talktomysilentheart

[talktomysilentheart]

You know, when someone breaks your heart and you are left with so many jagged ill-fitting pieces that you put together or never do but always you are left different from the beginning. I was left cold, very cold. Something in me, the warmth I think or the innocence, had crept away silently when I put my broken heart together and that was okay, I liked the cold and it gave me time to think, time to work and a lot of time to work to keep myself warm. I always did feel cold though, at the thought of those long months piecing myself together that turned into years, 2 actually, and that final point when I looked inside and I saw myself standing there – standing tall, crooked, fatter than I remembered, cold for sure, wary, uncertain and poised to fight. 

That was my new heart and I learned to like it just the same. I liked how it protected me by letting me form no attachments, I reveled in its protection, its steely gaze wasn’t full of the starry warmth I associated with the earlier heart but this one worked better, more efficient it was and with less painful jerks in my chest cavity. Sometimes I even forgot it was there, I certainly behaved like it did not exist. It did its job, beating through me, perfectly and I never found any fault with it although it did talk less and less, it went silent one day and I did not care enough to ask why. My brain had gone the way of my heart too and by the time 2 years passed, I realised all my organs had fallen silent and I had forgotten to notice. I said to myself, since nobody would talk to me, I began talking to myself, so I said to myself, that why is it necessary that they must talk and hum? They do their work well, let them be. Zindagi zindadili ka naam, murda dil ka khak jiya karte hain. But I let them be anyway. I was breathing and living and after some time surviving, no matter how hard you try sometimes surviving is enough. So, I did just survive.

Then I met someone whose heart still spoke to him, and his kidneys sang and his liver was always full of good humour. I met him and after a very long time, I felt a trickle of warmth. I was very surprised, I tapped against the ice-wall that guarded my heart and I tried to ask it a question but the cold did not let me speak, it froze my words into the air. Maybe I just imagined it. Then I met him again, the heart singer, and I could hear a boom from deep within the ice. This time I did not get excited, I just wore my armour, my tattoos and my word-swords and got ready to fight whatever new icy Kraken lurked in the depths of my heart. After a couple of months, I could feel that whatever was happening inside, it was being mirrored in other spaces of my body. That is when I decided to drop my armour. My ice melted away, our hearts sang together. How amazing it was not to have to defend myself. I gave in to the warmth. I gave in happily. And the warmth crept up me like ivy on a tower and I did not use my word-swords, I did not fight with my silence-lancers, I let it creep and creep till the last of the ice melted away and I was summer again. 

Summer lasted as summers do, for a short while.

You know, when someone breaks your heart with their carelessness and mishandling, you sometimes forgive them or you never do. But you always remember the before and the after, your life divided into many vanished civilizations, markings of which only make sense to you. The forgiveness comes, for me, based on the person who commits the sin, and sometimes I forgive and forget though forgetting is harder than forgiving always. I did forgive the first time my heart broke, I forgave not easily but sooner than expected and I never imagined hurt or similar bodily harm befalling that instigator of my icy heart. The second time, I could not, not because I had had enough or because I was angry but because this time, my mother broke my heart.

You learn to fight the ones who come from outside, you learn to be wary when you are away from home, you step with care over every leaf and stone, or at least I did. I always watched for danger from the outside, you could never not be prepared enough as far as the outside was concerned. I forgot the dangers within, I forgot the sharp corners and concealed daggers within my own home.

And most surprisingly, I was not watching out for danger from within because I thought that after seeing me put my broken self together, pushing myself over days that clung like powdered glass, my family would never dream of making me haul myself over hot licking coals again, and again, they would not do that I said, and my mother would never do that, never willingly and not even unwillingly. But she did.

And now I am broken again, right where I started. Hot coals, powdered glass, and tear-streaked oceans await me on restless nights spent tending to burns, stab wounds and that is just on the outside. There is nothing inside. My heart left, before it could be broken again, it collected all its major fragments and left for pastures not filled with tongues of flame. Greener pastures. All I have left are broken pieces too broken to be put together now, they cling to me with the glass, diamond-shine and moonlit dazzle. People hardly notice silence. That is what eats me from within, for my heart taught my parts to speak, and now that it has gone, they never speak, not in remembrance nor in forgetting.