How Many Scars Did I Justify?

Both walked. Steps in sync.
Thoughts in sync.
Words on the tongue in sync.
But egos in sync too.

I've become a walking mortuary,
With bodies covered under my skin.
Dead bodies dying to be buried.
Bodies of unkept promises, together-forever-pictures, see-you-soon-messages...
Bodies of all the love I'm dying
To unlove inside of me...But. Just. Can't.

I think sometimes we cringe to burn down a bridge.
Maybe out of the admiration for its build,
Even though the landscape on the other side seems
Too barren and bleak.

For it may no longer carry the weight of its travellers.
But it still carries their stories...the conversations made,
The laughs gurgled, the tears shed, the memories shared.
We just leave it for time to weather and weaken...

And seasons later I come back again,
To sit on the same park bench.
The same bench we shared the last laughter in.
The bench is cold like it has always been.
And no, the weather is not the reason.
I continue to sit even though my bones feel the chill.
Just for one last time as I ponder and think:
How many scars did I justify
Because I loved the person wielding the knife? 

---Rakshit Nair

Lost in the Familiar...

Bewildered for brief
Baffled beyond belief
Billion thoughts bottled beneath
I becalm on the boulevard of broken dreams

Suffocating in the mediocrity
While others seem to be breathing free
Can't explain what it feels like
Feels like my throat threatened with a steel knife

Screaming inside. Freedom deprived.
Dragging through days tryna survive.
Scared of my own self...don't know why
It's like I'm dead but kept alive
Enough to feel the pain of my own demise

But "real eyes realize real lies"
I was just tied to the tides of time
Soul is the ether if time is the moon
Free and limitless...like the mind
Unpredictable like the rain off-monsoon

At the end of it all, just a dream survived...

To cut my hair and change my name
To start off clean slate
To storm out of my room one day
To head off unaware of the route or way
To just relish the journey
To seek and find my home some day...
                                

---Rakshit Nair