Poem had been named Poem for a reason, or no reason in particular. Both her parents were authors, renowned for their literary tastes in a world that loved the idea of romance without feeling it.
Poem was born in haste, in earnest, at eight months, a month earlier than she was due.
The doctors blamed it on stress.
Mom had been working on a deeply moving novel where the protagonist was in a hurry to die. It showed in her pregnancy. But okay, as long as Poem reached home safely after a month in the nursery at the hospital, no one had any regrets.
They named her Poem, but no one told her why…
Grandma spelled it like pom… some said that was exactly how it had to be pronounced… pom.
Dad was overjoyed; they told her. He had always wanted the firstborn to be a daughter. Mom had wished for a boy, but they would follow, and Poem ended up being the eldest of five children, all the other four being boys.
They didn’t have literary names, though, and she never understood the reason why.
Mom and Dad had started drifting apart when she turned three, and the first recollection she had was that of Dad yelling at the top of his lungs while Mom stood stunned.
She remembered hiding behind her thin and frail figure, trying to hide herself with the hem of her skirt.
But despite their differences, Mom kept getting pregnant again and again.
It made her laugh…
She never smiled.
Smiles are born of peace, laughter out of distress. That was how she would analyse.
People told her she laughed heartily, and she nodded in assent. She didn’t smile, she never could.
Sometimes she wished life would have been easier for her. It made her wonder what exactly made sense, being born to renowned parents who didn’t get along well, being brought up in luxury, or being emotionally abandoned…
She felt alone…
Like a poem written with blood.
The only one of its kind…
Or a novel with some chapters erased, causing agony to the reader… like when the protagonist meets the love of his life and when they are supposed to kiss, one of them dies, because there isn’t any story in the pages there. Blank pages speak to no one, we can only guess.
Poem kept guessing…
And while childhood had been a blank slate, written and overwritten many times, youth entered with confusion, not knowing how to handle a sad heart inside a beautiful body.
Poem had emotions that felt like tidal waves. She kept trying to grasp and make sense of each rolling wave, and yet it eluded her.
No one had taught her emotional maturity; she had grown up overwhelmed.
Dad cherished her, probably… sometimes she thought he did.
Mom loved her to the moon and back, sometimes she thought she really meant it…
She was sure they did.
They were her parents after all, and Poem was the only daughter.
Her brothers loved her too.
She was affectionate. It was in her nature. She didn’t know how to be unkind, and sometimes it hurt her.
When you are compassionate to everyone except yourself, it kills you bit by bit until all you are left with are scraps sutured together with pain… but that would come later.
For now, Poem grew up to be a beautiful hazel-eyed girl with flowing brown hair. People told her she was pretty, heads turned when she walked down the road… and her name added to her beauty…
She felt like a poem, yet untranslated… and if anyone ever would, his heart would gladden to have her in his life…
But that special someone, where was he…
She wrote poetry… her lovely fingers carving words like rippling streams, moonlight, and November fog.
She wrote about unsung songs… the blank spaces no one wished to speak about… Poem grew up dripped in words and romantic novels…
Her home told a different story, for Mom and Dad had been in love for four years before getting married… she had seen them without rose-tinted glasses, but the romantic inside her refused to die…
She crafted her own glasses, not just pink, but with other hues equally profound and unjust…
J pursued her relentlessly… He looked like someone straight out of a Hollywood movie… powerful, handsome, and super rich.
They would make a lovely couple, but J had eyes for everyone. It didn’t matter to her, for her stupid heart had never listened to her mind. And she believed that love transcends everything.
I am in love too… one day her heart accepted it…
The first kiss happened in silence and lasted a moment. It was the first time, but it wouldn’t be the last…
J held her like someone holds a new pendant, he clasped her to his neck, showed her off for months, and then let her go…
Poem had believed she would be enough, but he proved her wrong…
He had tasted her like wine the first time, but the last time had been a spit…
He just spat her out…
Poem couldn’t believe it…
Her body had been written upon, and nothing could erase those marks… Poem wasn’t a flower untouched, her fragrance was lost, but it didn’t show…
People still told her she was pretty, but she knew better…
Her poetry sold, if not in millions, but in thousands at least.
People understood her…
You don’t pour out your mind on paper, you pour out your heart, and when you do, you are no more a mystery, and men love mysterious women.
Did she fail there…
She clung to J for validation that never came.
“I gave you everything…” she told him… “please don’t leave me.”
He gave her a little push, and suddenly she felt like a three-year-old clinging to her mom’s skirt for protection against God knows what…
D followed J.
And he spoke of flowers and dewdrops and seasons that don’t last. He looked at her like someone looks at an angel, and the first time he touched her, she realised she was still holding on to a memory of J… it wouldn’t leave her.
“I am betraying him…”
She told D.
And D never touched her again.
She hurt him, she knew, but she couldn’t lie to herself.
