Your Insistence Is Adorable.

Everything in the vastness of space is in a state of perpetual motion. Every tiny speck and every gigantic object that exists because several such tiny specks came together... everything, is moving. Shaking. Hovering. Vibrating. From the tiniest electron revolving around the nucleus of an atom to a huge star in a galaxy eons away. It is all moving, gently and crazily. Silently. And I am sitting here, still; suspended in all that motion. Waiting to be lifted. Waiting to be moved or removed by an unseen force. I am the glitch in the system, the nut that refuses to rotate while the rest spin in wild, silly circles. I am right in the center of a moving world, stationary. Useless.

I can see you, sense you, reading me, following me around. Trying hard to decipher me and my struggle. Putting such great effort in thinking about my past and my future. And I don’t even know about my present. I see you trying to visualize my story, trying to adapt it, picture yourself in it.

“What happens? What happened?” I hear you ask yourself, incredulously, as you turn another page to my story, as you see me running from the horrors of an unexplained monster. Running in vain. I see you crease your forehead, run your tongue over your dried lips, change your drooping posture, so that you won’t get tired. So that you’ll be able to read a little more without interruption. Your insistence is adorable.

You are tired. You didn't sleep all night, you were so engrossed in reading me, thinking about my story and tweaking your perspective as you moved further, word by word. I was there with you, without you realizing. I was watching you enthralled by a story that wasn't even your own. So I asked myself why you did that? Why did you hurt yourself over someone else’s tale? Cry over another’s pain, laugh at someone else’s joy? Why do you sit here, your eyes following me, your mind wrapped about me, when your own story remains abandoned, unwritten?

I've chosen to be the glitch. To stop, to drag on so that you’d become agitated. So that you’d put me you aside for a moment and look around and see what your own world has come to. The ignorance of your own reality so that you can indulge in mine is flattering. But I realize I've been doing the same. Trying to indulge in your story, figure you out while you try to decode mine. I've been trying to stop you from interpreting me, all the while looking forward to your reactions when you finally unveil my end. All the while we've been simultaneously reading one another, embracing tales not our own. We are linked this way, you see.

So, when I see you handling me with such care, adoring the curve of each word, cherishing the way every scene of my story falls into the other, melding beautifully and unlocking a mystery, I melt. I see your eyes shining at my happiness, you cheeks wet at my sorrow, I never realized I became so much to you. And I never grasped how focused a part you became of mine. After all, without you I am just a dying script, drying ink that will eventually fade to nothing. But you never let that happen. You've treasured me, spending so much time with me and thoughts about me when I wasn't even there with you. You became the lips that spoke my story, the syllables were written but you sought people and shared them. And I have come to realize now that I fell in love with you every time you opened my story, over and over again just to share my repetitive joys and tears one more time. And each time when you held me carefully before giving the story to a friend and whispering a loving, ‘Take care of it’.

And I have fallen for you each time I heard your sigh of relief when you once again held me in your hands.

-Momina.

*This piece has been written keeping this in mind: 

Buoyant Flames

With slow steps she descended into the cold pool; each step measured and pondered on the slippery floor of the pool as she had never learned how to swim. She gently walked further with even steps. Arms held outwards by her side, the back of her hands resting lightly on the slick water surface, she submerged herself up to her chin. Tendrils of dark hair, gleaming in the harsh sunlight, spread out halfway around her head like roots of an ancient tree, bobbing gently on the water. 

There was a fire burning deep within her, a mix of vapid anger and disappointments welling up from the core of her being, shattering any wall of peace and reassurance to tiny crystal like jagged pieces that burned and reflected the fire. The sweltering heat did not seep out from all her pores, outwards to the water, as she had imagined it would. The cold water around her did nothing to cool her down. While the sun was another story, showing no mercy, trying to melt her exterior unaware that she was already deteriorating inside. 

With closed eyes, so that they wouldn’t burn in this eternal battle of interior and exterior fire, she began a slow tread forward. Deeper she walked, in the colder water that wrapped around her in a desperate attempt for a little calmness. She ventured into greater depths, the water rising; quivering at the tip of her nose, the bridge between her eyes, feet gradually losing ground. Deeper and deeper she crawled, trying to avenge the blazing fire, to shut down this insane play of incoherent flames, losing herself to the water; trying hard to float in tranquility whilst she drowned in the depths of the pool.

-Momina.

