just keep rolling. Keep falling.
A Meaningless Expectation
The sun has disappeared
behind a summer cloud.
Now only a heavy mass,
of thick water vapour,
floating all around.
A worry,
an anger,
a sorrow,
pouring down all over.
I know I expected too much,
I am sorry for being such;
as I mistook thinking,
for you I would do as much. free@symbianize
A Prayer That Came True
I always prayed,
with courage and confidence,
no matter how unbearable it seemed,
that I may ease your grief
by having it filled up in me.
Maybe this is why so unexpectedly,
a small tap
broke our unbreakable bond;
and for a lifetime I became,
an incurable wound.
Stranger
I told you
a thousand beautiful words.
You understood all of them.
I told you
A silence.
You remained silent.
I told you
a thousand tears.
Now you are a stranger.
My Wasted Sacrifice
I liked you,
for what you weren’t.
You disliked me,
for what I wasn’t.
Your life is,
as it was,
without me.
My life is,
as it was,
when you killed me.
But I’m used to all these pains;
from the beginning I knew—
between two forevers,
only the worst can be true.
Emptiness
I knew who I was
before you appeared;
I admit life wasn’t filled to the brim,
but at least it wasn’t fully empty.
When you came,
you were always near,
you were everywhere,
until you were here, there, nowhere.
Now the harder I try,
the more I struggle,
who was I—
before we met?
Sshhhh!
The eerie movement
of the three hands
of my ghostly wall clock.
Its tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock,
from four a.m.
to four p.m.
Reminds me nothing
but how quiet and how slow
suddenly my whole world became.
Remembering You In
My Forgetfulness
Once I asked you, will you ever forget me? You replied just like every crazy lover does—“I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Now, ma
ny times I sit at my window, in my beautiful autumn bed, and still keep missing home. The pages that are torn from my poetry books, I can’t tell what I have actually done to them. And even photographs pinned on my walls started to appear unfamiliar a long time ago. When some unknown people, who still claim to be my old friends, heard some sad news related to me, they beat me, tried to get me to cry just for once. I tried earnestly to expand my little soul to fill the whole universe just to force myself to laugh. Because now when I even forgot how to cry, I need helplessly to laugh. That’s the only way left to squeeze out my tears. That’s the only way now I cry.
I don’t even know exactly how long it has been since we started living in two different parts of the same world. Wasn’t it all two years ago? Is there a zero, too, after two? But why do I feel there are two, three, four and five zeros?
Again, I don’t know.
Today, however, I feel proud of myself. That someday I replied to the same question I questioned you: That, “even if I can, even if I forget everything, myself, too—never will I—you.” free@symbianize
Treacherous Market Of Love
Like a single raindrop
melting into a river
that flows into the ocean,
what was once visible
only to my eyes,
gradually all of it disappeared.
Clouds of white ache,
in the far corner of a sky
that only birds of dusk own,
covered all that once
I thought I would own.
If ever again,
someone says
to go to the market,
where hearts are sold
in exchange for melancholy souls,
never would I go.
Never would I wait,
if ever again
someone says—
not to.
Winter Cries
I have entered an unknown
no grey can ever reach.
I have been in a cosmos
no emptiness can ever know.
I have breathed a melancholy
no ear can ever hear.
I have a day which secretes dark
no night can ever bear.
I have a story curled up in my bed
no one can ever fall asleep with.
I have a red
no winter can ever bleed.
A Melancholy Soul
She has the clearest road;
a magical lamppost,
to guide her soul that’s lost
somewhere deep within.
She says,
the road will take her nowhere,
or perhaps
somewhere back to nowhere?
Grey clouds
are always better
to sit under,
she whispers.
Black Sun
For a long time
I haven’t seen
the sun.
All around me
even the bright days
look so dark.
Among all the complex knots
of yours I had undone,
it’s your disgracing words
still left undone.
Among all the cries
that make me feel better,
I’m still trying to be fine.
Shackles Of Iron
Sky’s piercing gaze
grasps me for a moment;
my legs sinking down
to my own bottomless base.
