"I hate her, love her and miss her at the same time. Do you know how dreadful that is?"

"No, I don't."

"HEAVENLY HINTS - A happy month on the whole - with you, the wise last sign, firmly realising there’s no point fretting. Around the 3rd-4th, you’ll realise someone isn’t really worth bothering with – it’s a relief to you to know this in your own mind ( you’re often so tolerant, giving people the benefit of the doubt). Around the 5th – 8th, you may be pleasantly surprised by a friend’s actions. There may be niggling money worries this month, but also something specially pleasant connected with your finances."

W.O.W. (Double that.)

My parents told me the most bizzare lies when I was young.

One of them was the story of perseverance. Mom always told me that if you tried hard enough to attain something, you would get it. Well, first she told me that if I wanted it from the bottom of my heart, I would get it. Through time and a lot of whiplashes, I figured that really wasn't the case. Hence, I moved on to step two.

Work hard and you'll get what you want.

Through time and a lot more whiplashes(painful ones), I learnt that true wisdom lies not in blindly ploughing and hoping it will happen, but to have the humility to accept that sometimes, it won't. You can be smart or handsome and sometimes both and yet, it won't work out. Yea, you. That's right. Now the humility part.

That's the bitch.

Alright I might have a problem accepting some things might not work out. But the pursuit is so (bitter)sweet that I cannot help but stay addicted. Soon the object of pursuit becomes nothing more than a reason for the pursuit, the pursuit becoming that bad nicotine habit. I liked it. I was a dog chasing my tail because it was better than sleeping in the sun for the rest of the day.

Now I seem to be moving on from the spot where circles are fun. Circles can get to you after a point of time. A room without corners is for the insanely numb. I need corners, they are comforting spaces. They are excuses for things you can't let go anyway. A constant loop is the gateway to madness. Really.

And I'm trying to break it, even though the road beyond it may be lonely. There are things you do that you can never explain, but the head knows the reason and soon enough, your body accepts.

I need to ask my Mom if there was a step three to any of it at all.

Or is it step six?

Words that are spoken are words that are freed.

They are lifted from cages, set free from pages, they fly around till gravity gets them to settle in clusters. And of course, an army of opposing ones would mostly mean war or more conversely, lust.

Which I'm perfectly fine with.

But words are animals and we're that annoying species that sits on top of the food chain. Some need to be nurtured, some can be kept as pets, while most need their own sanctuaries. Some need salt pits, the others survive on sharp tongues. They can hurt if intimidated, they can rip you apart because they don't know how else to kill. Words kill. No, not in the Aretha-Franklin-killing-me-softly way but more ripping-apart-bear-maul way. Yes, they hurt physically. Ask me about my headaches.

And I hate to think that the one person who matters the most has been hurt by my words.

Lately, we've been killing each other in bits, pieces dying out like nebulas, turned inside out and upside down. It's quite spectacular if someone's watching. This war of light and fire, spite and momentary hatred; we are killing each other. It is a cancer of words, of language, of communication. There are times that you cannot command the nicer words to come back, but words are powerful and they never fade. There are quotebooks in everyone's heads and they never perish. Little yellow mind diaries... don't ask me why they're yellow. It's a movie thing, given a choice between green goo and yellow slimy pages, I prefer yellow pages.

A cancer in the head propelled by the heart.

Words, I fear them these days. I'm afraid that what I write now might haunt me tomorrow. I see little white gowned thoughts with big black mouths and pointed ears to hear the scared ones in my head. Do animals believe in the supernatural?

Do words have a supernatural plane?

I think that is the explanation, a parallel world with silver-jet-propelled karma ready to be shot at you with words as shrapnel when the Bearded Man is bored on a Sunday. But there is only so much I possess and most of them are made of words and forgotten promises. That's almost all of what I possess. The rest are the pages and data bits that hold them. The words and their crutch.

I wish they don't kill us one of these days, these words that you and I have been hurling at each other.

I love you way too much for that.

There are things I can't tell you.

Not in these spaces that are alloted so meticulously. There are rules here, sharp lines that give me papercuts when I try to tread them. No, not here where emotion is forbidden. We cannot afford it, the poor man's bread. You work as a puzzle, some pieces fit and some don't. This square world is a misfit for us.

There are things you won't tell me, I would love to think that you have reasons at all. We live in such a short world that the edge finds us faster than we can blink. I cannot live in a world that runs on geometry. I cannot calculate word limits and boundaries for the heart when we talk. Really. It tires me.

