Unexpressed Feelings

by Khadija Rupa

  The morning was so slow in its movement that she felt every individual drop of blood slithering under her skin, heart, and mind. Every drop falling on the floor, on the pillow from her soul, she could clearly hear their echoes. When it became night’s turn to wring her, morning was still unfinished. Terrified morning sought shelter under her tiring eyelids, shining and burning her up inside so fiercely with its darkness that even the sleep suffocated and left her helplessly.

  “Are you okay?” No one ever asked her.

  “Go away!!!” she screamed, falling violently to her knees, suddenly dumb, shocked by her own reaction.

  Flashbacks

  You loved me,

  so much just yesterday;

  today you don’t even

  want to stay.

  Once I had,

  a minor finger-cut,

  you were the one

  to bleed so hard.

  Now you pass by

  and pretend,

  as if on Earth,

  not a single injustice happened.

  But I’ll pretend, too,

  it comforts me,

  hoping someday—

  it actually will.

  ………………………………………………

  What about those Promises of yours to never leave me? she asked, stammering too much this time. His cruel smirk was as gut-wrenching as his words—Promises are meant to be broken, sweetheart.

  Her Nights

  “Was it a nightmare again?” he asked, terrified.

  “No,” she fought to keep her expression as normal as possible. However his watchful eyes stayed fixed on hers. “I saw you were crying in your sleep,” he continued when she would not reply. “Whom were you trying to bring back today?”

  Her face became as black as the moonless night sky. “I was asking the same question to the same people,” her voice dropped a little lower.

  “And you were trying to convince them to come back, to love you just a little bit, but, as usual, they left you overlooked…” he murmured, eyes and hands too tight.

  Special Power (Part One)

  In life sometimes, unintentionally, we commit a ghastly mistake which makes us feel so remorseful that in a flash, this one mistake reminds us of all the mistakes we ever committed in our entire lives, but never noticed. Or maybe we were arrogant enough to accept.

  In a dark place, deep down in the very ground we stand on, we find ourselves held captive, suffocating, pressing our backbone hard against the wall and sinking our head between two trembling arms, as if nothing in this world matters except those mistakes.

  This is a painfully special moment as a special power enters us, piercing every cell of the body like bullets of world war fifty three. We start to notice the tears of the people whom we’ve hurt on our hands and clothes as if blood suddenly decided to change its colour to that of water. And the ache they went through because of us brings us to our knees, paralyzes us from even breathing. Then it owns this outstanding quality to teach us all those valuable lessons that maybe, maybe we wouldn’t have learnt at any other time, in any other way—transforming us to a person—who is ready and prepared to pay any cost to amend all those mistakes.

  I want this special power to enter your body, too. There is a place where a secret part of empty-handed and crestfallen people go to seek this power. They wear black shawls and a thick cloud of tiny water droplets suspended in the atmosphere. I want you to find that dreadful place and hear their terrifying cries. And then to search for me there impatiently, screaming my name again and again, pulling out every nerve wrapped around your throat with your two trembling hands. The way I did once. But I hope you don’t feel the hurt as much as I did.

  You are too weak and fragile to stand that ache. Remember, you always will be.

  Special Power (Part Two)

  “Why do you think some people wish the person whom they had once loved unconditionally to realise someday how much they had hurt them? Do you think it’s because they want this person to suffer or to come back?” He asked her while washing his black shiny Volvo car.

  “Of course neither,” she said, tying a piece of cloth around the injured leg of the parrot she had found in the garden. “Someone who knows how to love unconditionally and was hurt by an extreme pain would never want anyone else to experience such intense pain, let alone a beloved.”

  “Then why do they say—one day, you will realise?” He asked as he continued wiping the window glass, without looking at her.

  “See, there are two kinds of realisations: one that leaves you in suffering so that you get destroyed and another that leaves you in suffering so that you get built. That’s what they want: to see their beloved get built.”

  “Get built?” His moist forehead wrinkled, the confusion preventing him from closing the car door, and he just turned around and stared at her.

  She threw the bird up to the bright sky and watched with joy as it flew away. “You see,” she took a deep breath, “the one who hurts someone in a way that wrecks their soul beyond repair, can heal many impossible wounds of the world if he realises his cruel mistake. They transform themselves to a special power. The bravery, the strength they build in themselves to heal others by hurting someone else, one can hardly build it by being hurt by someone else.” She continued looking at the empty sky while joy played tug of war against a mystery in her face.

