the slow art of breathing bitter

Oh, Mamma.

Long conversations and black coffees would never happen again.

Like a freckled star, you would be sprinkled on the sky,

And I'd be bleeding in splinters of glass.

It's something you've never seen on the screen.

Something you could tell through blood and bruises.

Something too real to feel.

Too real like we were,

Too cold like blue death;

Where no one knows anything but radiant flames.

I looked at your grey eyes;

You were mouthing something I couldn't hear.

The smoke rubbed against the crumbling space between us;

I tried to feel you in my trembling fingers.

I wanted to bury myself in smoldering complacency.

Another call—a shout (maybe a confession) in the void

of being in love and never feeling it.

The bell moved back and forth. Vapid.

Maybe they're right.

I pulled up at the bar; I needed some fresh air.

Things could never be 'normal' for me

Since I've built my life around you.

People are hurt all the time, as we did.

They cry, hope, fight, and fail. Periodt.

Life never changes, honey. 

It's only a change in the way we see and accept it.

Your silk dress flutters in the wind—I could smell smoke and cocoa.

Orange flames glisten like asphalt roads; they wouldn't notice, though.

We are horribly haunted at times, I know, Mamma—I know.

Some pills and stuff to forget

when it's hard, too hard

to not remember that once upon a 

cliche fairy tale studded with a dirty diamond,

we were drawn in pink pastels

on autumn nights and blossoming Christmas.

The wine burnt my poisoned throat;

It's better to fake it 'til it fades away

like a runaway butterfly dream.

I could still feel a ray of lingering sunshine

in the dark meadow beneath my heart:

Slurred, stamped, stabbed.

Grief, that's what it is. A death wish. A detrimental revelation.

Your lips were warm and fleeting against my burnt skin.

A burning ache mumbles in my hollow chest: Darling.

If only your fingers could touch me, had this ache disappeared.

I wanted to melt into the scorching nostalgia

Of you, of us.

You promised me stars and moons,

together and forever,

roses and reds—love.

The more you came closer, the more I collapsed

till I had nothing but red flames and smoke and nights.

This winter died in our marble white love grave,

A glinting razor cut and pouring pain;

A glass of cold wine; my fingers tremble

For our colors to come back

and paint the palette of ashes,

Before we died on the salty flesh of the bleeding earth.

You were standing on the porch

In the moon's shadow.

I was drinking hard to forget about an impossible you.

I wished we could have a last red death talk

Over your favorite Darjeeling tea.

It was hard to focus on flashing lights

when constantly reminded of our last sloppy kiss.

How tenderly painful in lavender poison.

It's a broken metaphor for frostbite and blistered pleasures.

I remembered our us was born from azure blood and silver waves;

The one that begged the sun to be born again.

A single butterfly remained still near my eyes;

And I was suddenly crying over the red-raw memories.

I wanted to wither within you; it was hard not to cry.

My wine was still burning my heart—how sanguineous!

Before I burned our withered rose dreams,

I wanted to cry for the last time as a wretched boy

lying on the silver sands and breathing the roaring blues.

The blue hair's nowhere to be seen.

Black. No, blue-black. Maybe it was nothing at all.

That's what I like to cry upon and smile—

The part where you know you're dead, yet you live.

There were always guilt and faults in those blue streams.

Even what I saw today in the blue-black chaos.

Mamma? 

Was that you?

–the sea remained silent in the dream of waves/ for living's a murderous art.

——————————————

A/N: Well, tapping the star's another art to express your love (lol) ;)

© April 25, 2023. Sreeja Naskar.