Wrecked

By Shanysa Jain

A metaphorical diegesis of falling in love and then falling apart

An ecstatic escape

I’m sewing butterflies, butterflies that purloin every ounce of my existence as they soar high into the sky. My walls come crashing down as I meekly surrender; I have no more armour left to shield my sanity. Oxygen books the last flight departing from the base of my lungs, rebelling against its former acrophobia. For my spine suddenly conducts electricity, putting forth enough voltage to take away gasps from my hollow throat. His pupils of raw sienna with the faintest swirl of amber burn blazingly into mine, sirens blaring obstructively in my mind. Euphoria entangles into a knot of barbed wire, a haze of auburn keeping the candle inside me alive. I melt into its wax as each second breaks down time. I’m now sacred, now the glimmer of a comet in the sky. There we are, tossed into screaming colour, while the rest of the world wanes into hues and shades and tints of black and white. We flee, we steal the scene, we weave the arms of this dream.

The first crack in the glass

Every pore of my skin tingles to the brim of eruption, my mind and body being distant yet afloat. A myriad of fireworks is physically sucking me in. If, god forbid, fear ever envelops me, I’ll run into the arms of this moment, the one where he finally tells me he loves me. Ever so tenderly, my fingers brush across his heart. My heart aches to kill the oblivion clouding his mind. My soul yearns to carry the luggage he drags inside of him. I’m walking beyond the shore, beyond the point where I normally fret. I’m shedding my skin on paper thin ice. The wrath of sharp-edged rocks shaking my world is what I visualise. This is only the draft of mistrust, the roughly scribbled one, where his unspoken thoughts create an invisible glass wall between us.

The fight

Once, it was something we had stitched ever so beautifully. But now, the patch starts to tear, and the battlefield is all I have left. To fight for my worth, to hold together everything in the universe, for a split second of languor could annihilate everything I have worked for, mentally and physically. The sky screams a violent shade of brewing purple as I awaken to the touch of the cold sharp nib of a sword resting with rapaciousness on the pulse of my neck, ready to feast on every ounce of me and obliterate my very existence. I feel the earth shake beneath me, as the thunderstorm above bellows mercilessly and unsuccessfully tries piecing together the scraps of two tales, two lost narratives from rather opposing periods of time. Alas, the scars that embody him aren’t quite ready to heal. Now the wind speeds up and takes along everything in sight. Brutality welcomes itself with the mind shattering cacophony of horses running astray. Somewhere out there, he is drowning deep underwater and cannot align back his long-lost soul. I toil endlessly, but cannot reach ashore. Time ticks. I wait, I wait, I wait. But no, nothing. His pink arch of lips remains sealed. And slowly but surely, tears take a stroll down my opal eyes. Gloom tucks itself within his unforthcoming disposition, a jute rope arduously coiling itself around my neck. And now the curtains close, we shut the blinds, and our demons... come to light.

The breaking point

Stars cross, blue skies, echoes of my past ghost alive. The high tide comes, we’re left to run. Waves crash in hard, sand like quicksilver pulls us down, and we’re stuck in this void, screaming for life, with no one around. I’m circling back to those whispers, to those frightened eyes. The hurricane, the storm, the grey is all we have left. “Don’t go, don’t go,” I say. Foolish. For the walls crack under the pressure, his hand slips away from mine… he runs screaming for life, dodging this love. He leaves in heed, as a tattered stain of art, abandoning unfinished business, promises get broken like shattered glass.

And now, I’m entrapped in a bubble of hurt, buried under layers of wounds, and the fate of doom. The click of a gun, the twist came undone, the thirteen months of expectations lie forgotten and fly away as specs of dust. Long tiring hours of battling with the devil, approaching it at midnight, and begging to be allowed to surrender to this fight. In haunted sleeps, in sleepless nights, a rusted chain of fireworks set my world on fire. I’m no more the soul he once had. Pitch black clenches my skin. I’m left heartbroken and trapped.

By Shanysa Jain