shreyasmixtape

[shreyasmixtape]

application form

[shreyasmixtape]

paper town

in the paper town where we cello taped our ripened apricot hearts onto the seams of engraved treehouses with stolen pennies beneath our copper ears, there was a crooked sign right across the street from the nursery school that cultivated cannabis in schoolgirl's far-fetched mind.

"PLEASE REMOVE YOUR SHOES BEFORE ENTERING!"

so, we run barefoot across the juniper grass in april showers with mosquito bites along the labelled skin of our famished remains. swaying back and forth on ruptured seesaws and painting ourselves blue whilst we ride on the back of paper planes through the currents of our play-act hearts.

you were so dauntless in your kaleidoscopic dreams with the whole of nebulae in the palm of your hands, that every time you flew too high or crashed too hard-the skies spit bubblegum to ground you back to the skinned soils of the earth.

ivory pearls along our moon bones and the clement veneer on snapped ankles- we recited mandarine monologues at the top of our cancerous lungs as declarations of our unruly philia.

the act of being drunk on one's sobriety and juvenile hopes and dreams- time-stamped 11:11 pm.

patient number 137986 has been clinically diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and handed a prescription for clozapine, 200mg.

anytime now, they would strap my milk ribs with gasoline-soaked shoelaces and pour hot liquor down my skinned throat.

they needed to cement the crumbling concrete of broken pavements along the remote streets of my mind.ignite the shattered cores of the rusting street lamps across the loose seams to guide me through a town i had molded with my own sweat, tears and blood poured to the depths of every crevice along the crenellations sheltering broken families with blunt knives in bleached denim because blood will always be thicker than molten clozapine.

one last rendezvous at blue hour with lemon zest in our crimson-rimmed eyes. had the stolen flower petals endured through one more fatal winter night, perhaps, we could have hopped on to bus thirteen with our salt soaked maps long forgotten under april showers and the skies at last with open arms.

as tempting as it sounds, we should have known.

paper towns could never last under april showers for long.

[shreyasmixtape]

favourite crime

toxicity dripped from his bitter lips like blue blood

i took a sip of it as it was wine

pure red poision wine

and it drowned in my throat like a tide of,

blisters

words of little simple lies and fake smiles

toxicity sunk him whole

all the things you did,

well I hope I was your favourite crime.

she was hurt -- no damaged from her past

is this why the lethal liquid follows she wherever she goes?

he is a fatal thief

throttling insecurities in his grasp

like a god chocking on prayers

and he steal,

he steals buckets of hope from others

drowning in toxicity that fills the cup of blood

he made her drink the poison wine

he swaddle his hands around she blood coating throat pushing down the shame

the shame that he had

he made her shameful

he made her ashamed

he tie his hand tighter,

her teeth stained with blue blood

and she smile

she smile at him like she hates when she still can't bring herself to

[shreyasmixtape]

scars

the more i look at it, the more it fades away

my world that once knew colour now completely mundane and grey

the tears dripping down my face

they burn bright through my skin and eyes

and every piece of clothing reminds me of your ocean ways and diamond skies

it wasn't all physical

the marks you left on my heart with your eyes outweighed the actuality of the ones your lips left on my neck and thighs

you left me cold and alone never to be held in your arms

all the marks for me to remember as i dust of my plams and claw off these scars

[shreyasmixtape]

will i still be the same when winter comes around?

the truth is-i've never understood why apples are never green in math problems. never understood why butterflies are worshipped and moths are killed, why english teachers love boys who smell like musk and recklessness, why people only write poetry about the kind of love that never stays.

i had this thought once in january.

that maybe-if i drank enough orange juice, if the glass was empty enough, if i hurled that goddamned thing against the wall hard enough, it would shatter into something softer than me.

and maybe, just maybe, i could pick up a single shard, press it into my mother's tear duct, and tell her to blink. once. twice. thrice. so she could feel what it's like to swallow glass.

she let mould grow in the corner of kitchen sinks, she never wiped it clean. she never wiped me clean.

and if she did that is all she did.

they found faith in scripture, in train tickets, in the way i shrank into the walls.

