Now, as I am

In search of peace, when Friday comes, I walk the empty roads;
No dust, no noise, no crowds—that much is true,
But alas, there's no peace there either!
These Fridays no longer taste as sweet as before.
When a Friday used to arrive after a whole week of waiting, what joy, what excitement would flood the heart—I can't even articulate it properly anymore.
Salman Shah films on BTV or Chayachanda after the ten o'clock news, the crowd at the neighborhood pickle shop in the blazing afternoon, everyone sharing ice-cold drinks together, or sneaking out for walks while skipping the afternoon nap—none of it exists anymore. Not for me, not for my friends, not for the neighbors, not for anyone.
Have my Fridays grown old, or have I grown old myself? I can't quite tell!

There's something stuck inside my chest, some word I simply cannot speak—who shall I blame for this?
I give thanks daily for all I have, yet there's something I haven't received, something I don't even understand myself. Why does coming home leave me feeling so utterly alone? I've become far more organized than before, yet my mind grows increasingly scattered...!
Even when things happen exactly as I wished them to, why does something gnaw at me inside? This sense that something's missing, this hollow aching in the chest—why does it keep growing day by day?

I used to fear the deep of night, afraid that something would untangle in my mind and spill out! But these days it feels that way from the moment I wake up! I manage to keep it together all day, but I can't quite organize my mind. So I tidy up the house instead, leaving my heart in disarray.
Is this what they call "inexplicable despair"? I don't know. Someone chasing after something specific can say, I didn't get this particular thing, to get it I must walk down that particular road—but what road should someone walk who doesn't even know what they're chasing, what absence aches so deeply in their chest?

When overwhelming exhaustion engulfs me, I sit down to write.
Then I grow tired of writing, and with that tiredness, I sit down to write again.
What should I do, tell me?! What more can I possibly do!?
Sometimes I'm dying of thirst for tea, yet I can't bring myself to leave the writing and get up to make it.

Here in the dead of night, I sit with a strong cup of steaming tea, ready to savor it leisurely. As I drink, I'll think one by one about the stories of our beginning or our separation.
Tell me, did our separation truly happen? Or could we never really begin at all?
Ahh... this is why I don't let myself think about these things just anywhere, anytime. Whenever I do, I feel like I'm going mad.

I never understood you, and you always misunderstood me. This has been our alternating pattern. Neither you nor I could keep the promises we made to ourselves.
You know, I desperately want to return to the past now! Those days were so beautifully perfect, even thinking of them sends shivers through me!
It truly feels chaotic thinking about all this in the middle of the night. I'll never be able to tell you that I live by dying a little each day, waiting for that first and final chance to touch you, but I won't quite die.
I've stopped waiting these days. I no longer sit watching for your path. Of course, our relationship was virtual anyway. We never saw each other, never even spoke. Only those brief exchanges through messages.

You probably won't understand why, as I write this, my glasses keep fogging up. I can't say anything coherently. I can't cry because Mother is nearby.
Why don't you return to me anymore after coming home from the office? "I'm home"... you'll never know how much peace those two words brought me after a day's exhaustion. How does it feel to keep someone in unrest when just that much could bring them calm?

Can you tell me, how much more silence before I become mute?
Or how much more endurance before I have no capacity left to bear anything? I don't know.

But these days my body feels numb; it doesn't even feel like I'm alive. This is like living just for the sake of living.
I've cried until my tears ran dry, and now I can't even cry anymore.
From waiting and waiting, that irresistible pull toward anticipation—none of it works anymore.

I've decided, when the world is fully healed, I'll be the first to launch a movement to end all this waiting.
I'll shed the guise of your lover and take on the garb of a revolutionary.

You know, people only become revolutionaries when they have no time left to reclaim anything!
And today I have nothing left but this numb body of mine.

Oh, what am I saying!
Let me go take a shower.
I have to prepare myself for the revolution!