  He approached her and started helping her to clean her hands from the stains of blood. His chest had been aching agonizingly since the morning remembering the way she had cried secretly last night. “Doesn’t that mean,” honey started to melt in his quiet tone, “it is because of the people who love unconditionally that such miraculous healers get built? As one mostly realises their mistake in such a life-changing way when they accept that they wrecked someone who has loved them unconditionally. Doesn’t that mean,” his tone incredibly calm with both eyes fighting to escape her own, “it is the unbearable wound of people who love unconditionally that heals the incurable wound of the world? Doesn’t that mean, the world is helplessly in need of their ache, too?”

  She stared at him in shock. She instantly understood, some questions are asked not to question, but those questions themselves are eye-opening answers.

  I Wonder

  Do you ever wonder

  where the nightingale disappears

  on nights that are longer and darker?

  Do you ever wonder

  if I ever truly slept after you left me

  with a pain that was eternally sleepless?

  Do you ever wonder

  if your decision was as right for you

  as it slowly started to be for me?

  Do you ever wonder, do you,

  why I loved you for such a long time,

  and still didn’t really know you?

  Thunderstorm

  Now even if she smiles,

  it seems a lost girl

  is crying.

  And don’t ask me

  how it sounds

  when she laughs

  her heart out.

  Deafening thunders

  in a thunderstorm

  are always

  less frightful.

  If

  They ask me forever,

  how I stay with cracks and splits,

  all over my body,

  ghastly un-repaired.

  How I walk around

  with wounds that are raw,

  and intolerably putrid,

  to the heart and soul.

  What things would I give

  to stitch my torn skin;

  through what situation would I live

  to make it glowingly new within?

  I tell them forever,

  I would give the whole world.

  Without a single shiver,

  I would liv
e through it all.

  But if ever I try to mend,

  some other bodies

  would instantly break,

  would instantly be fragments.

  The Difference

  I gave you such happiness,

  which once recalled,

  would replace—

  even the greatest sorrow of yours.

  You gave me such sorrow,

  which in a lifetime impossible to forget;

  even the greatest of happiness—

  cannot ever replace those.

  Law Of Conversion

  Like poetry, physics has always been a mystery to me. Both are my favourite, too. Everything about these two subjects always teaches me something fascinating and eternal about the universe. And about us…about you and me. Hence, despite all that’s happened, I continue to believe—our love was never unreal.

  It even follows, the law of conversion. This law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can always change its form. I find it the perfect definition of our love. Do you remember how we used to say—if you truly love someone, then there won’t be anything which can affect the quantity and quality of your love? Not even the sun or moon can do that using time as their weapon. Love can’t be created, neither increased nor decreased. It’s as it was at the beginning and will always be the same throughout, till the ending. That’s the science of love: it is always at its peak. And so when we fell in love with each other, we instantly knew we could never love each other more than—this.

  And love can’t be destroyed; at least that’s what we used to promise each other, remember? Truly, we didn’t lie.

  In our lives, love, like energy, has just changed its form. Yours has changed into an unsaid goodbye, an unfelt emotion. And by reminding myself every morning that you don’t exist anymore in my world, my love keeps changing itself into many different forms. Sometimes it becomes the night of the desert, sometimes the day of the ocean, and sometimes an ache—which is meant to appear just before the historic healing, just before the tremendous transformation.

  Just before the majestic moment where I find myself by losing everything.

  A Lovesickness

  I hope someday the sun will still rise from the same east it has been rising since the beginning. I hope, that day, even the cloudless sky will remain as blue as it should be naturally. Those gray sparrows playing outside my closed-window, I hope none of them die. The hands, of trees dressed full in colours, keep unclothing season after season. The busy streets bustling with human sounds never become empty.

  Nothing ever changes, not even my favourite library, not even my favourite lake, not even me, only you. I hope someday you change when nothing changes: neither in the universe nor in me. And surprise me as you say: I understand.

  And I will wear the same old gown you made from red and gave me when you proposed. And I will wear the same white pearls that you tied on my right ankle when I accepted your soul. Then I will hold both your hands; you will clearly hear my spirit laughing. Slowly I will take you to everywhere we ever were just to show what it looks like when time stops. Life stops. Living stops. Until then I will live to prevent as many changes as I can. Until then, I hope to understand.

  Never Again

  Never again, will I say anything.

  The emptiness deep within

  has started

  to deepen again.

  My soul is being wounded more,

  from my tattered feelings

  to my battered thoughts.

  But never again, will I show any of that.

  What has gone,

  what was never near,

  how I ache to be there.

