Home > Work > 4 AM Conversations (with the ghosts of old lovers)
1 " You and IAgain and again Always almost Never enough.- A world of almosts "
― Ayushee Ghoshal , 4 AM Conversations (with the ghosts of old lovers)
2 " I am getting used to my voice not sounding like an apology, my hair looking like a thunder storm, my face resembling a calamity, my smile looking like jagged tombstones, my soul feeling like an abstract art. "
3 " Let hope break youand then allow hopelessnessto set you free. "
4 " 4 AM and here we are. Awake, drunk on regrets, hungover on heartaches - without you. "
5 " There are things I can confess only after swallowing a bottle of ink. How i crushed a moth between my palms before it rushed to the fireplace. These hands that are used to killing things midflight. Like my mother tongue. Before I can roll out my rounded R and O. Because women like me are believed to practise witchcraft and blackmagic. We swallow men and spit out their bones. These hands that danced with your ghosts on the bluest 4 AMs. These hands that raised a knife to its throat. How deep was the longing to be nothing more than an empty bed, an empty room. If someone asks you tell them writing was the closest I came to witchcraft. Poetry was the closest I came to being possessed. I wanted to leave behind more than emptiness so I wrote.. They say it takes 7 seconds for the eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. I glide across the dark room like the light was never here. Your body imprint on the mattress lost to the frenzied waltz of sunray and dust. How easy was it to just grab a handful of you before you dissolved. If someone asks tell them loving you was the closest I came to seeing god.. On some nights I open the curtains and you are the moon. I am the darkness surrounding it. Which is to say I don't know how to love without being consumed. If they ask you tell them remembrance was the closest I came to being sick.. Once I met a homeless man who spoke in madness because he had forgotten his mother tongue. How long do you hide yourself from the world before you forget your beginning. Like him - I too am full of silence. My beloved - a handful of you, your body. There are things I could only tell the moths but they no longer visit. I have put off the fireplace. Which is to say they too don't know how to love something that won't kill them. . My phone always autocorrects I love you to I live you and what is love if not living the other person. One summer afternoon our bodies turned into each other's. Your breath played lye strings on my neck. If they ask you tell them that was the closest I came to being alive. "
6 " They either come back or they don’t.That’s what you tell yourself. That’s what you learn. As you go through mundane days with so much of pain beating in your chest that you feel it will explode. You strike days off your calendar, waiting, going for a run, picking up a new hobby, while trying to numb that part of your brain that refuses to forget the little details of your skin. Soon, you start sleeping in the middle of the bed, learn how toget through the evenings alone, go to cafes and cities alone, you learn how to cook enoughdinner for yourself and just make do without the kisses on your neck. You learn…Adjust..Accept..The tumor of pain already exploded one lonely night when you playedhis voice recording by mistake.. by mistake..But you didn’t die.. Did you? They either come back.. or they don’t.. You survive.. "
7 " Men like you happen once. Women like me prefer to live our lives cautiously with your after taste, lessons and splinters of broken heart underneath our tongues. "
8 " One day, I will wake up with a terrible longing for you. And in some corner of the world, your heart will skip several beats at the thought of my name. And you’ll finally know what I meant when I said: When you stand near a burning pyre, the heat tends to rub off on you. "
9 " You and Iagain and againalways almostnever enough. "