Ted Baker London

Ted Baker London. It’s incredible how memory can fuse two disparate entities into one, which is why that brand is you now.

You are the red of the lipstick and the thick lip liner in the box with the quaint art on it. Ted Baker London. It was a gift for me. I cherished it of course, so much so that I never used it save once or twice and that too because we’d stopped speaking. With you no longer sacred, your gifts lost that sworn oath halo too.

It’s hard to remember you except as that box and the lipsticks you gave me. It’s hard to remember the details of who you were that made you so precious to me then. I remember what ended the friendship between us exes. I remember the fulfilment of a promise your dad planted within you. I watched you dig deep into your heart each day and remove more of the love you had for yourself and value the nothing left behind because it made you “stronger”. You believed it like people do the gods their parents teach them. You were trying to create a star in that intense vacuum but ended up a dark hole that no light could escape.

Did you ever find that trophy? And the wife that went along with it? Things that shine so bright that you’d finally shine too if you stood close enough? I remember you didn’t like that shirt I’d gifted you. It was a double-shaded, sheeny party wear number. Correction, you didn’t like it once all those shades of London had seeped into you – greys, whites, blacks, blues.

Perhaps that’s why you’d fancied my sister for a bit? Isn’t that how they say it there? “I fancy you.” You were confused. You were lonely. Later, it never happened. Still you managed Ted Baker, because it was us. People trying to heal from the clumsy, tactless damage of a first love. We never could. It’s funny how fancying an ex’s sister bombs a bridge already on the brink of destruction.

You messaged me randomly after years, two or three years ago, telling me that your mother had finally gotten her poems published. Her dream. I had politely asked if I could get hold of a copy. You’d said you’d send it to me but we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. And that was all.

Still, walking by the Ted Baker store, seeing the clothes there and how expensive they were I was reminded of how you’d just started with your first job and how it would’ve been steep perhaps, for you, at the time. But you wanted to buy me something nice, show me you could afford it and show that all your hard work meant something. I would always be the girl your new girls would hear about in some way or the other. You put me on a ramshackle pedestal where only if I held my breath would it not tumble down. But ultimately I took a deep breath.

Sky Memory

Ever had the sky and the milieu ask you to remember something?

The evening first turned sepia, like the beginning of nostalgia. A gentle nudge to remember something beautiful. I looked up at the curves and swishes and fluff of clouds and saw the dark flitting shapes of birds. The wind had them aflutter, tragic that their panic looked like fierce shadows moving against the sepia-grey background. I looked up, my elbows propped up on the ledge.

I realised, not for the first time, that people don’t look up usually. I don’t know why. The firmament is the most ethereal art gallery available to us and it’s free. When I looked up today and saw the birds fly by and the clouds move and the wind make it all play, I was in the now. I wasn’t thinking of what had happened or what was going to, I was just a speck under the giant mass of the sky, watching it change colour and scene.

The colour then deepened to pale red, all buildings awash with the same shade. Now the memory was insistent asking to be remembered, but I didn’t know what to remember. The world as it was at that moment was perfect. So the tint was really not helping its case.

Finding Those Lost Melodies

I’m not sure if I want to remember you, or remember that feeling. Carved-up spaces, empty cloisters, cobwebbed alcoves: a haunted cathedral remains where once was a heart that belonged to you. Its ceiling falling in bits and pieces, water from countless thunderstorms trickling, pouring in.

The space that this cathedral takes up, reminds me of you. Beyond the turn of now, at the periphery of my periphery you lie. Sometimes I wonder if I use you to feel. Like scraping a wound to keep it unhealed. Sometimes I wonder if you remember me, or whether the moat you built has some enchantments and evil-eyes to ward off thoughts of my existence.

Why you? Out of all the people I’ve known and loved. You, who is not an ex-lover. You, who was a soul friend and something deeper than a usual anything. You, whom I wrote a song for. You, who eventually left never to look back again.

