Chase & Status

I am going to give you up.

And not because there’s a list, there’s always a list, but because I don’t deserve the good intention in you. I cheated it and along with losing you I’m losing the hope that picking a good person doesn’t make you a good person. I wish you’d give me a chance but the odds aren’t in our favour and with the boundaries we started out with the way we were defined by other people there is no play by play win just an effortless background score of drunk Saturday nights that start out knowing or not knowing but always end hungry. The understanding makes me want to unleash my childhood stash of blues and purples and mermaid greens because we are not a sunrise or a sunset we just are. You turn up and all we do is turn our faces to each other and it turns my spine to silk, and I know it’s not just me because your hearts playing hopskotch and we’re melting and we’re not even kissing. Still, you arm yourself with excuses and you lay them down like a salesman but it’s the details that make me want you to stay.

3 am and we’re cab cruising through the city breeze lighting up our veins and you reach out and put your hand on my thigh and I lift my face to you ‘I don’t like PDA in cabs’ you say, and while that would be a challenge for me with anyone else I trust you to never want to hurt me and we face our windows my hair whipping into my face and you’re holding my hand and you’re holding my other hand and we’re a cross connection of comfort.

2 am and we’re sitting in the garden and I’m blazed and I just want you to pet me but you say no even though you mouth is kissing me back and then you bodyblock me “can you please not act like I’m molesting you”, I say and untangle myself from the fit of your body “Are you unmolesting me?” you say trying not to laugh “Yes”, “That’s worse” We sit and for the first time round you’re talking. You tell me about little things and it’s smooth and I’m not sulking and you’re taking me seriously.

1 am and I’m struggling over a sum about smurfs, elves and how many groups they can form. You teach me in words you break down so I can chew on them. You make sure I understand and you do it again and again until I’m not distracted by you anymore. When we stand outside the lift comes 36 floors down, but when you look at me I laugh and we’re back to stairwell one.

Is this situation easy because it’s so hard to imagine that we think it’s not really happening but if that’s true why can’t we Narnia time everything we do? I am over it. We should be friends. Not best friends. Just not kissing friends. Because I like kissing you. But I hate begging you and laying down my dignity cards because that means you never got high like I did.

Maybe to you this is not a colour this is black and white.

Which means you didn’t even try.

Wolves

"A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

 "Which wolf will win?"

"The one you feed."

 I want to control this. I want to be able to catch this feeling in my hand and shine you with the glitter so it spells out my name. But only in the dark. Only on my terrace. Only when your big hands are curled deliciously around my waist and I’m levitating for your heart shaped lips. Did you know that I pulled my stomach back so your hands could slide into my shorts? Your fingers lingered on my buttons and my heartbeat staccato-ed all over the place and I could almost hear the voice in your head pulling you backwards through time.

“Come to my Planet,” I say breathlessly, “it’s so much fun”

“Gravity won’t let me go”

And I know it’s true.

I run my hands over your forearms and your muscles and you’re so ripped I fight the urge to bite you. You hold me gently. Like I’m a doll and in these sweeping moments with you I feel like a ballerina – always on my toes, always dancing, always curving my curves into your chest so your ribcage can shake mine up.

“You are so much fun to kiss”

Fact: My mouth can only kiss like she cares, full, gentle, bite marks buttercupping your neck, your collarbones, seeking out the beast.

When I find him I’m on your lap and he grasps my hands behind my back, his eyes dark and wolfish. I’m devoured; tastefully, tenderly, your stubble leaving trace marks on my face.

I pull away fighting to breathe, so turned on it hurts.

“This sucks, it’s like being 16, controlled kissing”

You look at me and your skin is so hot I want to hold mine against it.

We know the score. Bros over hoes, yeah?

“I need you to be mature about this”

“No,” I say covering my ears, “stop telling me to grow up”

You hold me tighter, “listen, I need you to understand…”

And the implication is enough, its a ‘bros over hoes’ deal, so you can’t lace your scent through mine except you already have and the first time I kissed you you backed away but then you found me hiding in a corner and kissed me back hard and despite everyone around us throwing a fit in a pulsing club lined with independence day lights you kissed me back and let me lead you away into the crowd so they couldn’t see us so you could hold me and then it happened again and again and now math is as much my weakness as it is yours.

“Help me with Percentages and I will owe you everything”

When you come over you don’t look as shiny happy as I do and a part of me hopes you aren’t pissed at the pull. The lure was enough. We go to my terrace and I pull out a single book with a million sums. Where am I supposed to solve this, you say reasonably, and I look at you because I have to and I want to and when you ask if you can put the book away I know I won a percentage of this but I’m going to end up losing the whole battle.

