01

"you are the ghost of my past and
I am your reaper. Two indestructible
paradoxes"

All I've ever learnt from you are bad habits, from the cigarettes at 17 to the almost kiss in the attic, everything I've ever done with you seems like a fever dream that is nothing but a vivid smoke of abstract lies that follows me everywhere I go.

It tastes like cheap candy, salty and then sweet, those cigarettes at midnight and that suffocating puff of smoke in my apartment, these are all remains of you, parts of you I am yet to discard, you've rubbed off me for so long that it's almost impossible to wash off the remains.

We were the kind of kids who laid too close to the sun, almost blinding in all our circumstances but when the nights dimmed, we found the moon between our hearts, we had become strangers in the daylight, beloved by the night. So to let go of this ghost of the past that has haunted every word I've ever written since then or this pleasant scent of lavender that roams in this room I've sought comfort in, everything reeks of you and it makes me want to burn my haven down. 

And still, I can't let myself push you out and leave you stranded on an island far away from mine, it is as though the temporarily impeccable writer's love that started at 16  hadn't seen the death of winters despite 10 years of spring blossoming between us.

Somewhere or the other you are still trapped in my notepad while I stay stuck on your room wall, between those vivid colours clashing with new pastels, in that old painting, I am still there, looping in and out of time and you're there with me, locked in this time lag, unable to escape, lost.