they let me rot in the name of devotion.

i don't know if it was the three-hour sermons, or the decades of sunsets that burned my skin raw, but i have softened into something shapeless.

something that drips through their fingers like i was never meant to be held.

father said-no, he spat-that i am a sick thing.

not a sick person.

and i never argued, because people are beautiful like spring.

they bloom, and they wither, and they come back again.

but i don't.

i stay dead.

but i love people. i think

i love strangers on trains, their tired eyes and cheap cologne.

i love the way someone tucks their hair behind their ear before they speak.

i love the ones who love like it's the last thing they'll ever do.

i tell mother to close my door on her way out.

i tell her seven times.

eight.

but it never sticks.

i tell her to shut the door

so i can curl into myself and bleed quiet.

so i can press my forehead against the window

and beg the rain to take me with it.

because, the sun always comes back, but i am so tired of watching it rise.

i hate people.

i hate that they are beautiful and still do ugly things anyway.

i hate that the sun keeps setting.

i hate that it is beautiful anyway.

i hope no ever sees the world like that.

[shreyasmixtape]

"I desire to do things, but what if I don't feel like doing it all? I don't want to be held accountable for my diverse being, I want to be held accountable for what I've been"

- shreya

[shreyasmixtape]

no. i won't be your muse, your tragedy, something to write about and get fame. that's unfair to me and my heart and soul. the one you possessed, you don't get to destroy and then gain from my destroyed soul and being.

[shreyasmixtape]

i cut my nails really short to the point where you could not seem them, differentiate them from my skin.

i wanted to claw out my skin in the shower so i stood is scorching hot water for a good minute, my back is red with burn marks now

[shreyasmixtape]

a bullfrog

the boys are singing lullabies that once lured a whole generation into the sea. my rope still hangs from the tree and a bullfrog babysits it.

not just my rope or the tree. it guards my thoughts so my hands will be free. they are red-stained though

not mine not mine not mine not mine not mine not mine

then who's is it asks the bullfrog.

a red right hand, he sings. a red right hand and what happened to the left, he asks.

or can only the right collect blood, he wonders. does the left just shake it off, he marvels.

some girls are dancing barefoot, watch out for the tree, they spin and spin and are coming right for you.

they danced my mind straight off the world. the girls are no longer barefoot though, the grass has turned red (i cannot get it out, the bullfrog bemoaned) and there are sixteen men swinging.

the bullfrog chirps, the boys sing and the girls dance. they're doing it for the new generation, wondering what changed with the last one.

generations that were too greedy for money, too greedy for beauty, too greedy to think about what living would mean.

it's a no-brainer as to how they all sauntered into the earth's pitfall. yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, the bullfrog sings.

another generation vilified and they only just let out their newborn cries.

[shreyasmixtape]

my oh my

he is my sunsets and tired eyes.

messy hair and grey skies,

4 a.m kisses and midnight giggles.

white sheets and bedtime riddles.

milk with a drizzle of honey, just how i like it.

preferred if you stir it with sunlight beaming,

with your head still in twirls,

from our restless nights of nothingness.

you soften you gaze with every glimpse,

as if i'm your last hope for love.

releasing the toxins, as you soak in my treats;

the taste of heart shaped candies.

pupils that dilate with a simple glare.

a body that melts with a simple touch.

a mind that obsessives over a simple boy.

i'm not so simple though.

[shreyasmixtape]

a snow white lily with blood

spilled blood

soaks into the soil of her youth as she paints pretty white roses blood red with

scrupulous strokes. gardens of fragile florets and blood thirsty thorns bloom,

brutally bewitching beneath the strangled sun.

she paints

until the brush falls from her fingertips. blood splatters and spills like ink on a

page and through the mess and the madness she doesn't notice the marzipan

moon creeping in or the teeth of nightshade corrupting her gardens with

its venom - a violent vagrant seeking sanctuary from the cold corpse of midnight.

the final white roses are plucked from the earth, the petals fall like feathers and she

holds white hot heaven in her blistered palms. innocence is stolen with the

sun, tainted and painted until the night runs red with bitter ruination, a

flightless carcass and a desperate lover. scarlet seeps and stains, nothing pure can stay.

