8.

I did not know my heart
until you ripped it out and spilled it out.

Can I climb out
       of what you have buried me under?

I cannot help myself
I cannot survive the days we do not touch.
They will ruin me forever.

 Please,
       Be the sea, wash over me.

7.

A graze of sharp half moon nails
And suddenly our previous petty pride is put away

 Repel and Attract.
Like confused magnets our mouths hover... waiting.
our eyes meet
our hands shiver

 Like cogs and wheels whirring slow
Every twist and turn fits into me

Lock me in, give me your key.

6.

Blank pages tell you of days
when the ink runs out

Wrap me in, fill me full
write with me once again

5.

When I sit by the river

under the bamboo

The answers come in soft whispers
and drown in silver ripples

Come with me, next time.
Swallow my questions with your mouth.

4.

Suddenly I am limp. I have no sense of feeling in my arms and legs, my fingers are carrying me away to another place. I hear people laughing in the distance I don’t know if they are laughing at me, at any rate I want to laugh too. I really really want to laugh – my usual bellowing deep laugh that scares little people away. 

But I must swallow my laugh and bury it deep in my gut. Sometimes my laugh rises up and gets stuck in my throat like an ugly lump a, big fat bulbous lump that keeps bobbing up and down like a grotesque Adam’s apple.

I can’t control my laugh any more, it seeks to escape, though no sound comes out, my eyes start to water and my ears begin to ring. My laugh is trying desperately to escape. It is no longer a beautiful entity that always reminded me of resounding bells or ripples. It has become a slimy tar-like goop that sloshes about silently. It has become a living-dead thing. Trying desperately to survive, but sometimes giving up and slinking back into my stomach, its refuge.

Poor laugh, you don’t know how desperately i want to release you, but how can I give freedom when I myself am bound inside my mental cage. Bound by my own ropes, by my own greed.  But never ever did I think that I would lose you dear laugh, I thought despite me tied up to this throne, hiding in my grey court, I still thought I would be able to laugh. I never thought my mouth would be gagged too.

I’m sorry laugh. I will seek your release but somehow I know I’ll be seeing less of you.

Happiness

I recently quit my job about 3 weeks ago. It was my first job out of college and I was hired to be a content writer for the corporate communications team of a large firm.

The work, though stimulating in fits, saw me twiddling my thumbs most of the time, waiting for the next chai break. And slowly my mind became more numb, more limp, more inert. I became half the person I usually am. Half a Noella- it sounds like the worst abomination ever. To exist as half.

And so I threw that all in the air and watched it crash and burn giving up a substantial salary and good position because I want to be all of me. I threw myself fully into theatre, something that I have been a part of since 2010.

The result:
I am learning new things everyday that astound and amaze me
The world around me just got a whole lot bigger
The people I meet on a daily basis are crazy cats that are on a completely different wavelength
As much as I am outwardly exploring, I'm getting to know myself better
I am working on my health and fitness
I am working towards goals that broaden my horizons of experience - travel, write, read etc.

It's amazing how much you can accomplish if only you will free yourself.

(Note to self - get a tattoo of the words 'Carpe Diem', cause in the end, we are all cliched motherfathers)

3.

I think half my life has been spent dancing naked in front of my mirror and the other half has been spent having full conversations with myself. I am, and most humbly I say this, the best conversationalist and the best listener all rolled up in one. When I talk to myself I understand what the other person is feeling completely and I can relate perfectly. It’s hard to find someone like that who you can talk to.

One day my father caught me talking to myself and he looked at me strangely. I felt extremely apologetic about the whole thing because he looked at me as if I was that crazy man in Shivajinagar who talks to himself and waves his penis about. He’s quite friendly I think. I don’t know many people who are so interested in you that they would wave their genitalia at you. I most certainly would love to wave my vagina at certain people whom I love a lot –but they would get emotionally scarred because SOCIETY dictates that gonad-waving is bad.

But after that look my father gave me I stopped talking to myself that much. And if I did talk to myself I would whisper. Now what this did to me was hurt my feelings. Because when you whisper with someone occasionally it means that you are in love or that you have a secret or that you are just being silly. But when you whisper all the time… well I don’t know what that means.

But I did know a girl who whispered all the time and frankly all I wanted to do was punch her face till it reached her anus and call it a day. I couldn’t do that, of course- not because it’s physically impossible but because she would have gone crying to her mommy or worse still she would have called me a bully.

Many times in my life I have been called a bully. But the fact is that I am not one. I am more like a gentle elephant that roams the Savannah flapping her ears gently to cool her bulk. I am the protector of the herd but without all the wrinkly grey bits. A bully is someone who heaps their insecurities on people who they feel are inferior.
I am then the OPPOSITE.
I absorb people’s fears and doubts and just let all sorts of people unload their worries onto me-much like the gentle elephant I think, who for millennia has been carrying around human crap like luggage and annoying children. And I think people would realize I was not a bully if they saw me as a real person who had fun and let loose- basically if they saw me dancing naked. Of course it might offend them or turn them on – depending on their frame of mind and whether I use scarves or not.

But let me get back to my point which is – I love to dance. Now I am aware that I do not dance very well- or maybe I do? But I just love it so. As a child, nothing could stop me from dancing. But then the teenage years hit and so did shyness. And that I think is why I turned to alcohol – just so I could dance without inhibition. And I think in my head that is truly truly pathetic!
How can one love something so much yet depend on a crutch to perform said loved act? It’s like saying I love having sex but I’m not very good at it so let me swallowsome Viagra so I can perform better – oh. Well that makes a lot of sense actually.

Wait a minute.

So I love drinking too. Do I need more alcohol to supplement the drinking of original amount of alcohol so that I can drink alcohol better? Or have more fun while doing it? Yes? No? maybeeee?

The point that I’m trying to make is- don’t wear pants. Talk to yourself in the mirror. Be an elephant.
I think life just becomes a little more peaceful then.