I am a careless person,
Who often gets yelled at by her mother for losing things
that she once possessed, owned or held close.

Winter of 2014
I lost my burgundy sweater.
That December nothing could keep me from getting cold.
No coffee with perfect number of sugar-cubes made me feel any better.
No affection felt genuine.
No intimacy felt real.
All the warmth burnt me to freeze,
As I realised that everything I have or will ever have will be lost someday,
I should have learnt
That change is constant
But I always dwelled on the learning
That, constants never change,
That constants never weaken and fade,
That constants never stop being constants
Until my burgundy sweater outgrew me.

So, weave me another sweater now.
With threads of the same warmth, same texture and same colour
But I know it for a fact,
That it will not smell the same on me.
It will not keep my chest warm enough
To face another biting cold winter.
I am flung into a tangential-wrong-address.
Into a pain, I never planned on having.
Into a melancholy, a little too intense for me.
Into a sudden spiral, I never spun in.
Into a choice, I never made.

Summer of 2015
I forget about all the things lost
Like, my fingers forgetting the numbers they had once learnt to dial in the dark;
My eyes forgetting the sight of faces that they had once known to be places;
My thoughts forgetting to linger upon those who once made me write so much bad poetry;
My nose forgetting to inhale the dust that it had once lived breathing upon.

But do not mistaken my forgotten loss
To have been replaced, repaired or erased; for that matter
Because it never does.
It is a pain that only get suppressed
To erupt with vigour and fervour later.

As you see,
Letting go was never designed to be easy
For someone who uses her boarding passes as bookmarks,
For someone who screenshots every special conversation at the back of her mind,
For someone who swings on the hammock of misery between the past and the present,
For someone who fails in not letting this poem become about you – “Loss”!

Lost childhood in a polka dotted frock,
Lost yellow postcards and unposted letters,
Lost pages from that brown vintage diary,
Lost mixtapes that I once played on repeat,
Lost molars that melted with age.

“Losing is inevitable!”
I have even lost parts of me.
Like how I will eventually lose the first draft of this poem
But what I grieve the most is how I lose people

I lose the tickle of their voices
To the echo of their absence.
The mellow murmur looming.
The sickness sweeping me into nostalgia.
Making me a hapless over-thinker.
Pitching the tents of nihilism,
Getting crushed in this slugfest called – “Losing”.
Sinking. Drowning. Losing.

Monsoons of 2015
Fresh showers fill me,
As I drip out every tear that is left in me.
Giving out everything that I had ever bottled-up.
Cleaning the hollow that you carved inside of me.

I was incomplete from losing
Things that I thought I still needed.
But now, I know
That it was a fallacy,
That I tricked myself,
That it was a misinterpretation.
A punishment, I need to free myself from.

“Acceptance”, came like the pitter-patter of the rains,
Leaving behind a gentle reminder
Of soaking in.
Of absorbing.
Of getting drenched.
Of letting go.
Of flowing on.

That monsoon, I took a walk all by myself.
Loving all the parts that I had lost.
Folding paper boats out of thank-yous
And scribbling messages with crayons that would colour someone else’s sky.

now, when mom yells at me
For getting wet in the rain
I smile at her,
Put on my rain boots
And just remember to carry an umbrella along.

by Kajol Runwal

Art – Shaunak Phadnis