pick me

 ~ saathweek 

have you watched things around you?

they change. like that book you wanted to read but haven't touched, yeah it changed. it has become heavy, just by sitting there. it has taken in the smoke, the dust, the grief.

I'm not sure if you've noticed.

it was new when it was hot off the press, mind you it hasn't been read yet. you haven't set the trigger yet, so it's still new in the bookshelf of a chic, chill and mundane bookshop.

and on a fateful day, you walk in empty-handed. I'm sure it's too much work carrying that emptiness around, but you are unaware of how much it is holding you down - like a stone tied to you as you fight against the currents of an upstream river - of your thoughts - you are drowning in, but it is still holding you down.

you pick this book up, you are greedy.



jump forward to present (insert a cinematic time-lapse of your not so happening yet happening life.)

its bright outside, and you sit in this dark. I see you walk, reminds me of that fateful day - more like regretful day?- you picked me up just to put me back?

you carry all that grandiose emptiness, resentful helplessness, you also carry the weight of your transientness, but you refuse to carry this book?

you've touched me and taken off a part of me that made me feel new. the void has been sucking in the light, the warmth, the air, the dust, the smoke, the haze, the colour, the grief and everything else in your life and it has made me feel old, yet you think I haven't changed and you still leave me there like i have an infinite shelf-life.

you’ve added me to the list of things you weren't supposed to carry but you carry around anyways. its killing me that I'll be the part of your emptiness. I'm that book you picked up. I've changed but I haven't been seen. come read me between my pages and my line, I think my words are made up of love and will fill the void you've made in me and the void which existed in you.

its a reminder that things and humans change even when they aren't noticed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SandwichMan

Image
  ~ Kook kannan Winning entry of PRADHARSHINI '24, Flash Fiction Prompt: You get the ability to speak with the dead after touching an ancient book. But you can do so for only one minute. Word limit: 180 SandwichMan: Speaking with the dead was never my hobby until I touched that book. And the first person I talked to was a thousand-year-old mummy buried beside it. But that's how learnt the rules for this power. One, I had to touch the dead in order to speak with them - which is not an easy feat. Two, I can speak with them only for one minute. Three, never again. Somehow, that mummy wasted the whole minute just to explain these three rules to me. I had talked to many dead bodies ever since then and learnt a lot more nuances about it. But the most shocking one was what I learnt yesterday - it was not just my hands that wielded the power. I went to the nearest 'SandwichMan' joint yesterday with my friends for a dinner party. And as soon as the allegedly chicken sandw...
Read more

In the blink of an eye

Image
~ Julia Have you ever stopped to notice how things really only last for a little while? And when something comes to an end, it happens abruptly; silently, with no signs of it happening at all. Just the other day, I was driving past one of my favourite restaurants, just to see the place had closed down and been replaced by another. Granted I had only been there a few times for special occasions and it had been long since I had gone last, but it still filled me with a huge sense of disappointment. When I had dined there a couple months ago, would I have held the experience in a different light had I known then that it would be my last time having their cheesecake for dessert? This leads me to another memory from my last few months of high school. It was before we started preparing for our Board exams in earnest, when we still had classes happening instead of just revision periods. One of my classmates made a witty joke in English period, and it had the whole class clutching their bellies...
Read more

Scars

Image
~ Akash Have you had a scar - something that you wished you could just cut off? S ome ugly reminder of a mistake. A constant tug at your heart, reiterating everything you lost because you were inadequate. Scars are echoes of the past, relics of the simple things that existed once. But are they simple enough? A ren’t humans complex? Perhaps, too complex for the ones around us. Scars are just as complex. Just as intriguing. Just as convoluted. Not all scars are visible though. S ome are just there, hidden in plain sight - almost as if they belong .  They are somehow uglier.  No one ever sees them, but their effects are clear. Humans are social beings; a scarred one scars the rest too. Scars ar e sinister -  their darkness bleeding out, bearing claws. Claws that scar your relationships, changing them for better or for worse. Perhaps, removal is the answer? The quest to get rid of the scars is a fool’s errand. A downward spiral with no return.  The wish to get rid of sca...
Read more