the soul mate thesis. ( a vindication of the self)

 there once was this story i had heard.

about plato. 

how he had said that humans were born with four arms, four legs and two heads.

and how zeus, to punish them for their sins, split them in half.

destined to walk the earth finding the other half.

i have a theory to counter his story.

imagine the humans go almost all their lives searching for their missing limbs,

having to adjust with their own bodies.

will they want to conjoin themselves to something 

once known, 

now,

alien ?

feels like a hoax.

feels uncomfortable.

-

a tutorial on how to find your other half:

find them on the park benches holding a flower 

a flower that is dead.

talk to them.

you'll find them to be a nice person.

too nice.

you'll let them graze their finger against yours.

only for a second.

but the second seems to have surpassed.

now a decade.

an old dyscalculia.

still hanging in the desk of your old classroom.

you'll show them the battered limbs.

the ones that have carried you through the seas.

and you'll believe them.

all the letters.

all the things they say.

and you'll smile.

and you'll conjoin.

and you'll feel your skin merging.

the pain.

the elasticity

and the mutating

and the disfiguring

and the loss of self.

you'll start to realise slowly.

a painful slow.

and when you do understand, 

it'll be like a soft murderous pain.

a silent, vicious one.

where'd all the time go?

whenever you catch a glimpse in the mirror,

it'll be a horrid two headed monster.

and all the letters with the mould,

and the things they said,

and the smiles

will have rotten.

it will all have been in your head.

and you will cry.

each tear sets you free.

each tear burns the skin in half.

separates.

every drop of tear.

-

i pause.

i smile.

i seemed to have proved my point wrong.

the body hungers for home.

a justified piece that completes. 

-

the irony is that, 

you do it again.

because the tears quench the thirst for a pain you left behind.

the tears set you free.

running across the horizon.

and they call you a runner.

not a survivor.

not an addict.

not typhlotic.

a runner.

-

reminds me of the runner coils on the railings.

the yellow chipped railings.

the fragile velvet coils.

shonai ogulo dhorish na chire jabe.

bhetore ae

mosha kamrabe.

-

 

i miss lying on a bed with a soft white floral lightbulb overhead.

with the faint buzz of sports commentary in the background.

a familiar smell my father would freshen.

an ease my mother would suffocate.

i miss knowing that i was whole.

i miss being whole.