Please Don't Let The Government Or Anyone Erase Any More Of History. It Is On You. You Have A Responsibility.

Do you think that if you love a certain thing, it is supposed to be constant throughout and it loses its charm when it stops being exactly that?

I think that the idea of loving an entity as it changes and transforms is much more endearing than going "Oh. This doesn't resemble what I initially fell for."

I think that especially with people, you have to know that they're constantly moving and they are experiencing things, and they change. To hope that something stays exactly as it was when you fell in love with it doesn't sit right with me. Haven't you changed? Do we have the right to tell something to remain stagnant when we aren't?

I think I personally have a skittish attitude towards things that remain constant; on the other hand, change feels so natural. I think I see it in this light: to be with someone or something as it changes is to get to discover more things to love, new things to love about them. I also believe that there are certain things that always remain the same. Even when the person is entirely someone different, there is always a set of habits or a preference or something specific to just this one person, that still remains constant. I find myself fascinated by the fact that even after this landslide of a change, there are moments where you can see them be the person you first go to know or how even after such an elaborate transformation, there are things that still somehow remain the same.

I think there are tiny constants even in the grandest of transformations. I quite ardently believe that people are much more endearing when they embrace their changes rather than thinking that the people who loved them when they were someone else will stop doing so as they grow into another person. I think that if the people you know do not fit the life of who you want to be or who you have become, you should let them go. So no, I do not think that anything I love owes me the grave burden of being in a state of constant; in a state of stagnancy.

-Anika

Boo.

To acknowledge the Monster is to say

It is here,

That it has been here all along;

It is to stand in the dark with a terrible thing

Hoping it does not devour you.

To be hopeful is to be terrified

Of anything otherwise;

It is to hold on

To withering threads of optimism

As the likelihood of the unfavourable

Gets the guillotine ready for your head.

To scream Monster is to say

Here stands a terrible thing

That scares me;

You cannot simply

Take the elephant out of the room

And throw it under the bus,

You know?

To be scared is to admit

You have something to be scared of

And something to be scared for.

To draw a monster and ask yourself

What makes one,

Is to ask yourself what you consider

Dreadful enough to be called inhuman.

To tell stories of your childhood

Is to say it is long gone;

It is to acknowledge

Childhood pushed you off the cliff

And ran away.

It is to say you have been

Free falling ever since,

Trying to grasp at things

That do not stay.

To have an inheritance

Is to say that

Everyone in the family is dead.

To scream Monster

Is to stand in the dark beside it

And say you know terrible well enough

To know what a Monster is.

To say you are here

Is to realize there was a time

When you were not,

That there will once again

Be a time

When you won't be here;

It is to say you don't know

What time is anymore.

To be alive

Is to be terrified

(All the time)

And hopeful,

Even if the guillotine

Is getting ready

For your very execution;

It is to turn the lights off

And sleep in the room

With the Monster

And pray like hell

It does not kill you.

- A.G.

When I was little, I used to stay away from matches because I was sure I would set myself on fire. What I didn't realise was that I've been burning for a long time. You know how they say you're a sum of everyone you've met; everyone you've come across? I think I'm other people, more than I am myself. I still remember the phone number of my friend from the third grade. What do I do with the memory of that? That's the problem. I remember too much. I can never forget: numbers and people. I am a walking ache, I am a fresh scar; I am open wounds: always aching. I am hurt. My happiness is pretense and my sadness is a default. I have been hurt too many times and I can never forget it. I never remember my happiness. I remember too much of what went wrong and too much of all that hurt me; that's the problem. What do I do with all this hurt? I carry a lifetime of hurt. I think I will age backwards; I already hurt so much at so little, I am sure there can be no way this gets worse so I have to hope this will get better. As the years grow, I will grow. I will be taller when others are starting to hunch. How could I not? Where do you go from this ache? I am the ache I feel and I am the thing that hurts my heart. My happiness is always a pretense. I am always sad during the happiest moments of my life. Someone called me arrogant and I laughed at their face. I think some people are always sad. I am always other people and I have never been myself and I do not know what to do with that. I am a stranger in my head and my face is always a foreign image that surprises me. I remember too much. I don't know how to not. How do you forget? I don't hate myself, I just don't know what to do with her sometimes. She is a child and she is so grown up and strong and she is always grieving the loss of some part of herself.

After Indian Mystic Poet Kabir Das

Kabir walked after death,

Walked his own body to a grave.

Flowers bloomed and plucked themselves

Out of their homes,

Placed themselves in the middle

Of life and a walk to the grave

To let a man leave in peace.

Kashi born,

He walked with the conviction

He had in his knowledge,

Challenged the Orthodoxes,

Challenged the convention;

Kashi born guaranteed a place in heavens

He gave it all up,

Got himself cremated and burried at the same time,

Got himself fights throughout life

And even afterwards,

Got himself a piece of satisfaction,

Got himself legends and disciples

And angry purohits,

Got a piece of logic and equality of castes

When there were no such words

And Brahmins were gods.

Man dead already,

Looked at his funerals,

Looked at the burial

And felt his head turn towards Meccah,

Could hear the verses ring in his ears

As the soil washed over the lack of his body:

"We created you from it,

And return you into it,

And from it we will raise you a second time";

Looked at the cremation

And felt his soul return to the gods

As they proceeded with the Antim Sanskaar, chanted:

"When thou hast made him ready,

All possessing Fire,

Then do thou give him over to the Fathers,

When he attains unto the life that waits him,

He shall become subject to the will of gods".

Inevitable

We were a prolonged sunset,

Something beautiful

That we knew 

Would end in darkness anyways.

We were a mouthful of words

The tongue couldn't help but mess up.

We were a tiny cat

Who climbed the big tree

And forgot it had yet to learn 

How to come back down.

We went skydiving,

Up, up, up 

And the earth pulled us back down;

We free fell into our own demise

And made a mess,

We left chaos behind.

Burning

I am a walking grave

Of all the people

I did not let myself become.

This sadness is the only eulogy

They will ever hear.

There are skeletons which live in closets

That have been kept shut

For far too long

And the skeletons need their coffins

And the coffins their graves

And one too many graves

Makes a cemetry

I am the cemetery:

The door that locked its own kind out;

The graves, the coffins and the skeletons.

But I am alive, goddamn it!

Buried within myself

People I did not

Let myself become.

People were not meant

To carry so much of

What wasn't alive,

Coffins do no justice to the living.

Lives aren't meant

To be spent within boxes,

How the hell did

We get tricked into believing

They will do death any justice?

You are alive,

And everything

You could've been too,

Just not here.

But somewhere,

In another universe,

You exist

But are everything

You have always wanted to be,

And perhaps,

Someday in this life too.