But as history goes (and in the honour of history wanting to repeat itself), I understand when you run far from saying what you really want to. But you need to understand too, I'm not going to stick around for words that I have to dig out, words that I have to beg and plead to hear, words that I have to dream about and forget because you will never find the courage to say them. I'm not going to stick around for mediocrity. I want the complete turmoil of knowing someone. Not like this. Not controlled language and legalized pieces.

So one day, when you find the courage to get over yourself, I hope we can know each other again the way we used to. Probably then, I'll tell you all the things I can't tell you now.

I visited our salty old house today. Do you remember?

She's gone thin, her floorboards have worn out. Her fingers are fragile and the city's growing around her. This massive strong willed city is eating into her. I put a piece of wood into my pocket as I walked out. She didn't let me take much, all houses grow possessive with age. Our couch talks no more, some say it was the ghosts.

You know I don't believe in ghosts.

They'll say anything about a memory that doesn't talk back. The steps are as young as ever though. They still trot, laugh and sigh. They asked me to tell you that they'll always love you. Steps and staircases. You know how they lie.

I didn't go upstairs though, I couldn't summon the courage to. Passion is a dangerous place to revisit. She never dies; this city might eat our house up but Passion, she'll swim through the concrete and invade unsuspecting spaces long after we're gone. She growled. I presume she meant to send her love too.

Our salty old house and the things who make her. They send their love.

I still get butterflies in my stomach.

It's a good way to know you're alive. All that heart-pounding-blood-rushing-through-your-veins is so passe. It's the butterflies that remind you about life. Not a heart with too many fissures.

In the wake of rather unpleasant happenings in the last few days, I have been trying to educate myself about tuberculosis and its effects, stages and degrees of fatality. It turns out (and this probably is not a mere matter of co-incidence) that humans are affected by TB at the rate of an infection per second, the same rate at which they fall in love.

Both are dangerous but only one kills, apparently. Funny how the heart can take a thousand deaths but the body can take only one. Evolutionary joke, I presume.

Song playing in head - Scissory by Psapp

Pangea Ultima.

That's what they're calling it. 250 years from now, the war between land and earth would have finally settled; it seems that the fate of this planet is to end up divided forever by her own children — Land and water. According to geologists, we will end up back with what the earth was, nascent, primitive and eager. The land will breathe and swell and we might be particles in the air or six legged creatures living in water, watching land crash against the ocean. And we will watch as the mother weeps.

Time now, time right here, he records because he knows he must. He puts red flags where hearts break, he cleans up after cupid. But when the earth's heart breaks, our little red flags will be shaken off. How do you comfort a planet? How do you kiss her to sleep or wake her up? Is time deep enough, does he take the untrodden path when needed?

Now how all of this happens is an interesting read. Oceanic plates will collide against other continental plates leading to something called 'subduction', i.e., the oceanic plate slips beaneath the continental plate, sinking into the earth's mantle. At the same time, continents will be drifting apart, leading to the widening of ocean beds. The normal course of nature is that these two opposing forces are balanced by each other, leading to oceans and continents maintaining their peace somehow. In due course, however, they will differ and the seas will contract, land masses will unite and the planet will settle into a chunk of land and a huge mass of ocean. She will end the way she was born. Foetal, barren and unloved.

This is what a heartbreak is. The violent change of a planet into something unfamiliar, something unpleasantly new, something rippping across, terrifying, it's almost beautiful. This is what a heartbreak is, the final divide between what is yours and what you thought was yours. It is the final point when two opposing forces cease to battle against each other.

Pangea Ultima. Whoever thought.

One year later

- I miss you...

~ Give it some time... It'll get better.

- ... Of course. Thanks. Night.

~ You ok? Is something bothering you?

~ Hey?

- Nothing. Just wanted to say that. Good night.

~ Ok. Good night.

There is this picture in my head. It haunts me like a nail stuck in my heel. I have this picture of you planting a seed, your feet buried deep in wet mud as you plant yourself along with the seed. You are looking down intently wondering if it would immediately sprout and grow into a golden beanstalk. Then again, your understanding of today is what ties you down. And oh it makes you so beautiful.

You must be three; I have not the slightest idea of how you look now, let alone when all of just three years. Curly hair and a sly smile under your frock, your words almost slip out like water sprinkles onto my hand. I watch in awe as you mould the Earth in your hands. I watch as She obliges. I watch as you make little sounds, you are making life after all. You are creating life within the shadows of five tiny fingers and all I can do is watch. All I can do is know that I will fall in love with you over and over again, year after year when you plant a seed every birthday. I know that you'll break my heart when you're 26. I know when you caress the soil that I will still love you then. So much that I know, and yet I can do nothing with the Everything between the shadows of my fingers. The past, the present and the future mix and converge in creases of my palm.

