Our Shades of Grey

Friends? Nah. We aren’t just friends. Maybe being just friends is a bit too dark. But we aren’t lovers either. Maybe being in love is a bit too bright. Half-girlfriend? It’s a cliche. We lie somewhere in between breaking the cliches, beautifying the grey shade, having something between us that’s too mundane to be labelled or titled yet magical enough to hold us on both ends.

Life isn’t a game of chess. Blacks and whites are often hypothetical. Picking up a side is theoretical. Look at us; you lie there with your own little insecurities you inherit from your past, and me, with my worries about my future. Maybe we are just two passengers on a ferry waiting for the other end to arrive, knowing that it will not last forever. Maybe we just represent the logarithmic function; we do not exist at the extremities. We are just legit between your zero and my infinity.

So let us not waste time picking sides and labeling things that aren’t meant to. Let us not just wait for the other end to arrive. Let us turn the slope of this function into a roller coaster ride. Let us just not exist but live this small eternity. Let me pick you and let you pick me and let us be together if not ‘forever’ but at least ‘always’.

~Vikalp Joshi

It’s like a cup of salt in your mouth altogether

“You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.”
― Samuel Beckett

A letter from the ‘Ex’ to the ‘Contemporary’

We were just happy in our own little oasis, complete with each other until you arrived, like a sandstorm and filled his eyes with sand making him falter.

I wasn’t just his favourite; he needed me like oxygen wasn’t enough for him. I wasn’t just his leisure; I was his secret pinch of magic dust which made every chore worth doing. Every other day it would be my duty to heal the wounds he received from the battlefield called life. Insomnia hit him more often than others and I would just caress his hair to make him sleep like a toddler.

I would have given up long ago, but hope is a bitch. The harder I try to believe it’s over, the harder she kindles that spark breathing beneath these ashes. His sillage still tickles my nose asking me to hold on. For this, I’ll try, a bit harder this time. He may not need me now because it’s too sunny outside. It’s too bright for him to see the difference. But, times change my dear, times change. Someday, the sky will don a darker shade. The masks will fall off. He will die a little more inside and all you could do is stand there helpless, staring at the tempest taking its shape around you both. When his glass of scotch will not be enough, you’ll fail to offer him the “high” he demands. When he will fail to do his job, you’ll fail to keep this universe in place. It’s because I know, not everyone can withstand the storms inside him.

For now, I might be just a skipped song on his playlist. Mind it, skipped not deleted. The day you’ll fail to fix his ripped soul, he will turn to me and I’ll seize the day and you will never see him again.

~ Vikalp Joshi (Words Of Wonder)

Paradise of a Reader

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

Be that Contradistinct person

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Rob Siltanen

Indeed a huge problem

“Everyone else isn’t you. It turns out that’s a huge problem for me.”
― Clementine von Radics

Lucifer explains desire and covetousness

“Yahweh: You’ve been unhappy because you’ve desired things that cannot be.

Lucifer: That’s what desire IS. The need for what we can’t have. The need for what’s readily available is called greed.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 11: Evensong

Because dance isn’t everyone’s Cup of Tea

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Coffee is the language you speak boy

“I think we all speak a different sort of language
than one another, but boy you sound a whole lot like coffee on a
Sunday morning.”
― Shinji Moon, The Anatomy of Being

“There are flowers
in this world
that only grow
after the ground
above them burns.
Scientists say
that the fire sets
the earth aflame
with the birth of these
special flowers which
wouldn’t grow otherwise,
that even though the fire
seems to destroy
everything it touches,
it can also bring
new colors into this world.
What I am trying to say
is that healing hurts,
but so does forgiveness,
and sometimes it is worth it
to see yourself bloom”
— Pavana पवन ( reader’s submission)