My heart at 2am

by Ojaswita Raj

I lie down and think of all the skin I’ll let people rip. All the bones I’d let them break so that they can get through and cradle my heart. My pillow knows I gave it my all for just a tiny ounce of warmth. It stores my tears as a trophy for all the people who made me believe, it costs too much. I laid myself on the dinner table and let them feast all that they wanted in hopes of getting all what I lacked. I saw them chew all the skin out of the lamb, careful to get the bits in between bones, sucking deep into the juice ravenously and leaving the carcass behind disregardly. I’ve let people break my back like they break oranges. I’ve seen them peel the outer layer with great care, keen on not spoiling the insides and then breaking the pieces and relishing on them one by one. Somehow, I justify their apathetic selves against me by stating, that’s what you do to an orange. That is what the fate of an orange is. That is what it was nurtured for. That is why it was taken care of. I sit on the cold ground and let warm tears roll down staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of the world push me down. I feel a physical force pushing me down 100 feet deep into the ground till there is no oxygen left for me to breathe and I start gasping. I fill my mouth with air and close it hoping to savour it by pice in fright that I might get no more of it in the future. That I’ve had my full of it. That this is all that I deserve in my entire lifetime. I scratch my fingers against the wall till I’ve ripped the skin and stained the wall hoping the feeling would return back to me. But in the aftermath, instead of putting a bandage on my finger I gather cloth and water in desperate attempts to clean the mess. And as I lie down and think of all the skin, I’ll let people rip and all the bones I’d let them break hoping that they would cradle my heart, all I am reminded of are the times they juggled with something so delicate, in such an incredulous conniving manner. Yet my brave lips quiver the word ‘more’ masochistically evermore greedily, knowing the outcome, knowing the unhealed wounds, deliberately picking on it until blood oozes out and the wound is open again. I hope that at least when someone looks under the bed and find their old washed-out cardigan, they put it on and remember how it used to be a favourite always. How years and years after when they find their old book among the many new spine intact paperbacks, they flip over to the dog-eared pages and smile. I have this urge to feel every feeling at its highest degree and I swear by my soul, melancholy will always be my Favourite.