- All the night's stars live on, buried in the depth of daylight!...Will you remember? If your heart ever asks, will you come looking for me?
- Did you eat at night? Or are you just composing verses endlessly?
- You could have read it all—what I wrote. Never mind, it doesn't matter! You never read anything I write! Either you're busy, or you're busy with me. Even the busiest person in the world finds time for someone they want to find time for. Not everyone gives time to everyone, and it isn't always possible. The most precious thing we can give anyone is time. For the want of just this time, how many things in life go undone, no matter how desperately we wish to do them. When we ask someone for their time, the first thing we must ask ourselves is: why should they give me theirs? Even if they weren't occupied in that moment, they could just stare at the ceiling, and still—why would they spare me even twenty-seven seconds? Who am I to deserve his time? When asking time from a stranger, you have to know the trick. I don't know that trick. Giving or not giving time depends on three things: relationship, willingness, and opportunity. Perhaps when you find time for me, you already have other things waiting—things you enjoy doing or things you must do. And even then, if only I could create some reason—some compelling reason—that would make you carve out time for me no matter what, I could do that. But I can't, or I'm choosing not to. I deserve only your busy face. It's perfectly natural! I won't write another word for you again.
- I've read it twice, ma'am!! You're very angry, ma'am! I was the one who knocked, wasn't I? Do you understand what it means to knock on someone's door after shattering your ego a thousand times? Huh!!
- You didn't read that part about the 'Shabda' film! Why don't you read what I write? Because I can't write like you? Is there no sense of life in my writing at all? Is everything I write just rubbish? I haven't gotten much in life, but I've known suffering! Doesn't that count for something? Who is a better teacher than suffering? Have I learned nothing, trudging through all these exhausted years?
- I really have read it! Everything. Twice!
- Then tell me—where was the anger in that text? Mention the lines! You call everything I say anger, expectation! Do those two ideas alone contain all that I express? Isn't there a simple expression of feeling there at all? You never read my lines with love. Perhaps I don't know how to say 'I love' in verse, but does that mean I don't love? Love doesn't cling to my lips—it clings to my eyes. Why don't you understand?
- These are your misunderstandings. You haven't yet sent me a text that I could pass by without reading. I walk through dust, but I hold the gems close to my chest!
- It's not a misunderstanding—my understanding is right! Go on, tell me which lines had anger in them!
- I made a website. Give me your thoughts on it.
- Is the image on the site made with apps? Or is it hand-drawn art?
- Hand-drawn. A younger brother, out of love, drew it for me in twenty-two hours of labor. He didn't just draw my face in that picture—he drew what's inside me. I can't fathom how people manage to draw someone without ever truly knowing them, capturing only their appearance.
Those who draw well understand the object first, then draw the object’s form. Without that, too much remains hollow.
—Do you have the painting? Or did she leave it with you? Say something… won’t you? Everyone on campus has seen you! Only I haven’t! And the thirst that’s stuck in my eyes because I haven’t—if only you knew!
—I’ll give you the painting. Tell me your email. It means a lot to me. I give precious things to you…
—I don’t have an email! A friend opened Facebook for me. Ha ha ha… Don’t ask why I laughed, I won’t tell! I knew which of your things might please you! That’s why… never mind, I won’t say!
—It means so much to me! Really! For two reasons. One, because the person who made it is precious to me. Two, because what they made is precious to me.
—Is the painting at home?
—How does it strike you? It’s from a long time ago, actually. There’s no hard copy of it, only an email version. The artist never gave me the print, and I never asked for it. Sometimes it’s better not to keep precious things with yourself. Better to leave them with someone who will care for them deeply, precisely because they’re precious to me. I love binding my beloved to the duty of keeping safe what I love.
—The painting is very beautiful… Should I show you some of my pictures? What do you think of this one? Even if you’re lying, say it’s beautiful! I’ve sent you all my favorite photos together. Now tell me… beautiful! Am I not lovely to look at? Can’t people love me? Am I among those who can’t be loved? Tell me, do you know anyone like that? Someone no one has ever loved, no one ever will love—have you ever met such a person?
—I love you, be well! Truly, the photos are so beautiful! It makes me want to speak like Sunil Gangopadhyay: *Light has come and stands as light’s own image…* You really do look strikingly beautiful! It’s not right to say more than this. With pictures like these, saying more only makes it less.
—That piece of yours… *Song of a River*… it was so beautiful! I’ve been angry these past few days, didn’t visit your profile. Went today and saw it. Left a comment too. Such a fierce blow struck my chest… right after finishing it! That piece about society!
—Which piece, dear?
—The one in English. So beautiful!
