as i move through

This year is dying on me. The days are wearing me out. The hours pop like my like right knee. The minutes slip by like yesterday didn't exist and tomorrow is never to come. This is an ache that burns a hole in parts of me that I thought were numb. 

Outside, the storm raged in all dark colors enveloped in streaks of neon blue. The rain startles everyone from all sides. The walls shake at the foundation. The shutters clang and rattle. The leaves rain alongside water droplets. All colors appear darker than they really are. Outside, nothing is warm enough. Inside, our hearts ached in the pain of knowing that tomorrow, we'd disintegrate all that we had shared, practiced, and grown and dis-member. We pull out layers of our skin and rinse the wounds with salt water. We watch the blood red patches get purple and blue and soak in the burn. We push away the parts of us that behaved like opposite poles of magnets. We pull and tug at the strings, the veins that tied us in knots. We trace our fingers over the imprints of the ties we'd mended over the years. We run along the banks of the rivers we never dared to cross. We sigh at bridges we can no longer walk on. We scrape on the corners of our ceramic kitchenware that we don...

By the time that winter is gone, we'll both run out of love. The leaves will grow out green and shiny. The flowers will bloom in red, violet, yellow and pink. They will all dance as the birds sing. You will see colors in a different light as the butterflies pass by. But you and I... Oh, you and I will run out of love. By the time that winter is gone, we'll not know of love. Our friends will learn new songs to fuss about. The new paintings will become the talk of the town. There will be new poems to write in the new ink. A few more books will be added to both of our piles. But you and I... Oh, you and I will run out of love. We watch them shed their clothes layer by layer. We watch ourselves drain away with every word we tell them. "I love you"s are just a little gush of wind that vanish before we even feel it. And all the stars that aligned yesterday have fallen. We will miss the last bus that takes us home. We will forget where we misplaced our favorite book. We will...

The normalcy of things isn't always a thing that gives us the solace we need. The last time I met Maa, I wanted to ask her to tell me a random memory from her childhood. Any piece from the past that she could scrape off the past would be great. "Maa..." was the only word that escaped my mouth. I was never the granddaughter who would ask things like that. That week too, I stopped myself midway. The folds in her skin were darkened by the wounds she earned every time she visited the hospital. The brown patches had increased over the past few weeks. The afternoon sun was bouncing off her clear, pale skin. She looked luminous. The dull brown patches on her wrists and feet seemed out of place - like wrong strokes on a canvas. They didn't belong there. She didn't deserve them. A few strands on her forehead were now silver white. The recent hospital stays had been long and tiring. She had had no chance to paint them black. Three days after she was discharged,...