It’s raining outside. It’s the 2 AM ache. I wrote a poem about it once on this blog. Did you read it? I’d once told you about this space, you and two others. One of the other two forgot. And you erased. Only one left.

But I do wonder if you read my words still, or are those banished from your world too. Probably the latter. You look happy with her, living through ethereal moon nights and sunsets that look like the prime jewel upon the sky’s crown. You fought hard for your fairytale and found it at last. I just didn’t imagine that my role was that of the vanquished monster, and the princess was someone else.

Look at me, thinking about you, after all these years, during a storm in the AM night. The way you sunk into me and the way I allow you to sink deeper each time I think of you, is what curses are made of. I wonder if we’ll ever meet again. Or will the ring on her finger be the full stop to it all?

I’d just like to get my songs back because you broke so many within me when you left. I now have tune-less words that don’t feel like they belong to me. Maybe just once, if we were to meet and speak with kindness, I could find those lost melodies again.

The hotel guest

Is it all right to admit that you still wander the corridors of my mind?

Like a guest at a remote hotel, the kind you find and forget,

A sudden, grey apparition along a road as dark as charred wood,

That guest who refuses to vacate his room, or pay his dues.

And each time you tread at leisure through these hallways,

The yellow lights flicker as I try to lock all doors in futility.

Your atoms remember mine, even if your mind forgets,

Do you let me out of the suite I occupy in your head?

To wander free in your hallways as you wander through mine?

To run my hand casually along the shifting colours of your walls?

Or do I sit on the cream sofa, waiting for you to unlock the door,

After you’ve loved your pretty painted dream of 5 days for years?

Oh, but you try and you try, to erase this room,

All records of it you try to burn,

You pull down the words, poetry that shaped you,

You pull down the connections, social media block.

But what will you do about the room, dearest friend?

Because the strange thing about us is,

And has always been,

When you are in my head

I know I am in yours.

Finding You.

I remember how slowly you’d eat your food. Like contemplating the meaning of life after each bite. To make waiting matters worse you would pile up a mountain of food on your plate. I met someone today who does the same. I remembered you.

 

Crossing roads has never been my forte, which is the definition of an understatement. But you know that, you have crossed roads, come back and waited until I deemed the road fit to cross and then accompanied me. Someone helped me cross the road today. I remembered you.

 

Smoke bangles? The ones you’d make and I’d wear for the two seconds that would take for them to float up and away? We never tired of the game. Today someone discussed making those during a smoke break at work on the terrace under the open sky. I remembered you.

 

Remember how when I was stressed, even though you were in a different city, you’d send me fattening goodies for a quick pick-me-up? I’d complain but adore you for it nonetheless. A friend did that for me today. I remembered you.

 

The other day I heard one of our many songs: about stones moulded from fire, about the happy, lost ones, about raging loves. One was on the radio, the other someone played in office, and the third one played in the car. I remembered you. Each time.

 

One time someone was talking about the formation of planets, and began to talk about Jupiter. That planet. The host to all our tea parties, to our bored escapes. They spoke of how the storms on Jupiter have been going on since its inception. I remembered you.

 

The other day someone spoke of football, and I remembered how I’d memorised football trivia and rules to flummox you. You’d then explained all the leagues to me and told me about your favourite players. You also informed me that I’d forever be a Chelsea fan. And that I hated Manchester United. So naturally when a bunch of boys were discussing football, I defended Chelsea with all my heart. And remembered you.

 

I overheard someone make a call from the plane the other day. We had all boarded and were waiting for take off. I remembered how you’d called it our tradition where we had to call each other once we had boarded the plane. Now I stare at my phone screen and remember you.

 

Memory is an old picture, beginning to fade.

 

But I find you: your smile, your eyes, your laugh, your tears in pieces and bits of the world around me. In the brightness of a 3/4th moon, and stubbed cigarettes from which smoke still curls up, in the dry rotis from the canteen, and in the black polish of a shoe.