Dear you, I'm sorry you had to hear a sigh of disbelief from my end of the phone line, when you were trying to convince me that it's not all my flesh that you fancied. The people around this place had already made me believe, I wasn't loveable.

Dear you, I'm sorry about the time none of them in your family believed your truth.  When you were sobbing into a puddle of tears and babbling that you didn't even touch her, in a gasping, broken voice. The people alongside had already deluded their thought process. I believe you. If only she confronted them too.

Dear you, I'm sorry for when you couldn't decide what you wanted for yourself, or maybe you did but couldn't stand up for yourself. You fell apart after choosing what others made you believe you should. I'm sorry for all the times, you had to choose them over yourself. For all the times you tried to love them a little more and yourself a lot less.

Dear you, I'm a tad bit sorry for all the times I had a breakdown while we were trying to make love or now and again when it made you feel like you were wrong somewhere, and you didn't even let out a sigh. I'm not very proud of my narratives with men before. consensual touch is still quite alien to me.

Dear you, I am sorry for all the times you felt like you don't belong or sharing a shoulder was a shame. No, you deserve all the love that there is. The people around you don't know better. But you and I, we do. And we will survive this. You can be whoever you feel like. Let's lift the load together shoulder to shoulder. And never stop being artists, please.

My friend puking out her Christmas dinner like a little girl trying to scrub off that uncle’s touch who tells her she is his favorite kid.
For her dad fat shames her every day.


My friend’s parents sending her to therapy because they don’t get how she can like a boy as well as a girl. Or rather don’t try to, because calling it phase is so much easier than explaining to the neighbors how that is who their daughter is. They are oblivious to what it is like to live in a home where you are treated like a victim of your existence.


My friend needs help, a little attention and someone to talk to.
His family is ashamed, how they could have done better for him, how they’re responsible for the things inside his head and I still don’t know what depression does to him, his family doesn’t like to talk about it.
They’d rather consider him possessed because anything is better than people knowing that he needs therapy and love and care. “Their son can’t be suffering from mental illness, they’re a happy family.”


My friend tells me she’s turning into her mother, and her mother let me tell you, she’s fabulous and fierce for she has been through things harsher than a lover who never says,'I love you’ but wants you to be their ***** little secret and you love them a little too much to deny. My friend, she had an anxiety attack last night for she can’t go out with her guy friends, neither talk to a classmate for too long because her boyfriend might start ****-shaming her. I disapprove and tell her she is not turning into her mother but when I sit in their living room, and aunty brings me snacks while talking to me about life within these faint green walls of the house and what did I eat for breakfast. I ask her to go out sometimes because there are so many things out there that she’d be experiencing and creating, friendship, weather, languages, people, art, emotions. And smell some sunlight in the lush greens fields. She says she’s not allowed to, like a kid calling its mother, "Ma". Her husband loves his ***. And her helplessly hazardous heart, too drained to take ‘harlot’ for a word from an alcohol-soaked throat.
The same walls that once adored their wedding photographs now question their love.


My friend’s girlfriend telling him she loves him but they can’t be together because she’s doesn’t want to be seen with him in the streets. But she seeks his warmth in the winter and leaves right before spring. He loses a little bit of himself every time she does that. He blames himself for what love does to him.


The woman who wears a heavy heart to the bed, finds it difficult to put herself to sleep, holds her dog for a little too long. Whose husband refuses to try therapy.
For I can't margin in metaphors, the agony within the wives who haven't been touched for years.
And the woman who feels a little less human after every night her husband forces himself on her. Because she's, his wife. His. Possession not prized but objectified.
The wife whose husband refuses to wear a ******, she gulps down pain every morning with the pills.
Families of these women, who were taught to think that is how the society functions and who are unwilling to unlearn.      


My friend’s brother asking her to stop wearing that short skirt around guests. There's a hole in her heart every time she remembers the traces his hands left on that infertile body of the kid that looked just like her. He pretends like it never happened.

What we had was legit,
you were not.

"When the sound of his warm breath was not enough
to fill the emptiness in our conversations,
I knew it was over."

I hope the new year,
will be a little easier than the last one,
and gets you some more sleep and even more of mom's food,
gets your room messier and home, happier,
lets you see a rainbow, and mom lets you play in the rain,
helps you find that internship or the job that sets your soul on fire,
or gets you into that school.


I hope over the next year you,

are invited to that party and have someone to go with,
meet some amazing new people, who share the same the emotions towards those mere things in life as you,
finally get to learn skate-boarding or go trekking,
see that old friend from school and get to spend some good time together,
never run out of coffee and smiles,
save enough to buy that guitar,
receive a better gift from Secret Santa.


I hope in the upcoming year you,

edit that draft,
find a publisher for your first novel,
discover your true calling,
create that Youtube channel and keep working for it,
read some good books and donate some,
travel more and grow into yourself,
drink plenty of water, and your skin gets softer,
don't give that person too much of you, who deserves none. don't carry your insecurities along from the past,
become some more self-aware and find time for yourself,
love yourself a little more and never lose hope.

Don't worry, I won't tell her about you.
Don't worry, her first word will always be "Mama".

Don't worry, I won't tell her about your deep love for strawberry milkshakes.
Though, she refuses to have milk in everything but strawberry shakes.

Don't worry, I won't bother telling her how good you were at volleyball,
I would tell her its a good sport to play.

Don't worry, I won't bother telling her science fictions are great,
I ask her to just give any of them from the shelf, a read.

Don't worry, I won't bother telling her that she can't bunk classes.
Because she is allowed to but, also read her textbooks later.
Though, she doesn't know how pridefully your attendance used to drop, then.

Don't worry, I won't bother not going to movies with her and yeah, she can choose them,
alternatively.

Don't worry,  I won't bother her to grow up.
She can always have brownies and chocolate ice cream in the middle of the night.
Though, she doesn't know how you used to be lectured for doing the same.

Don't worry, I won't bother asking her to learn singing,
she loves  Jazz dancing.
Though you never stopped moving your feet, to those Irish beats.

Don't worry, I won't bother saying how blowing bubbles and balloons were your favorite pass time.
It's her 16th birthday and all she wants is the party hall to be crowded with red and white balloons.

Don't worry, I won't bother telling her that black is the color.
I tell her that she can always wear black to dates and sometimes, they work out really well.

Don't worry, I won't bother asking her to give me a call
every once in a while.
Because she loves writing letters and mailing them to me.
Little does she know, about your handwritten notes that still hold a place in my diary.

Don't worry, I won't question her choices.
But, will for sure forbid her from falling for a man like you,  
who will soon fall for someone new.

Oh did I forget to tell you, she writes too.

"What is an indulgence?"
"A crispy sun-dried towel after a nice warm bath."
The lazy soul replied.