J had shoved her aside, but her heart clung to him like a bloodied grapevine clings to a fir tree…
“Don’t you love me?” D asked…
“I do…” she replied…
“Then why do you carry bits of him on your skin… Why do you refuse to let time wash them away…”
“If I could, I would…”
D walked away… he never tried… she wished he had.
But then J was just another layer over her supple skin that wore memories from her childhood.
J held her, then pushed her. D wanted to hold her, but she pushed him away…
“I don’t know what I want… And I don’t know how to keep what I have… I cling, I get woven, and then I can’t let go…”
“You strangle people… you try to get inside them, and people don’t like intrusion…”
“You can’t cut off their oxygen and expect them not to try to get free…”
“With J, what went wrong with J… I didn’t want to cling… but…”
“And D… what about him… He walked towards you, and you hid…”
The mirror spoke loudly, and she had to shut her ears with both hands.
Poem wanted someone to write poetry on her fair skin… far away at the beachfront on a moonlit night, as she lay on the sand with waves gently touching her silvery dress… drenching her long brown hair, and someone busy writing poems on her skin… her arms… her bosom… and the waves erasing it every time…
She wanted to make love under the stars and the spell to last a lifetime, but moonlit nights wane, stars hide, day erupts, and butterflies vanish.
“There is too much romance in your head…” she told herself a lie each time she met someone. “This time I am keeping my heart safe…” and each time it broke harder…
She met B soon after D vanished from her life…
“I don’t know what you want of me,” was the last sentence he had said before leaving… It hung between their goodbyes… She had no answer…
He waved his hands in the air in exasperation.
She wanted to hug him then and make everything okay, but he wouldn’t let her…
He was right, but he could have waited if he really cared for her…
He could have been the balm to her wounded heart, but he chose to be the breeze… a slight touch and gone…
B was wonderful… she could sense that in the way he carried himself, a true gentleman who would hold the door open for a lady, kiss her hand with just the right amount of pressure, that wouldn’t make it feel obscene or demanding… and when he held her for the first time, the December moon shied away…
He touched her where no one had, right up to her bones, he carved a path upon her waist, his fingers knowing exactly how long to linger…
Poem bloomed in bits and pieces… no one and no one mattered, neither J nor D… it was a love she had never known… But B wasn’t here to stay…
“I have to leave for higher studies…” he said as she had her head on his chest…
It made her want to yell, but she just sat straight and looked at him with a film of tears in her eyes.
What will make you stay? She wanted to ask, but she already knew the answer.
The flight took off in September, exactly one year after they had met.
Poem tore at her hair, it came out in bunches, her mother took her to see a psychiatrist. A few pills to pop every day, and life would fall into place… but what if it never did…
“B touched me wrong, I want someone to make it right…” she told her cat, Onyx, the only one who understood her…
Onyx meowed.
“How… just how and where do you expect to find the kind of love you are looking for? Don’t tire your poor heart, girl… No one can love you the way you love them… It just isn’t human…” texted a random person. How could he see through her… Were her scars too loud? He had read a few of her poems on the internet.
She had no answer, so she laughed…
Half a year later, after B disappeared from her life and her sent messages remained unseen, she gathered the courage to meet new people.
“I am keeping my heart safe…” she pressed her chest… “but I’ve got a life to live.”
An art exhibition by the differently abled, read the banner.
A clay horse made by a dyslexic child, it almost looked like a rabbit.
A woven ribbon-shaped flower created by a woman with Down syndrome… How strange…
The painting of a daffodil by a blind man…
Someone must have helped him… how would he know what colours to use…
She wanted to ask him…
The manager took her to a room where the artists were seated to take comments.
“The painting is good, the colours are almost correct. I could make out it was a daffodil…”
“I tried…” he said with a smile.
“How did you know what colours to use, and how did you know what a daffodil looks like…”
“My hands have eyes,” he replied…
“Oh…” was all she could say.
“May I touch you,” he said as they strolled the park after the exhibition was over…
“Where do you want to touch me?” she asked.
“Give me a bit of you, and I will know what all of you feels like…”
She gave him her hand, he held it for a few minutes, ran his fingers on her palm… felt her nails…
“Stop…” she whispered…
“Why?”
“I can feel you everywhere…”
“I know…” he replied.
“What have you done to me…?”
“I have coloured your shadow… look at all those hues…”
“You can’t see…”
“Girl, I feel you, and I know you feel me too…”
She pulled her hand from his grasp and ran as fast as her legs would carry her…
She called him after a week…
“I want us to meet…”
“Come to my place.” He gave her the address.
“No, meet me by the beach… tomorrow night…”
“Okay.”
Poem wore a shimmering silk dress that night, and as she lay on the beach, waves drenching her… a blind man making love to her under the full moon… she felt something she had never known before…
“Is this it, then? You will stay, won’t you?”
“Maybe…” he answered, and she pushed him away.
“Stop it…” she yelled.
The man laughed… “You know, girl, deep loneliness has a way of dragging you into a place where your heart never wants to go…”
“You… you will walk away? You… you…”
“I never walked towards you, Poem… It was you who did…” he simply replied.
The End