No one, and I mean
no
one
ever
should have to go hungry for even one day. No one should have to go bed on an empty stomach even once, just because they couldn't afford something that should not have ever come for a price in the first place. 

Which tense do we belong in?

You are so different
now
than what you
were
It's almost as if the clock itself could not tick,
I could not press these keys
to type those e-mails
(I often now 'save as a draft')
as fast as
this change in
you
It's too great
for me to be able to tell
if you once were,
or are.

Gone.

She says we barely ever  met when she lived in this town and yet I feel her absence deeply. With you, I have spent whatever I can recall of my life. Now, you are actually a thousand miles away and yet I cannot tell the difference. I don't how to feel about this. Sad? I'm confused. The funny part is, now that you are not here, you are communicating more frequently.  I try to miss you, feel your absence and yet I cannot recall a fresh memory of us together. The most hilarious bit out of all is it keeps circling my mind, again and again,  that you actually forgot- yes, forgot, to say goodbye to me before you left. This geographical distance is literally staring at me in the face as you send those pictures of grandly lit London streets. It's almost mimicking the distance that has developed between us over the two years, the kind of distance that cannot be measured; the kind that perhaps, I can only attempt to measure with my words, the words that have become hollow with time, impregnated with the huge void in my life I have not been to fill even after two whole years. My life lacks you now just as lacked you even when you were a 20 minute drive away. The thousand miles don't  make a difference. Many times I consider I shouldn't have given this position to  you in my life ever. I scramble in bed at night because I can't even lay the blame for your absence on anybody. It's maddening, this silence.

At 3:43am

A punch.
A hard, gnarly punch in the gut. I felt it when I went through all our old pictures. You only read about this punch in the gut but I felt it today when I saw the people in those pictures, ran an eye across the room and failed to spot any of those faces around. I felt it when I realised these pictures were from  two years ago. The fist stuck to the gut and ground itself in more firmly. I wanted to somehow magically put my hand through the picture and pull us out here again but we will never be what we were. Now I can't decide if that's good or bad. This exact question will probably cling to me for quite a long, long time.
Some times, I don't know what's more unsettling: the amount of time which has passed by this speedily or the thought that we've moved ahead too far to ever go back to being the way we were. But then I ask myself if I want to be let gone of the same way. I remember my position in the scheme of all things. I see my own lack of power over our time and I also see the necessity of change. So I keep the pictures away in a safe place and I let you go. 

She taught me how to walk. But now why can't she walk on her own? Why can't I be her legs? Why can't I be her back when it's given up on her? Why can't I give all my strength to her? Why can't I give the rest of my long life to her in exchange for hers? Why can't I when it's probably one of the few things in life I very willingly want to do? Why is there no answer?
A part of me is crippled for life. 

And again.

It's almost 4am. I am about to switch off the lights and curl under my blanket.
I know I won't fall asleep for another 3 hours though. I feel a slight shiver run down my spine. We're in the middle of summer but I feel a slight chill come on. I think it's here again. It doesn't let me sleep at night. I think...Yes, I sense a light draft of air crackle through the hidden crevices of the windowsill. The windows are quite old after all, creaking, reeking... It's all quite old to be frank. All with its fair share of cracks and fissures.  All with their fair share of cries for repair jobs.
I think I just saw the hem of the curtain ruffle again; almost caught a glimpse from the corner of my eye. Ruffling curtains, that's how it arrives: on the wind. Every night. Softly pushing the door open, only a few millimeters ajar. Tip-toeing... leaving me searching the empty corners of  the room, half-moons cradling my heavy lids for another night. I can't sleep again because it's back. There's the sound. I'm not remotely tired. I should get up. The sound again! The bratty laugh of a bunch of school children in the playground. A whiff! Smells like warmth. I can't stop staring at the light. It's like sunshine even though there is no sun.  Looks brownish. I don't want to switch it off anymore. The brown frock. The gray kameez. There's still sunshine. A sudden lull in the room now. I think I'll crawl  back under my sheets. Maybe if I just shut my eyes first, I'll fall asleep automatically. Wait, did I just hear a step? Those footsteps. I know that clicking sound. Typically him. He was such a good friend. It's 5 am. He can't possibly be... My parents will kill both of us if they see a boy in the house. And at 5 am. Umm and after that they'll shoot themselves too because they won't be able to live with the fact that they killed their own child. Ridiculous. Yes? We were almost best friends. There is no one. She was right, I'll buy a sleeping mask tomorrow once and for all. Maybe earplugs too. In fact I need the earplugs more. Shit! Where are my headphones? I hope I didn't leave them in the office drawer again. I wasn't even hungry I don't know why I had that tikka. Bitch, stop whining. I probably would've been asleep by now. What shuffled?! Unannounced. Like every night, it won't let me sleep before 7am again. I just know it. Can't forget how we skyped  through the night till 7am once. Crazy! Fuck. These memories don't let us sleep.

This, again.

Every time I set a limit for myself, I eventually end up breaking it. Every time I map plans, I end up deviating from them. For each of these times, you may call me careless or carefree or plain reckless but what I see, on each occasion, is the inability of life to be held back with reins, the inaccuracy of our judgments as naturally as they may come to us. For each of these times, I feel as if I have been reminded that even though I thought I had got it right this time, I haven't yet. It's cliched but it's true... how do I put this? Life is funny? No actually. Life doesn't have a sense of humour. We do. We develop one eventually when we realise that we never quite will know it completely or know it all.
Actually, this is upsetting. Not funny. Humour doesn't come naturally to you when you see yourself doing the things you probably never saw yourself doing. It's not funny when the winds suddenly shift their course, their temperature, jolt your body into adapting again and it's not funny when you observe people change right in front of your eyes, jolting your entire being into adapting to this idea of a new person within the same body, with the same face.
I guess we must eventually see that the seasons, the weather, the winds and the behaviour of the people around us should not move us more than it has moved itself. Acceptance; in every form; And it only comes to us when we understand that nature is not constant. We perhaps must at some point in time understand that in order to keep walking we have to tackle the turns at the corners and the twists and bumps on the ground. We must understand that those twists and turns are not the grounds' vengeance upon our feet but merely the nature of the ground- the earth beneath our feet that does not care.
This doesn't end here though. It is a mere link in this chain.
 The stage is circular, surrounded by an audience at every turn of an inch, and you imitate the earth as you revolve. You, like a dervish continue to enrapture us with your repetitive motions but we keep looking in search of an imitation, a fleeting reflection of our self. There is more to figure and this again, is not it. So we don't know what it is towards but like this dervish, we keep going on and on...