The Impossibility Of A Blank Space

By Ankita Surabhi

Wretchedly her mind demands an audience with mine

no care for mine, she thinks her time is divine

brandishing herself, a radical she wrapped her insinuations, so sweet so sublime in prose and poetry and songs seeking reprobate lovers

her imaginations soared, brought to life

played out by all trapped in her eye-line

a mime not recognised at the time

wanting victims unwilling actors unspoiled hearts

craving breakage, vainglorious eager, to fall, in-line.

Be mine be mine they cried and craved for an aura mystified by the foolish asinine Be mine stay mine she seethed in tongues and hips and curved darkened lips; and cower in my glower

seductive superpower till my fuel burns,

be mine, till 9.

My motionless world was wrecked and awakened,

shrunk and sharpened in her ever-expanding realm

Realm without a helm, a helm without a bearing

a self-indulgent siren masquerading as a sailor

to cut and carve for her personal parade

aroused on a toothless, probabilistic wonder

guiltlessly then trodden, torn asunder.

Remorse has no home and hearth

no room for redemption in her heart

but the price for mockery has been paid

under the skins of those, with her marks inlaid.

Wanting, they flung themselves above and below,

round and round they’d go

ambulatory dance, a jazz, a waltz they’d begin

she would stomp on their foot, flounder and grin and grin

to the objective observer

pity begun to sink in.

dunked and stinking of emotion,

my craving for her could not cease

a gladiator or a martyr, my devotion would pay

with delusions of empty grander, I would sway

farcically I would pray, pretend to be blue and grey

in a story as black and white as could be,

knowing not what lay, nay…

knowing exactly what lay,

I would stay

I would stay.

And pity those ridiculously undeterred

as they sunk and bled for her delusions

their unrewarded predilections

and play ill-fitting games of confidence, murmur lies

and send them to the gallows

to the depths of her greedy heart and salacious wants

to be preyed upon

by the monster, with a pretty face and a broken smile; those hypnotic, tired deep eyes, bubbling with vulnerability, cawing for care, come to me, fall to me, they convey… I sent them her way,

so, I could stay

and glutton at the misery emanating from the withering auras

of all that and all who got caught

unbeknownst fallen through her trapdoor

decorated with her words that felt and smelt like flowers

words that could arrest minutes, seconds, hours

words that easily overpower and tangled the willing sacrificial lambs… lambs with muscular arms and sinewy limbs,

and delectable baritones

lambs without horns with profound desires

promising fecundity

they were pricked, entangled in her poisonous vine

vines mutated into beguiling narcissism

a succubus disguised as willing, supine

where her pain and preference is her armour

wielded with fervour

an act of vengeance

or defence and preservation

misdirected at the admirer.

An admirer slowly exposed to the brutalities of intrigue

the curse of hearty curiosity

like salt and sand on dry lips

that once shone supple, full, sprouting kind words of love and lore,

one who drew swirls of hot breath, electrified by the potential of the air that used to caress, air that now stings, such sorrow it brings.

Yet her appetite is meticulously designed

almost exclusively

to dine on her admirers’ glorious flourishing times

to slice and feast on their pieces, expertly shred

just like the lamb, a labour of love, exuding purity innocence

just like the star at the height of its existence

unbeknownst to themselves, they shine, luminous, selfless, almost grotesque with perfection that glows shamelessly, blissfully…

unaware of the robbery, the assault, the abuse that lays in wait

patiently, wearing the colours, bathed in the fragrance of affection, devotion, love and promises.

She licks and wraps her talons around them,

tracing the entryways, slipping in and out of their skin,

grazing at first, scraping, then cutting, then exposing some fissures

as they glow and glisten, exposed,

then taping the open wounds, then licking them clean, relishing this feast the more they bleed, the closer she feels,

bolder purrs her roused beast.

how protected they seem less luminous they gleam

maybe this fondness, is a journey, they think,

one for which I must pay

with this soul of mine, it’s okay,

for mine it will always stay.

their trust clouded them from the phenomenon

a caustic catalyst

they believed they’d be reborn through this rite of passage

this emotional tussle, inherent to every human

worth ending for, worth emptying for, worth being usurped for,

a small price, a worthy sacrifice, for what else did the old poets say about the glorious days, ‘You burn bruise burnish and glower till you are charred to destruction, And you emerge anew on whiter shores,

a veritable reincarnation’

so, they say.