Crazy Rambling #10

Lately I’ve been finding extreme fascination in withering flowers, roses, to be specific. I pluck them off from our garden a little before they are about to shed their petals, and arrange them into an oasis. Eventually they become limp and flaccid and dry out in their dropped posture. They are incredibly fascinating if you take your time to look at them, to really see them, not just a glance. They are untold stories, incomplete, yet they hold a charm far more precious than all the finished stories, all the happy endings. Even though they dry out, they are pretty, worth saving. 

I've never understood why people press roses between the pages of a book; there is little beauty in something you are forcing to die. And personally, I find nothing interesting in looking at a rose flower that is pressed until it’s flimsy and lean. It’s a full blown rose that darkens in color, that closes upon itself as it dies and dries that holds my attention. It’s beautiful, still intact. Somehow still living and fragrant. It’s the incomplete story of those roses that fascinates me, and I've always been a sucker for unfinished stories.

-Momina.

Reflections In The Paper

She sat down dejectedly in front of the mirror with her sketch pad turned to a blank sheet, the pencil dangling from her fingers. What had life become? 

Swallowing back the lump in her throat and clenching her eyes shut to will he tears back into them, she picked up the pencil, holding it just above the blank expanse. Composing herself she began to sketch. Her pencil dragged on the clear paper leaving a grey trail behind as her eyes moved to and fro between the mirror and the paper, sketching herself. She did not have to worry about expressions; she pretty much wore a single expression now. She watched her own reflection and her hands as they held the pencil that scrawled on the paper, bringing to life there a pair of hollow eyes. 

After an hour of the tenuous job, she was done. The sketch had a hint of a forced smile; an awkward curl of one corner of the mouth. The person in the sketch was so familiar yet a complete stranger. She gazed at it for a while, altering her observation again between the sketch and her own reflection while her mind wandered off into a completely different alcove. After a while she picked up the abandoned pencil again and began to shade. 

She shaded half of the face into the darkness of the gray lead. She then looked once again at the sketch, this time in satisfaction, at the dark and bright side of the sketch, the truth of the human face.

-Momina.

Twist A Zero To Convert It to Infinity.

Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Sometimes I stay awake all night. Writing and trying to fill in the blank spaces inside of me. As I add word after word, they become tinier and tinier but louder than screams. They do not consume the blankness that resides within me, they fill every other space, cramping into nooks and crannies, become tiny in themselves but they leave the empty space as it is, undying; never growing any less or more. The mayhem of the words is so calming, just as unsettling the nothingness is. The shouts of them so chaotic yet so distinct, each word, a sea of thought. Together they become an ocean that flows over the galaxies. But the empty void is still there, the disturbance; the iceberg that wouldn't melt away. It floats along, as outstanding as the words, as silent as their screams. 

It sometimes intrudes with my thoughts so much, I go blind. But then I realized, it’s the blankness that is the root to those nourishing words. It is the one holding onto them so they do not go astray. The blankness is where they birth from. The nothingness is the seed. And it’s there so that the words would never die. As long as the empty void is there, there are words forming, for me to write, for you to read.

 I am the sheets of paper that I fill with my words day and night, but I am the blank pages, too.

-Momina.

Illusions on the loose.

Holding onto my tea cup with both hands, I sit in the garden, staring as if sitting in alien surroundings. I do not drink the tea, I hold on to the mug only for warmth. So, I imagine that it gives of warmth forever, and that it doesn't goes cold, and that I don’t let it spill onto the grass, deliberately.

I watch the jasmine hedge for several minutes; it’s just up to the boundary wall now. I envision it growing and growing, until it sways violently in the wind, its top amongst the clouds. Ignoring the reality where upon it was cut down each time it grew to the level of the wall.

And there are several unseen rainbows in the sky, the ones that only I can see. And those people in the stationary cars that weren't there. The Kite that flies, cutting through the trees, yet moving only in that particular square that is bounded by those barbed wires. For these are those moments that I experience now, the ones where imagination becomes reality, and there is truth in the moments that were not even happening. But they were, and only you knew.

I look on as something falls from the nest in the tree. It falls down fast, blurry and off white. An egg. It runs down rapidly, landing somewhere in the green, that cushions its fall, maybe. Hopefully the mother will find it there, whole. And I’ll pretend that later on I did not see the carcass of a tiny featherless bird with thousands of ants moving to and fro over its lifeless body.

-Momina.