Paper

For you,
I may have been
just another good friend
who cared for you.
But my emotions
went deeper down.
And the most horrifying part
of it was that this hole
I dived into was more than
just a hole. It was an abyss.
And I didn’t know where
it took me, but I knew
I wasn’t getting out
of it anytime soon.

Now that I write this to you,
my heart gets heavier with
each finger that rains down
on these keys. It feels
like my tears never come
to the eye; they get transferred to
my hand instead. And whenever
I type, they get evaporated
onto the screen to form those words.

What do you know about
my feelings for you?
You found love. True love?
I don’t know. But you say, it is.
Every moment that
I stayed beside you
despite everyone leaving
for P.E class because
you were tying your shoelaces,
every moment that
I let you talk to me
about your fights with people,
every moment that
I absorbed all your pain
so that you didn’t have to feel it –
it’s amazing how you turned
all of it into dust, why dust?
Vacuum. Nothingness.

I absorbed your pain.
And now, I feel like a piece
of used tissue paper thrown
into the trashcan of memories
you chose to dispose of.
Can you recycle paper?
Yes, you can. But why
go for old, crumbled paper
when you have the option
to use a shiny, new sheet
of the same material, right?

Well, I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I didn’t know
that I was just a friend.
And I’m sorry that I
fell in love with you.
That’s what you
wanted to hear, isn’t it?

Good, then.
I guess I’ll go back
to being one of those guys
who would always have an
empty seat beside him
at the cafeteria during lunch.
Just know that,
once upon a time,
there was person
who sat on that chair.

And now,
the chair doesn’t even exist.
Maybe it does, but I
don’t know its whereabouts.
Taking a guess, I can say
I found a dustbin too.
Big enough to fit the chair?
No. I broke the chair into pieces,
exactly how you broke me:
in a second, like pulling a
band-aid off. But this
is all a guess. I was
drunk on our memories.
You thought it wouldn’t hurt.
But that would’ve been the case
only if I wasn’t ready for it,
if it took me by surprise.

You thought this was a surprise?
It wasn’t. I knew something like this
would happen. I chose not to
say anything. Because it could’ve
been as quick as the very moment
you did it, or as late as death.

Well, you love to write, don’t you?
Go on, discard me like the drafts
you throw into the trashcan,
like the genres you never wished
to write on, like comedy and horror.
Write a new story.
You have new paper now.

~ Swift!