And so, they think they must go that way.

Till she is squeezing them of their last breath and bravery

an addict, not of love, or lust, but power

the power of knowledge

a soul sucker, a gambler of emotions

a taxer of energies

except she expects more reincarnations,

because every cycle brings a new death

and every death, a dazzling explosion of life

new vitalities, new flavours for her to prey

once voracious, twice gluttonous, and then a hurricane of greed

she must feed. she must feed.

And she did. She always did.

In her might, blind pursuit of desire

akin, a parasitic paramour,

garbled in her knowledge of power

She has forgotten to fight

she has forgotten to remember

it’s a weapon not a cushion

and weapons cut and cleave, they do not discriminate

known all too well, yet she chooses to dwell

on the same sinking boats, and hop over whence one started to sway, bulge, leak and fell. Remnants of her lovers, lie bound together, split from themselves, sewed to another memorably mutated as souvenirs, a fuel to fire another romantic dinner and misty-eyed sessions, cuddles over conversations.

For another, there’s always another.

Soon as the fizzle begins to drizzle, the door’s flung open and she’s going..going…gone. And they, as have I bereave and bemoan

bamboozled, wondering, where has my mind gone

this weird cocktail of pain, pleasure, poem and song,

constantly now run amok in my head,

where the object of our desire lies engraved.

My jealousy and dissociation gives way to guilt

relentlessly rejected realisation

incapacitated and revulsed by it

overdosed on neglect, no longer attachable, no longer detachable

I had been the lover unrequited,

the sinner invited,

the con unassigned

the admirer designed.

The strangler and the choked, whose spirit none could broke

for a death bloomed inside me

that lived on my fear, my rudderless mind acting as a courier.

The consummate audience for the withering side of the spectrum

the anti-bloom, the pro-performance, the lunar landing likeness for the dark side of all things mysterious, broken, seductive, alien…unliveable.

So, I’d been foregone, settled in the debris

relegated to perish to my own incestuous hubris.

These cruel words for her,

the clemency for them

this admonition for me

are shadows that become stories, yearning calls for closure echoing against the valleys of the heart.

To recognise once and for all that she is not an evil cast upon me

She is not she without my temper, without my ache, without my silent characterisation, my mendacious colouring of her personalisation.

I eke her out to punish myself, to deliver sentences against unacknowledged disappointments

to identify, sullen and martyr-like, the signs of toxicity

holding it like a shield, like a fork, like a switchblade, prancing and wounded with echoes and memories subdued.

persevere in pursuing the feeling of a void vindication

failing to interpret the signages without a breakthrough to mutate it into an emotionally manipulable cross…and almost seek comfort in it, a sad joy, a reclamation.. a veritable manifestation, enacting a deliverance

a pantomime that couldn’t happen before.

To tell the child, you can say No,

Yes, you can walk away

The choice is yours..and you can make it.

She is not a delusion, she bites, she commits arson…she is all that, and maybe some more what’s also real, is my projection

my narcissistically satisfying portrayal of the victim, the victor, the saviour, redeemed and redeemer

Not an admonition…yet with a tinge of empowerment

in the knowledge that these layers go deep…

these furtive strokes of dead keys come alive in their impenetrable consciousness of my intentions, intractable deliberations.

Nevertheless, relishing the stinging bitterness of exposing the schemer a me and a not me, a coveter and harborer of ills and grief

replaying these in a different time, in a different place, a misplaced imposition of reality. It becomes behooved that the writer confess,

and go through the paths that tinker with the interpersonal

and face the arrows that pierce the soul

and listen to the words that seek her audience

and witness the purity of the eyes that look at hers

and know their enormous might is a vision of the abstract

Strikingly luminous, exploratory

that will blind her with tears of joy, tears from the profoundness of belonging as her hands shake now, her brows slightly in consternation,

this is the metaphysical function

of unbridled prose and succinct honest pronunciation, of honesty

of honesty that is as evasive as sleep

sleep laced with relief that something of hers, not altogether inhuman has been cast afloat in the morbid, mystical, morose, majestic, malleable world of readers and roamers and castaways,

some teetering on the edges of destruction and nullification.

And these words will find their control and meaning,

In the heart of you, dear reader

And you will decide and colour your story,

in every line

and give life to these inert words of mine.

By Ankita Surabhi