My dark seems to swirl,
around and around,
changing from the color of night
to a dawn of blue sound.
To my surprise
an unseen ache clutches me,
holds me suspended in the air,
commanding all my grounds to disappear.
Disappearance Of Time
Thousand decades have passed
within this one quiver,
with all the different seasons
only as winter.
A small piece of sleep,
a small piece of blur,
fiercely dipped
in the eyes of water.
Malaise
It is to keep walking
not because you want to
but because you have to;
that the long grueling day ends,
she looks at the mirror
by mistake,
and with such a pang, murmurs—
I don’t know
this girl.
Neither do I
want to.
Sadly Ever After
Once upon a time, there was a little princess who was deeply in love with sad poems, sad words, and sad endings. She was the sad princess. While all her friends were busy enjoying happy endings of fairy tales, she used to write heart-rending poetry in her secret diary. All the sorrowful moments of her life and the lives of her loved ones, all the lyrics of her tears and melodies of her cries, used to built a safe shelter in her secret diary’s world. The moment something or someone upset her, she would find comfort by reading this diary.
When she grew up, one day her mother, the queen, fixed her marriage with the prince of a far away kingdom who had an extraordinary talent to make people grin. He was a happy prince. After all, the queen was desperate to see her daughter smiling. On the wedding night, when the sad princess saw the happy prince smiling at her, she was mesmerised. She had never seen a smile like his in her entire life. It instantly sent light to her dark blue world and lifted up all her darkness to the sky. She understood the feeling of being pleased is a million times different than that of being gloomy. Sadness makes one fearless of losing something, but happiness scares. And she was ready to be scared of losing this happy prince so she started spending all her seconds, minutes and hours, smiling and laughing with him.
After a couple of years the prince realised it had been a very long time since he had gone outside. So the next morning he went out in the forest to hunt. For the first time the princess felt his absence. It was terrible; so much so that it reminded her of sadness and she immediately took her forgotten diary and started reading it.
When the prince returned from hunting in the evening, he unexpectedly saw her crying while reading the diary. He was amazed; the sound of her crying was wonderfully melodious. And the way her tears rolled down from her eyes to her lap seemed like the lyrics of a sweet poem soaked with souls. He grasped her chin with both his hands as the red ache he saw all over her face blew him away. Her dense green eyes, her wet plump cheeks, the curved corner of her small lips—everything was perfectly filled with a gorgeous grief. Every time her tearful eyelids moved up and down, he kept falling for her again and again. How can a sorrowful face be so beautiful and innocent? he asked himself, stunned. As if happiness makes one fearless of losing something, but sadness scares.
And the prince was desperate to be scared of losing the princess so from that day, he never made her smile again. He only gave her gifts of sad poems, sad words and sad endings. He bought thousands of melancholy books and gave her all. In return, all he wanted was to see her sad; crying all the time, being his sadly ever after.
………………………………………………….
Do you love me? she asks.
Even if you don’t love me in return, my love for you will be enough for both of us.
Sad Girls
She made a severe mistake,
by hearing all the silence
that he never did speak.
She made a mistake again,
by wanting him from a distance
he never promised to shorten.
The mistake,
that was worst of all,
she hid some feelings
; that made her fall
for him even more.
Now when she expresses
her longing,
she ends up losing him
more than ever before.
Secret Sorrows
You were yours,
I was yours.
What was yours,
was solely yours.
What was mine,
was all yours, too.
What was ours,
is now all untrue.
Strange You
You said once,
my flaws mean nothing to you
as long as I believe they are flaws.
You said,
what is ours
is what comes from each of us.
You said again,
I’m the one
who would always be your last.
You said,
our love would grow
a little more every day
and would be a little too much.
And then you didn’t say,
on a stormy night
you just disappeared.
Unexpressed Feelings
Today her morning slid very slowly, quietly, surreptitiously under her misery. Today she cried. Cried and cried, opening every door within her and lifting up all the veils from all those excruciating memories that secretly torture her. Today she lay in bed with all her wounds bare and open.