These months

I open the windows
It’s getting cold in here
Everything’s drying up
And the windows stay open
I used the word I know nothing of
I wanted to save, but I gave
I gave it away
And now
These months
These months are so still
These months
These months are so still

What’s in my head now
Needn’t be seen
Remember I called you
To see how you were
You hadn’t changed
Remember I ran into you in the dark
You hadn’t changed
And now in the leaves that drape the ground
The unwelcoming of your door
There’s a light that sees, I
I don’t think I love you anymore
But these months
These months are so still
These months
These months are so still

And there are times that I think about you
That I think surely still I must love you
Still know you…

~ Asha Ali

* * *

These months I am trying to snooze through an absolute inevitability of every new day without you. These thoughts are scattered across the room, surrounding me as I beg them for only some space, only some freedom to be. I keep organizing physical objects as if their awkward untouchable order will let me gather these emotions into some neat little pile of understanding, while they keep sliding and turning back into the shifting sand of which they were built.

These dreams march into my bed from the times and places where maybe one day I belonged, although it seems to have been a couple of lifetimes ago. These memories carry pain on their shoulders, the kind that fills my mind and leaves my heart empty. It’s only when thinking of you joins in however – or the absence of you right here in this room, where your shadow is needed by this lamp, and your ear by the song I am whispering, and your cheek by the brush of my arm, that accidental one, you know, in the midst of a dream – that I break down, and see the world spin, and lose myself in the dark, and never want to believe in light again. I lack you so much today, I get covered with cold and I drown in the feeling so overwhelming it sucks life out of me. It puts my strength into a shabby bag, the crude one with no holes in it, letting no sun reach my thinking.

I miss you today to the point where I’m determined to never miss you again. I am so tired of loving you, so, so tired. I wish you didn’t infiltrate me all the way to my blood, and dissolve in me, and uplift me to such heights only to drain me dry and leave me empty and throw me down so low, again and again.

I’d live for you, if only you were worth living for.

6 a.m.

I long for other you
Unable to release
This grip
Of fingers turning blue
I act at ease
Then hide to weep
Under my skin
From hand of fate
Its painful scratch
For I have seen
Your falling state
Please stay and catch
Day's quiet cue
Please try to be
For sunrise longer
The other you
Hold on to me
Till I grow stronger
And leave behind
This place
Its dust
My lover’s mind
His fading grace
His lust

Your face
My past

The music in my head

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

– Rob in the High Fidelity movie

I experimented by switching back and forth between sad and cheerful songs and found that upbeat tunes generally make me happier for about three minutes but are often hard to relate to. It is not because I am some kind of a sad little person, I am generally perfectly optimistic. In a way, life reminds me of parents. I love it despite all the crap it gives me. Then why do I keep listening to music that makes me cry?

I think maybe it is because there are so many sides to happiness while the pain of loss is generally one. I think there is a certain threshold of grief after losing a person, a place or a battle that was fought so hard… After crossing that brink of a primary shock, for a while there the pain becomes so strong it blurs the differences of all the initial reasons that hurt… It becomes all-engulfing. Excruciating. So similar to other pains. The melancholic words coming out of the headphones suddenly rhyme so perfectly with emotions… It brings a sense of a pleasant surprise amidst the ocean of sorrow, making you wonder how in the world someone else could put your heartache into their words so perfectly even before your heartache existed. It’s that easy-to-relate factor that makes sadness so listenable. In the words of one dentist I interviewed recently, “our market is essentially based on pain.” I know the producers of sad songs will make sure I stay miserable a bit longer and I know I won’t put up too much of a fight against it. I guess it’s all about the core. As long as you keep it strong, all that wavy stuff like the music in your head won’t really matter in the long run. Like a storm in the sea, it will stir you up and subside. And then comes new happiness, new pain and new music to complement them.