because we are still giving you a choice, to save

yourself, from an eternity of condemnation.

tailor your questions to suit our temperaments

and we will graciously accept you into our breathing space

and not all of us talk like that, so don’t rap your

instructions out or text incoherently with acronyms

you’re not sure of. do not wear that colour.

it has blinded you.

we do not equate to computers, music and cellphones.

we do not mean instability, depression, and uncertainty.

we are more-

we are the ones watching you when you sleep,

wondering who took your lightsaber away, the one

that you brandished so passionately in times where

darkness to you still meant danger,

and not shelter.

just you and me into a forest of things

you were told only grew in the dark.

i will leave you the first chance i get.

the trees here don’t whisper lullabies,

or rustle you reassurances with the crinkle

of their semi dried leaves.

they stand. just as they are with no leaves.

touch the moss that cover the uncovered roots.

don’t be afraid to scuff your sneakers green.

take a walk like how you’re supposed to;

wandering, uncomfortable. this is

a walk to help you remember the things you

walked away from. it doesn’t end

till you dare to ask for a map from the

squatting man who waits at the edge of this forest.

the map that gets you back to before.

he smiles you a smile and says ‘magic, magic’

as you hurry away, uncomprehending, but reassured

in the things you can grasp in the tight fists of your hands.

and placed them inside your bare chest

when they flung them at you, blood and all

in the play grounds. but now you sink,

in the memories of the splatter of fleeting hands

the smiles that paid for your coloured skirts.

everything’s still open, you say, that everything

of you is still wide, open, clear for a heart

to delve into your escalator of tantrums and pouts.

for someone to steady them with their eyes

set on the top where they can then, get

off.

the things that prick the tip of your fingers

but you want the blood under them to be gone.

you consider that every time you watch

the shadows of the raindrops on the window

of the last bus, as they paint gray stains on your chest.

you sit in faint unease at how you think

they’re the only reason why you would want to go home.

like a thread loose from a worn shirt.

its too thin and too worn to be holding

on to anything.

and you see it fly away in the opposite

direction of the listless wind.

seething and angry in red.

There is nothing like leeching onto a being

that was once like yourself, and sinking your

desolation into them, to suit whoever you are now.

We are the crumbling picture of collectiveness,

of togetherness. Just a string of individuals

hung up on the same wire of connection.

We send signals we can no longer read.

We continue our swarms in open places,

hands out stretched to grab and hold on to — ,

as we decay. We wander, and feed, as

our unconscious eyes beg for the lead between them

that would end this neverending hunger, for something that

we didn’t know we could never find.

*solanum: zombie virus

because I was too ‘undeveloped’.

But I think something in me endeared to them

because even the youngest, unsympathetic ones

were bright eyed and earnest enough

to admit an utter novice in this place like me.

I felt something I have never felt before at that moment

when a girl in red took my hand, crying, I was told.

I apologised, I couldn’t recognise it, having never

done it before. They nodded in understanding.

I nodded too, just to be part of it, even though I

did not see whatever it was they were understanding.

But it felt important to belong somewhere, to be part

of something.

I didn’t want to be told that I was an inconvenience,

even after I’ve died.

until god made us care, and scared

and disconnect. To forget.

So let us all declare:

I am the shaken robot who will one day

hold the tissue paper up to her nose,

and look at it only to see red.

through your general coherence, separating your

strands of thoughts that lay tangled and sated in the heat

that was what you shared. They tug relentlessly,

repeatedly, combing and rearranging the mess that

you have laid against the damp pillows under your heads.

The pulls feel like beeping alarms to remind you of his presence,

an apprehensive possessiveness that was absent before,

that gave way to cloying words, that made your holds on him slip

as you fever in sweat, the heat of his touches before, coarse on you skin.

You think this is better, the sharp, clean feel of his hands

in your hair, alternatingly hurting and soothing, a prophesy

of things to come. Definitive, like the clench of his fingers around

yours, unarranged, unlike a proper handhold.

The nakedness you feel is startling, and you want him to see you weak.

This was not love, the thing of caresses and silk bedlinens.

This was not the flowers that lay, fresh, forgotten on the floor,

an obligatory token that the world decided upon on a convenience.

All this was, was trust.