Chaos is a Friend of Mine

Things to do this summer:

• Paint all my walls black
• Get a new journal
• Put up the abstract paintings
• See a new therapist
• Publish the love poems
• Plant a new row of honeysuckles

to be continued…

On the first day of the first week of every new season, I write a to-do list. I’ve spent afternoons walking through my backyard, scouting for fallen flowers and interesting leaves. I never told her so, but when I couldn’t find dead ones, I’d pluck the ones I thought were as beautiful as her and press them into dried art. But, back to my to-do list. Every third month I go to the tiny art store around the corner and buy myself a new black diary with checked sheets and a lock on it. I like numbers, it keeps me sane. She told me I was crazy when I painted dark digits by my bathtub, and I felt it deep inside when she chanted the verses of the god above and shook me by the shoulders. She’s like that. I once read in the book I found on the seventh row of the last shelf in the bookstore on four saint’s street, that birth-givers say things they don’t mean, words sharpened at the tip to stab you in the heart but coated with potions to heal it soon after.  Some say it’s magic, but I now know that I don’t believe that. It only gets better, my last therapist told me. But when I unleashed the words in my head into the words she wanted me to spill, she screamed terrible things and asked my mother to take me away. I never saw her again. Three nights ago, I sat by the gravestone by the lake and warmed my fingers to the ashes of every piece I’ve written, the history of my mess. After every one of the eighty-nine hundred thousand words had burned down to nothing, I picked up the dust and walked into the water for I couldn’t let it survive, I’d be damned- or so she said.

Two nights ago, I picked up my pen to write again and felt the power of the goddess as she moved my hand along the blackened sheets of paper. Ice to fire, the desire quelled itself. She found my journals, from the deepest corner of the sixth trunk in the darkest part of my room. If I lift the cloth tied to my arm, there’s a mark burned in, a punishment for disobeying her. The murky waters in my thoughts drown everything else out and nights after nights I try to explain, and no one listens. They say fate leaves none behind but at every turn, I see myself isolated from the rest, a rotten seed amongst the ripe. And even as I stand there, left out, I can hear the wind gushing in my ear, tearing at my conscience and telling me horrible things. Is this what it feels like? To live with chaos etched in my being? Perhaps, it will all go away. And there is no hope. She comes again.

With the touch of her hand, all my words disappear, almost like I was never here at all.

gone, again.

Arzoo Afreen Jaini

Hi, I'm Arzoo. Dreamy, grounded, aspiring; from one moment to another. When I write, I'm someone I want to be, and so I do. I like poetry, prose and everything with words and feelings. I find solace in articulating emotions. Whether fictional or not, writing helps me connect with people and I write in the hope that someone, somewhere, finds comfort in my words and in the belief that they are not alone, not truly.

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