Skip to main content

Feast on Me.

Of pain and artistry. Must I feel to make art? I must for art is made to feel. 

This is about the hollowness, the space where your flesh feels exposed on the battlefield.

You have done all you could, yet it is still not enough. To be seeking fulfillment amidst emptiness. But only finding more of it. 

I am quite drawn to writing in metaphors of cannibalism and certainly grotesque topics. I have strayed away from it as I write more and more but I feel as though there is some emotion that can't be captured without such extreme symbolism. 

And this is one of those times. 

I swallow pain as if it were medication to feel happiness, yet I feel none; all I feel is numb.

Pain cannot offer me beautiful suffering; my tears will never write stories, I know.

My body has never felt the youth it craved. It has felt the hands of an overworked man, the tongue of an overzealous youth, and the teeth of a broken dream.

I carved a space for love, but no one filled it. I carve a space for myself, and I find my knees bruised as I beg for something I don't know.

The void in my heart never filled. The ache in my bones never felt. To feel whole again, I wish every day.

To part with what makes me whole. What did my childhood give me but the knack to swallow pain and feel love given to you swallowed the same?

The bite of unsaid things scars me just as it does you. But my teeth dig in further, feeling me raw, and I don't stop. To eat myself would mean to feel my disgust. And so I make a meal of myself.

Somehow, I wasn't the only one at the feast.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Varuthaayi.

"വരാം," ഞാൻ പറയുമ്പോൾ, "പോകാം" എന്ന് പറയാനുള്ള ആ പേടി. My legs prickle like the seeds of a strawberry, and I feel like tearing myself apart today. I keep picking at the wound that heals every two days, only for it to break open again—blood and flesh. I feel trapped in my own skin, my body will never be what I want it to be. There are things I’m supposed to become, but time is slipping away. I applied for many things. I have sent my name into the void—eight, ten, how many more? They have to call me today. If not, I won’t be who I need to be. Tomorrow, I’ll be hopeless again. I can’t hold on to who I am, so how will time hold on to me? I eat the yellow as if it might bring some joy. One piece is thin and crispy, the bite sounds, and I feel it. The next is thick and bland—someone like me must have cut it. One is unexpectedly sweet, even though it isn’t brown like I expected. How it lies to me. I look in the mirror, I look away. Another is too salty. I eat 250 grams of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Permission to Dream.

I had a dream. I ran out of the airport, got into a taxi, then out again, and ran. I ran so fast, yet my left lung didn’t pinch. I ran home. The company house I had called home for so long. I told them it was technically my tharavad. They laughed, and I understood why. But I knew every inch of that place. The way my feet could map the cool tile floors, the small gaps between them, the familiar weight of the air inside, the walls that had seen me through everything. I opened the door, and everything was just as we had left it. It was a dream. It’s been a while since I dreamed. And yet, this one felt jarring—not in a way that unsettled me, but in the way that it confirmed something. I knew I was heading home. I knew the airport, I knew my destination. But as I stepped inside, I felt as though it was telling something. Telling me.  That I could call it home. That I had permission to call it home.
Post a Comment
Read more

Reaching. Reaching.

What I reached for so long revealed itself today. In the trees, I find peace in the green—to feel small for once, even as the problems of my heart rise as high as the trees. For a moment, they float. They give me purpose. They make me a person when I am struggling to be one.   These trees have saved lives.   So many feelings overwhelm me; my head aches. I dropped her off at the airport, and my room was ill with the scent of home, so I strayed as far as I could while staying as close as I could (to the place I knew most in this foreign land). I stretched out on the stone bench—edit after edit—taking my mind off things. The deer looked at me thrice.   I feel.   I felt as a child. They have revolutionary thoughts, some psychedelic revelation. I was twelve—why did it have to be this way? Three parts torn into to get the fruit. Three different ways: one tries to become a tree, the other shrivels up and dries, and the third, a different color, holds a l...
Post a Comment
Read more