You sketched my life as a joke, didn't you?

Yellow paper and you're all of five. You drew my fingers and then my lips and all the lines in between. My language is slipping and all I can do is watch, watch as you make me a child again, watch as you put me back right where I came from. How many times do I have to let go?

You're all of three and I'm in love, again. This sacred curse is an eclipse. You will be back and the soil will grow dark, again.

And all I can do is watch.

Have you ever tried to forgive?

Of course I have. Forgiveness is the ticket to a lighter heart, but then again, something human in me pulls me back and twists my face. It makes me frown and cry alone when I shower. It makes me want to tear this forgiveness into bits of paper that can never be reassembled. Of course I have tried to forgive. You think I want to keep this crap inside of myself?

Then why don't you?

Because that human in me tells me that it's ok to be human. And for that single moment, I realize that could be greater than forgiveness. Then I sink into this sacred anger that lasts for a while. Forgiveness can wait, it's just a mile away from anger. You need to cross anger to forgive. Simple.

A circular world and feet that curve.

We have claws. No, not hands, not feet. Claws, like the arms of a goddess pouring out of her torso, out of her legs, out of her feet, out of her mind; claws that want to hold on to something. Curved feet help achieve that. It straightens this circular world.

We hold on for dear life and go about every day wondering if gravity will give up on us and let us fall again. Ah the fear! We are people of an afraid world, running, lying, fooling ourselves and our neighbours of what we truly are. Don't you snort now, you know it better than I do.

God is nothing more than a heroic representation of our cowardice. Glorify everything that we will never be capable of and pray for it. Set rules for permanancy and mundanity. No one will notice, will they?

You thought I would not notice too. But it was quite hard to escape how you threw all your arms out for me, golden ring on a fishing hook. I took it. Then you caught on, your palms glued onto mine with the promise of tomorrow. But here I am, in tomorrow and the couch is still cold. Did the circular world straighten?

Of course, what are those wings for anyway?

Life is an onion. I never understood that.
Pity that I now quite understand it at 21.

A closet of words.

Rickety-wooden-termite-ridden-dusty-closet. Your silken black hair against pure white sheets. Morning whispers from the child in you. There are very few things here that I will take back with me.

That dreamcatcher by the door should stay. How do you name a colour that has travelled through time, dirt and reason? Do you code it? Dirt has a colour, so does time and reason. Spectrums with dog tags. Tie the rainbow down now. My dreamcatcher still has your wishes in it, leashed and hopeful.

A closet of words can lead to the birth of a whole new social system. Some words must have clustered up into sentences. Small short strong ones and lengthy haughty boring ones. Then there are the phrases that are high up the food-chain because they hide a lot more than they reveal. Nature of mankind I think, has seeped into the language on his tongue. Language and its artificial intelligence; that closet is just bursting at the seams. You stored your words in there too, didn't you?

The sun spills across clean window sills, liquid wood helping them find their way to me. You liked it all clean before you left, sweeping dust into spaces between wood and concrete. Think I will sit here a while. I can still smell the dust. This cold white couch is strangely inviting and the closet still mumbles in its sleep.

I am just a visitor in our home anyway.

Osculation.

Science has a way of justifying a kiss. A kiss, the act of kissing, a close contact, a contact between curves or surfaces, at which point they have a common tangent.

A common tangent; does math recognize the skin? The epidermis regenerates for a living and the tangent would have to keep recognizing new points of contact by the minute. Three million longing cells along every square inch and I keep wondering how people have one-night-stands.

A flavour in between every cell.

When your kiss floods my mouth, I think of discovery. I think of a million tangents and a million drops of sex in my mouth. I think of a yellow sky and a white sun and your words educating my skin. Kiss me by the grandfather clock in the basement, I want to feel time grow jealous.

Does the tide rise when we kiss by the beach?

32 feet of nerves for every square inch of the skin and you want me to just stay the night. Make the math in your head and be kind to my science of the heart. I am inquisitive by skin and my nature will rest by your side as I resort to uncovering you everyday.