  But never again, will I ever look back.

  Never again,

  will I say anything.

  When Hands Unhold

  An undiscovered prayer at the end of the galaxy

  falling through space like a meteor;

  amidst all the worlds pulled by gravity,

  I have surely lost you somewhere.

  From all my dreams where you felt everlasting

  to all my clothes your words used to wear,

  to the old end, to the new beginning,

  you have lost me everywhere.

  A Cruel Reminder

  Sometimes some forgotten memories,

  on a delightfully decorated day,

  knock my mended-heart to congratulate—

  I have successfully forgotten those moments,

  when so badly my heart was broken.

  Thus, I fail to forget—

  those unforgettable memories,

  those unforgettable aches,

  which many a time I keep forgetting,

  and I only want to forget.

  Poet’s Last Line

  Why do you want a sad poet to be one of your soul mates?

  “I want to be the last line of his poetry,” she replies. “There’s a truth, an eternity, a breathtaking sadness hidden behind those last words. And between a poet and his heart, all around him, his left, his right—a musical silence sings just like the blue of the sky, like the white of the moon, like all the twinkles that fall from the stars’ soundless tunes. In that silence, I dream to be.”

  Do you think you will ever find one?

  When something is very complicated, or very uncomplicated, it becomes harder to explain. Maybe this is why she doesn’t want to answer this question. Her wet eyes slowly squint, themselves searching for a thousand answers, for a thousand explanations. And when she finally decides to reply, she says, she always says—

  “This is why I write.”

  Illogical Truth

  That moment when you are writing a story and suddenly you stand up, run to a quite place where you would be completely unnoticed and cry your heart out.

  After some time, you come back to the table—where the non-dairy creamer is now floating on the surface of your freezing coffee, some anguished adjectives stand out from a few crumpled pages, as though they’re sticking their tongues out at you, a few fountain pens mock your emptiness with their own and an old wall clock is your only sympathizer, pretending that time has stopped—now you can quit—and suddenly you change your mind and decide not to finish the story. Or maybe you’ll do it some other time, when you are whole enough. Or broken enough. In either case, no one reaches an unbreakable state. free@symbianize

  A Question

  “How do you know when it’s over?” the world asks him.

  “When you look at her and instantly know this is a girl whom men have been losing since the beginning of time. This is a girl for whom many mortals became immortal. This is a girl for which poetry ends up giving birth to poets. This is a girl you can’t keep.

  You aren’t allowed to.”

  The Heartless Girl

  I was quite surprised to see you standing on a doorstep that, as far as I believed, was mine. Unexpected things had stopped appearing there a long time ago.

  It was painfully beautiful yet beautifully strange to know it was you who had found my purse under the oak tree of that lake. I couldn’t imagine someone like you would go there. I thought only people who keep running from their own selves rush there every weekend taking a taxi that takes approximately six hours and fifteen minutes to reach. There they tear their chest apart, pull out their heart, their lungs, their ribcage and throw them into the small lake. Entirely empty, they breathe freedom sitting under the oak tree as long as the day allows. When dusk comes down, they search the whole lake, realising they aren’t allowed to stay empty for long. They have to go back where they don’t want to go. They put their heart, lungs, and ribcage back and stitch their chest with a thread of blue ache.

  I didn’t even notice that evening I left my purse there. You called my best friend and I realised why my cell phone had been merciful toward me all n
ight. Although I requested her to collect it from you, she is always up to something that might give my life—a beginning.

  You drove six hours to reach me and when I saw you for the first time at the bottom of those stairs—white T-shirt, grey unzipped cardigan, grey Nike trainers, short stubble, brown eyes, summer smile—I was actually trying to remember where I had seen you before. The way your curious eyes were chasing mine when I stood in front of you, I knew I had known these eyes before. You said you unintentionally read some of my poetry from my phone while searching for a contact to reach me, and from there you felt a strong urge to meet me. I became compelled to question you with a stare that never takes any help from words. You heard me. Clearly. Loudly. You answered, the world suddenly started to feel like the wrong place. There are a lot of things we don’t understand and what is worse is we don’t understand that we don’t understand.

  The way you expressed yourself to a stranger like me, assured me it was you whom I had met in that small dark bookstore at the end of my small town. You were sitting somewhere on the fifth shelf of the last cupboard and I quietly cried out when I found you. Your tall height reminded me, that day I struggled to stand on my toes in order to hold you. Your dust painted my two hands with worlds beyond worlds that we are never allowed to see in any science books.