the night may listen but deadly nightshade doesn't forgive. it courses through her

veins, dark and divine. the cards shuffle and fall to the floor, a queen

of spades or a queen of hearts. ringlets of honey rot and promises are

abandoned. the girl is gone, ruin becomes her and a crown of thorns winds

around her battlefield mind.

her majesty's

mesmerising madness could never be mirrored. she's at war with winter

and her roses are ruined - bloody, beaten and beheaded at her feet. a soul

survivor sits, fragile and fair atop rivers of blood;

a snow white lily.

[shreyasmixtape]

"and from the perspective of a man, to be a woman is both an insult and at the same time a post of post-ascension to god(dess)hood yet, I feel like lilith kissing the hooves of the devil on a monday, and I feel like someone standing on Venus on tuesday; believe me-- to be womanly, is to know every noosphere; is to know every sphere in every dimension"

[shreyasmixtape]

his pernicious painting

leila leila leila

you never understood did you?

too credulous you poor little girl.

you were his muse he would tell you,

his canvas, his inspiration.

your very silhouette was the guide.

every line, every curve, every imperfection.

but what you didn't know was

your very blood was the pigment

his pigment

you were like a serene sunset,

painted to die any minute,

a lost cause too blinded by idiocy,

a futile being unaware of the pernicious disease contaminating your lungs,

you're too gullible leila.

suddenly paint fumes scorch your throat,

frames grow smaller,

paper tears your porcelain skin,

cerulean watercolour becomes tears.

you were suffocating in yourown masterpiece.

you posed for him as he picked up the knife

but it was fine, right?

he was just sculpting you into his chef-d'œuvre.

you were his muse after all,

your sole purpose was to be

stained and sculpted

admired and adored.

you would remain smiling. still. silent.

until he was satisfied with his creation.

but what you don't understand leila

is you were never a good mix

your soul was pure white,

his dark black.

together it made grey

calm and detached,

something that lacked energy, depression and loss.

oh but you didn't see that,

did you leila?

he painted it red, you red.

the colour of love and passion

what you forgot my darling, is red

means danger

it means blood,

your blood.

[shreyasmixtape]

all my titles: (prose and poetry)

1. a meditation of loneliness

2. mirror mirror

3. across the street

4. "you scare me"

5. till death do us apart // forever

6. his pernicious painting

7. a snow white lily with blood

8. my oh my

9. a bullfrog

10. paper town

11. will i still be the same when winter comes around?

12. scars

13. favourite crime

[shreyasmixtape]

a meditation of loneliness

You're the morning fog that looms over bogs in meadows

you're the autumn breeze that tickles my neck

you're a ghost and you haunt me

the love we had is not quiet alive anymore

a turbulent passion, a torrid affair but i still see you, vividly, in my memories you visit me in my dreams every night it seems

I hold on to you, i let you go, i tell the stars about you, i cuse your name to the wind, i use the love letters you send me as an ashtray

i put our polaroids in a photobook that i'll give to my grandkids one day

if they ever ask me what love means

i'll show them pictures of you smiling with a mischievous look in your eyes holding a heavy book in one hand and the puppy in another

pictures of me laughing while flipping you off as I flip through your photo albums

pictures of us taken in front of the mirror while we brush our teeth or going to sleep or backing cookies

there's a photo of us in front of a famous bridge somewhere, our eyes closed and lips touching, my hands caressing the back of your neck

i searched every box, every cabinet, but I could no longer find it

mysteriously it disappeared around the same time as you left

now I'm alone

i get drunk and dance by myself to your favourite songs and get high and lay in bed staring at the silhouette where you once danced with me

[shreyasmixtape]

"you sink yourself into the motel translation, your body pliant beneath mattress like a prayer lost in my spine, and your fingers tangle in my curls as if they are rosary beads, as if there is salvation woven between each strand. you map my shoulders down to my chest with your fingertips like you are heading south when the sun comes up, like you are tracing a path out of this world."

[shreyasmixtape]

— sylvia plath