‘You’re a challenge now,” I tell you seriously, “Don’t say no, try new words” also I like tall boys with big hands who know how to solve data sufficiency sums and melt over dogs and will enter the Ladies to hold back the hair of a girl throwing up.

Despite the moral police kicking at our shins you don’t like to let me go when it’s time, when we smell of the same cigarette, skin like silver shifting every time we slip up. When it’s time for me to leave you lift me up and I get a proper destructive Disney dream kiss. Hard and real and an ‘I’m sorry’ gift wrapped with a sea of shining lights.

I don’t know if I can trap you into terrace Narnia time again. But I would like it if you let me.

I would really like to be a ballerina again. It’s a shame that this dancing is a sin.

Cookie?

Dear C,

Here's the deal. I could have stopped you, I could have leaned back like they teach you in all those 'howtoreadbodylanguage' books and any boy from Oxford wired as shit would've figured that one out but I didn't. I watched you apologize in slow motion and I watched you move in and the drunkenness of it all amazed me because drunk is the same in all languages we are the same in different continents, in black hole pubs that zing electricity that blinds you and binds you but when I jerked back and laughed my protective instincts kicked in. Just a boy, he'sjustaboy, I thought and the travesty of being lost of being a stranger of having no one to hold your hand even though you'd rather tonguetwist my throat made me want to give you a hug. A real hug that lasts eleventytwo seconds because I've been there I've been raw and a stranger who caresses her chaos I've stood by watched me spring out of my body like a predator, thatisn'tmeidon'tknowher. I did unleash later that night, after you told me I was hot and let me pet you and promise you that I wasn't complicated, my mind was a topped up machine, a juke box with the next song playing loud enough to shake off my old skin, I went home and I kissed a boy who will remember all the details because boys don't need to be drunk to marry skin and skin, a kiss is not a contract, you'resoyoungsoyoung, I told him, but he was old enough to know better old enough not to push it old enough to understand even when my body is bursting with stars I might wake up to only reflect sunlight, feeling like a rock. The moon is a rock. The moon has no light of its own. Satellites are only sad planets, you know, planets without life. I am the earth I am solid and real with a fire flowing through my veins refining redefining centuries of civilizations that rip open my ribcage so even though two many mouths spoil the broth the earth has survived it all survived the dark ages and the dinosaurs and gods too powerful to sway too easy to love too hard to let go off survived humans with rough angry hands and careless trampling feet and the earth has survived herself because self destruction is part of the deal, C, it burns away old boundaries fighting fiction with friction making way for a massive empty space of energy. We will always speak the same language because creation is the language of bodies so if you can read mine you should know, I'm out of skin to sin for tonight.

She's up all night to have fun

'Don't stop, come a little closer

As we jam, the rhythm gets stronger' 

Am I in over my head yet?

Look but don’t touch, touch but don’t taste, taste but don’t swallow.

You’re always on. Whirring through my fingers but too fast for me to catch.

If this was a video game you’re 5 levels ahead and down to your last life. Me, I’m lost and don’t want to be found, my lives backed by a history of playing safe.

I like hanging out with you. You smell like a God and your veins are laced with stories and you got me hooked onto the Smashing Pumpkins and Daft Punk and in a strange twist of fate, you’re addictive.

Rule #1; you never layer the hole in your soul with cellophane. You create your own concoction of self love and talent and shit until you can crackle cellophane with two fingers.

You are slippery. But you’ve crawled up the slippery slope with battle scars you won’t talk about. And with gravity against you, it’s only fair that I gift you my mouth.

Rule #2; if it’s not going to a big place, don’t take it seriously. If you don't take it seriously, you never get hurt. If you never get hurt, you always have fun. “I’m just fuckin’ with you’, you say, one diss away from a slap. When you’re not in front of me, I’m not going to squirm thinking about you.

Charming boy don't wander, stay here, you're safe here. It makes me want to inhale your exhale so you can fill me up with lies from a lifetime ago. You're dancing with the devil and dying to breathe.

I will never get close to your skin because you will always hoard your sin away from me.

Rule #3; you win.