Think about the grooves and little siths of space where we can lock in like puzzle pieces. Kiss me starved and plagued. Your skin is but another world and I want that pink cabin by the beach. I want us to live there, in your surge and fall, in your passion for sex and love. I want us to sleep by your cold night and wake up by your morning coffee. I want to sit by your tidal changes and watch your coast change. The reak of your sands can soak into my skin and I can stay a beach mongrel for a long time to come.

Kiss me in the dark; I do not want sense anything less. Three million cells every square inch and science can only call it osculation.

Even science longs to justify your kiss.

Cherry brandy yellow warmth under a dark blue sky. Fire, ardour, the fusion of skin; they are the three ends of a trapeze. The fourth end is uncertain and intangible. You can stretch and tease and make it yours. It is a trapeze act; unpredictable, bizarre and oddly entertaining.

I write these letters to you from a swinging trapeze. We are but one here; you have to hook your leg into mine to save your life. Bruises are a habit and letting go is a routine. We gain momentum by swaying uncertainty around like a pendulum in a child's hand. Time is a monarch and we are but peasant puppets. Art in mid-air becomes an installation, a living.

So we go on everyday; a trapeze act over a field of discovery. You swing and I catch you; you impregnate the field as you pass by; pollens of thought involuntarily dropped onto fertile flowers to ensure that life everywhere continues undisrupted. You plant life into my wooden arms and coax me to see a net where there is none. Your illusions have a solidity to them that is simply transitional. And in this state of transition, we pass decades.

Jump and fall, the flying trapeze is safer than you think. The danger rests in a slip of mind and you already possess mine. You complete the fourth end and the trapeze is nothing more than a mere instrument. Play it at your will and break the ends, the fire will not stop till it has consumed everything in its way.

Fire, ardour, the fusion of skin and you.

I must be mother and child in your light.

Nearly a thousand years ago, one man painted the holy picture differently. He escaped the glass pieces and painted mother and child in one light. He painted them as they would look, just like you and me. It must take a certain amount of pain to seep back into the mould, I presume, just like it would take to break away. I wonder if he tossed and turned in his bed, wondering how he could have such impure thoughts of painting a normal picture of Virgin Mary and the Christ child.

I wonder if he stood in front of the canvas for days, staring at the white, wondering how best to pollute it. You asked me to let go the other day. I imagined a naked Giotto flinging his arms at his canvas, pure dyes shooting from his veins as he painted something from life after two hundred years. It hurts to let go. It must be just like childbirth. Union and severance together.

Of course I must let go. I am but the mother who understands that beyond being a family, everyone dear is but an individual. You wanted some space to breathe, still wet and warm from tearing away. So I gave you space. And somewhere inside that space, I became a hurting infant. My hands hurt from not talking to you, my ears rang of silence. I picked the phone and called you irrespective. I became an infant. And you kissed me into this world.

You make me mother and child in your light. Giotto’s pain of being normal lasted for several hundred years before they discovered geometry again. You must be him. You reformed me with the single stroke of a brush. And here I sit, perspiring the excess of you to keep you in.

Throw your colours onto me now, I long to be buried under your adolescence.

Once upon a time, I started telling you stories. Brief ones with a predictable ending, elaborate grand ones with meek endings, love stories masked beneath animals and fairies, stories of you and me. I narrated the epics; remember the grasshopper and the bumble bee that finally made it through? Remember their happily-ever-after?

These happily-ever-afters' worry me. It is a three word cluster. All three word clusters worry me. They contain just enough space to shake and uproot permanence. They contain just enough syllables to alter our biological compositions. They bury themselves in spaces between blankets and throw the wind out to disturb the layers of dust we wait under. These three word clusters; they make me shudder.

This June was a fugue of stories. The little ones still sigh in my palm, the grand ones flutter around in their conceit. I keep trying to tether them down, wondering if they will gasp in your voice when I squeeze them between my fingers. Inside these thoughts, inside this June of stories, I burn.

On the eve of July, I wonder if June will come back; if she will run back to us like a child with open arms. I wonder if she will sit on each of our arms and tell us our stories again. What if she offers the grand ones to you, all held together by a single string? Would you keep them? Or would you smile and slip them into my hands? The stories are but children themselves, and they want three word clusters for dessert. I grow old by the hour, and my layer of dust seems to be withering. I cannot hide anymore.

You keep asking me where I often wander away. I never find the courage to tell you that I wander into you, straight deep down into your nerve endings, following your lost impulses into your blood stream, hoping to revive them. I can never wander away; I simply wander further into you. This June of stories holds our three word cluster and she is dying of hunger and silence.

Where are you wandering now?