How to Destroy Yourself?

By Yuvankshi Venugopal

You knit yourself like a half eaten apple with an opening for a love that feels as divine as the feeling of feathers on your feet.

You embrace vulnerability and open your heart to the boy next door who smiles with his eyes and speaks with his gestures and asks you for your opinion on the most irrelevant of possibilities.

The most irrelevant possibilities make for an attachment that seems surreal and forever old.

Forever old like the name you carved on the bark in the park across your home.

Your home feels empty with the sound of their breathe and the beats of their playlist.

Their playlist is full of songs you wouldn’t have ever chosen to listen to but know all the words to.

All the words they wrote on the paper planes you guys made to communicate secrets that were best kept tucked away.

Tucked away in another reality lies the truth when a new family of 4 pulls into the driveway next door and you see him smile the way he first smiled at you, the day you melted into naivety like an ice-cream on a Sunday afternoon.

And you stand against the bark of the tree in the park across the street and watch a new love bloom while yours is forgotten.

Forgotten, that’s how you destroy yourself, by loving someone unconditionally who doesn’t love you back, by living a love that is remembered by you only to be forgotten by all.

By Yuvankshi Venugopal