Fine by me

 "I'm counting to 10", I say as I trace my steps backwards.
"Bring it"
I find you leaning against a car like you've been waiting for me all along. That's some sorted swag you got goin' on but when you smile it slips and I laugh at the fail ninja in you.
"Let's get outta here"
Bombay sure knows how to set a scene and my fated flyover disappears into a dirty dusk. You've got your hands in your pockets again. I trace your tattoo searching for my spiral and you tell me stories about a girl you used to know. You tell me I look beautiful. This is not the time or the place but you cut your own hair and you're a storyteller and you know how to cook a mean crab curry and I have so many questions for you fast fast fast but you tell me anyway because this could go fast and nowhere or this could just wait right here till we figure out our fix.
"I'm sorry I went there", I say seriously.
"De nada, no worries. You're curious. Like a cat. And I never get mad at cats"
I want to unravel you spool by spool but strangely enough you make the best music with tangled tape.
"Kiss me"
You blush, not here, you say, not like this.
I would, I tell you defiantly, but I'm not drunk enough.
You laugh and you look like you're going to walk away but I order you to come back.
You want to. You want to kiss me. I can see it in the way your forearms pulse, the way you're holding yourself back and I tell you.
"I do, I want to kiss you."
I see it but I'm scared. The predator in me is out of practice and we're face to face when I realize I miss her.
I trace your lips with a target gaze and throw myself into you before I back out, I throw myself into you on a crowded bombay gulley, sequinned with stationary shops and xerox machines and people going nowhere. You open your mouth and kiss me back, you kiss me back like I'm Diwali in April, mouth to mouth, a heated resuscitation, my hands in your hair on your chest, a snapshot of album art till we both taste the same.
I can't seem to let go of your hand.
You leave but the winner goes unchecked because we're both blushing.
This time, you walk backwards.
Our audience cheers.

Truth or Dare

'Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.'

- Robert Frost

 

 They say the world will end in 2012, with tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, an explosion of colour on a now concrete palate. But I know better. The world won't end with movement and noise. The world will end with walls. With people icing themselves into a hole, brick and mortar piled on on top of the other like deafening memories till all we remember is how to forget. Forever love and emotion laced lungs buried under weed soaked veins while we breathe in and out to lyrics to teach no lessons. We've seen too much hurt, too much loss, claims a generation that has witnessed no Great War, no Great Depression. We feel too deeply, they plead and Wikihow doesn't teach us how to feel sad. So instead, touch screens form the surface of their soul and they tweet at reflections, a semblance of their conjured up suffering. And with every new friend accepted on Facebook, the wall widens. Everyone's inside now, they say earnestly, why get out?

And as the world watches over the walls, she weeps.

Paper Hearts

Rum. There is so much rum streamlining itself into my veins that I know what's going to happen before it does. A sixth chutiya sense only alcohol can gift you. Except this time round the chutiya is me. "I could do it, I could kiss you right now," I say, a dreamlike sequence lighting up my terrace, fireworks flirting with my fingerstips, 'the Festival of Lights' leaving me lit up and languid. Sparks. We've been watching each other like cats all afternoon, lazy housecats that bask in the sun and eat what's laid before them. When I feel the wildcat in my bones scratching herself out I warn you but your words of wisdom soak the sin in your skin and together we smile and seal the biggest mistake. We kiss. It's sloppy and dangerous but for a split second I know you. I know the secrets sewn into your smile,  the solidness of your chest, the curve of your neck. Truck. Fuck. I breathe minute to minute because all girlfriends know when a boyfriends' scent is missing.
I don't regret holding your hand because somewhere a lone Beatle was singing in the base of my mouth, a repetition of beats boxed just for you. Fuck, truck. Probably Ringo. It's always Ringo.
You know I slept with the Devil last night, he manhandled my mind while I tossed and I turned and I woke up 6 times to pee watching the sky change colours and hoping change wouldn't catch me first.

I open the door and you look so solid, so safe that I want to crash into you just so you can save me. But even Superman wouldn't save Lois from a burning building if she was locking lips with someone else. I hold onto you like a joey in a kangaroo shop and you smile because you think your luck held. The truth is I'm not lucky I'm a liar. We play with lime soaked prawns and your hands are beautiful. They belong to me. I curl into you, into the curve of your clothes, into the strength of your stance because at one point I will crack. I will tell you that I kissed another boy. That he kissed me first. That we kissed. That it happened. I can't look at your face because the hurt hurricanes its way through my heart first and i'msoscaredsoscaredsoscared that you will leave. You do.

I can't breathe. It's been 10 hours and you won't let me beg. You let me fake my excuses but even I can't lament the one mistake you told me not to make. Black and white never gave a fuck about grey.
I'm in denial because you defined me. I woke up knowing you'd walk through my the day, me throwing whines and words that built our world. You say I've ruined the walls, desecrated something that was once pure and shiny. But we're stronger than that. Destruction builds character. You were made for me and your walls don't need washing. Please don't be a stranger. Stay.

I love you.