Aham tvam, tvam aham

We are notes of the same melody;  
we are symphonies of the same universe.

The Nature of Pain

I turn the fading sheets of an old notebook
and in a discreet corner of a page filled with doodles,
I see her handwriting glare at me,
cutting through the shield of time.
She dots her i's with round playful bubbles.
 
Restless and clueless
like a wet teenage dream,
my being craves for her fleeting scent,
and my heaving heart longs for her careless whispers.
 
After four or five pegs of the Old Captain,
I drag my beat-up frame to the bathroom.
I kneel before the tap and turn the knob.
I clench my jaws against each other,
pull my hair towards my cheeks,
dig my nails into the skin of my forearm,
and press my face tightly against the cold bathroom wall.
A muffled shriek escapes from my tensed jaws
as I drown my tears in the sound of the downpour.
I escape from the shower to the palpable void of the house.
Sunlight shines through the gossamer fabric
and music erupts into the vacuum.
The music, like a syringe prodding a wound,
takes out the pain from the deepest layers of the soul.
But the infection fills up the wound again,
and the pain seethes through the body
in moments of deafening silence and loneliness.

My seasons chase after her phantom shadows.
She's the closest of flesh, blood, dreams, and bones,
who made me ache for every living second.
The memories are my ‘marham’;
the memories are the thorny bush on which my existence is impaled.