coco mellors, cleopatra and frankenstein.
“And I’ll make a cup of coffee with the right amount of sugar, how you like it.”
Coffee by Beabadoobee
— Rudy Francisco
Dunya Mikhail, from "The Iraqi Nights", The Iraqi Nights (trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid) [ID'd]
– Audrey Hepburn
I gave you a love so vast it could have swallowed cities whole. I built galaxies in my chest just to make room for you, carved out pieces of my soul and called them home so you would never feel alone. I was there and offering, but you… you only ever loved the echo of me, the shadow I cast in your mind, not the woman who bled herself dry to be enough. You didn’t love me. You loved the idea of being loved by someone like me. And that was the slow undoing.
You were never really there, not when I shattered quietly in rooms we shared, not when I fell asleep hoping you would see me again, not just look at me. I held up the heavens for us while you watched, arms folded, eyes elsewhere. And still, I stayed. Still, I gave. Foolish, maybe. Devoted, definitely.
Now, that it’s all gone. I have crossed oceans of pain to reach a shore where your name doesn’t burn on my skin anymore. I am somewhere better, freer, lighter. And just when I have stitched myself together with gold thread and midnight prayers, you come back.
You come back with a whisper of apology, a handful of words you never had the courage to speak when I was drowning right in front of you. Why now? Why always after?
It is the cruel theater of time, isn’t it? The final act where ghosts knock at your door once you have already exorcised them. People see your worth only in absence, crave your presence only when it is no longer a gift they are entitled to. Love should never be a posthumous award.
And yet, here I am, haunted not by you, but by the echo of who I was when I loved you. And that is the deepest ache of all.
(Darjeeling’22)
From surviving to generously falling in love with this city, I found love that I can finally gate keep.
July-December, Delhi’2024
yes sex is great but have you ever had someone fall in love with your personality and be so damn in love with you simply just for being you.
I loved you in ways you’ll never understand. In the way I remembered your favorite songs, even when you forgot mine. In the way I stayed. Long after you didn’t ask me to.
Martha Gellhorn, from a letter to David Gurewitsch featured in The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn
They/Them | 22 | INFJ | Geography major | Spilled emotions and Stills | Instagram sumedhachattopadhyayy | Alter Ego: @monetsirises in Tumblr.
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