on a scale of zero to ten how much will you rate the idea of surviving a heartache?
Nandini Rabindra Maharana
it is summer again and i am drying my wet hands in the backyard instead of a wet heart. my heart is palpitating, continuously doing somersaults (unlike last year, it is not crying). what is wrong with me? this is not the end of the world but i am least bothered about the end. who cares whether i end up under the antarctic ocean or in the middle of a salt factory. i am bothered about the beginnings more. how did my mother become my mother, and how did she end up accepting her fate? what makes her selfless, and me, cruelly selfish? how did someone manifest the idea of making a sandwich or even a loaf of bread? the ideas of beginnings are crazy, they take time to develop and even more time to execute. execution is the art mastered by perfectionists, why do you think poetry is perfect? because perfectionists who are a1 procrastinators write it. they deal with their feelings slowly until their mind becomes an ICU, and lungs, an oxygen mask. now you can tell why i spend forty five precious minutes of my life in the washroom creating melodies and sagas about hypothetical heartbreaks, thinking about mythologies and fanfictions, and then again i practise the art of deception. if my story exists, it is because you exist. i wish i could say that you and i are prodigies of a seed.
a seed: the universe with silent beginning
my mother telling me to untie my shoe: a blackhole
she thinks i stay outside too much, like i bake in the sun. and i know someday this sun of yours would have crackled, cursed Aristotle for leaving him untouched like every other man. my lips are cherry pie gushing with fantasies and she thinks i don’t care about our house like i don’t care about syntax in poetry, i like modern poetry and she hates modern kids. as modern kids like modern poetry do not care about stereotypes.
stereotypes: small cells where lazy bots sit. no i am not attacking my mother,
i can’t be them, i would never want to be them.
“not even for me,” she gasps, a statement. she knows her questions are directionless and pointless to ask me. yet she rotates it, answering herself, afterall, i am her only kid, and only rebel in the house of unhesitant receivers.
last summer when dad said she looked good she ignored him like she ignored every passerby on the street reading ghazals to her old fashionable clothes. she doesn’t believe in love being a child who wants to be accepted, she thinks it to be someone who’s exacting revenge on people. they don’t live together anymore, so, i often go to Starbucks and sit outside to look at him trying to make a living, talking to clients inside.
when we were together like a happy family, like a myth, i never used to say good mornings for i feared that i may end up screwing everything. and i did? did i? i was chewing gum last autumn to prevent tears after i got dumped in the KFC. mother saw me crying, mostly choking my tears. that day's dinner was weird. she said that love is an odd printer, all defective, it just copies its past memories. what she has got is all that i’ll get. and this is why i despise beginnings (again? again.), they aren’t transparent. no one told me in nursery that i’ll be made fun of if i sit as a recluse for six hours in a row. did my parents know that i’ll begin as a cheerleader and end up as a loner? if they did, there would have been backup plans. my mother says to worship god and they’ll fix everything. but i wonder if they created us, who created them? she says i think too much, it is because of all the mysteries i read. she says i am depressed because i write. actually, i think she wanted to say that i write because i am depressed. but anyways she was wrong.
mother, mother,
o, mother.
you still misinterpret beginnings.
it isn’t destiny mother, it ain’t destiny.
this winter my friend told me to visit a lagoon but soon dropped the idea for she said you are sea bro, i would rather drown and gargle my big mouth with your neutrally emotional ballads. i am a beginner in the field of analysing beginnings. i am the sold salmon dish, rueful and juicy, filled with spice, salty, teary memories, and pungent taste. i am, i am all of it, the start of everything: the monsoon breezes which wrapped my crackling heart, oozing with pus. i had the choice to prevent it yet i began a journey which was meant to end. mother, i washed my feet on the shore picking up all the mucus in my lungs, slowly filling the cavities of my heart with it, slowly eating my crystallised tears.
mother, mother,
o mother,
i drown in wordy intellect to prevent my heart from commiting unlike yours.
Nandini Rabindra Maharana is a seventeen-year-old who enjoys nature walks and petrichor. She resides in New Delhi, India, and is currently in high school. Her work has previously appeared in Cathartic Lit, and others. She is a 2018 bronze medal recipient in Queens' Commonwealth Essay competition. She loves rewatching murder mysteries and is forever ready to live in 221B Baker Street. You can find her on Instagram: @_flickeringchaos_