—Oh. That’s from long ago, found it rummaging through an old diary. Ah, once upon a time I lived with such a beautiful heart! What are you doing? Are you alone?
—Reading your work. I’m always alone! I don’t mix with just anyone, but when I find someone to my liking, I try to connect. Staying alone is far, far better than mixing with just anyone. And besides, I came into this world alone!
—But I’m here beside you…
—Not everyone reads your work with the care I do. Most of your readers are donkeys! They comment even under love poems—*Sir, I’m weak in English, won’t you give me a weakness-breaking pill, sir! Before you die, even then you’ll hold your hand and say: Sir, before you go, teach us some shortcut techniques for those bathtub problems, please!*… But you—you’re really beside me! You’re not even within arm’s reach of me, yet I can feel you. Those within reach, you can’t even touch. And those beyond reach, you can hold them tight and spend eternity that way. I love you in a hundred forms, a hundred times over!
—Then touch!
—I do touch! In feeling, in imagination! You remain silent, yet dwell in my heart.
—Touch me hard!
When you hold someone tight against your chest, stones tumble down one by one from within—doubt, hesitation, all of it drains away, and some kind of infinite power settles over you like a benediction! Silence alone won’t do it; we must touch, we must cling!
— Don’t leave me! How many times must I say it?
— I’m here, hold me tight against your chest!
— Even knowing you’ll go, I hold on, I grip with all my strength. If we quarrel, I knock again! How your every word churns the insides of my chest—I cannot find words for it. Even when you speak in anger, I love it! Your indifference, your rage, your contempt…I love it all. I want to pull you close, I want to gaze at you with unblinking eyes. See, I haven’t left, I don’t know why, but I’ve stayed!…Keep me right there in the center of your chest where your mind dwells, where your heart beats…keep me there and I swear I’ll never go anywhere in this life! Do you hear my heartbeat? It calls your name like a madwoman, over and over! Today it knows no rest, no fatigue. When will this night end, when will it ever end! What’s happening now is the pure outpouring of love, nothing more! For a moment I’ve shattered completely. I have nothing left to call my own! I’ve become like water before one person! The whole world knows me as stubborn, impossible, ill-tempered! And here I am, that very person, sitting like a street dog at your feet! The girl who never cared for anyone’s words—she’s the one now chanting your every whispered word like a sacred mantra! I know I’ll get nothing from this. How can I bear the agony of hope wound so tight around my heart, the torment of it all going unfulfilled? Your every word unsettles me! It keeps me unsettled for all eternity! Isn’t that love? Is there anything truer, more beautiful, more pure than this?
— Good morning!
— How poignantly you can write! Good afternoon!
— Which piece are you talking about?
— That one about society and people, rules and regulations, impulsive instincts, all of that. Have you eaten?
— Tell me the title. Yes, I have. Have you?
— “Looking back at myself.” Yes, I have. You’re a natural writer! My favorite writer! May you be victorious! May your pen and inkwell be golden. And that cover photo is beautiful! Aesthetic beauty!
— Good night!
— How do I look in the new profile picture?
— You look absolutely beautiful. How are you? Good morning! Where are you now? What are you doing?
— Going to teach! I don’t want to go. What do I do? I can’t figure it out.
— Go. Life doesn’t move as we wish it to! We teach, we study. Both activities weigh down the body with lethargy, yet how different they are from each other!
— What a mess! I really don’t want to go! I keep planning to leave an hour earlier, yet here I am! I’m caught between two choices on every decision in life! My whole life has become nothing but “To be or not to be, that is the question.”
— Always that is the only question!
— Since yesterday I’ve just been thinking, what should I do, what shouldn’t I do! One moment I think, let me do this. The next moment I think, but what if doing this leads to that? Tell me, can I ask you something?
Say there’s fire in front of you, you know that if you put your hand in it will burn, yet you keep your hand right there? Your hand is burning before your eyes, yet you don’t pull it away. What do you call a person like that? Senseless? Or a fool?
— We call such a person helpless. One who walks toward death knowing it’s certain—what else could they be but helpless!
# Helplessness
Everyone sees him as foolish, incompetent, worthless—they say such things. Only he knows how utterly helpless a person must become to willingly embrace death itself!
— Yes, ‘helpless’ is exactly the word. No other word fits this moment for me. How does one overcome such helplessness? I trap myself in just such a helpless state, day after day! Sinking deeper into it, slowly. And I cannot, for the life of me, find my way out!
— Speak freely. What is happening to you?
— If you have time, would you please answer the questions below?
Suppose you find yourself mentally entangled in something. Whether by neglect or mistreatment, you cannot seem to avoid this person, no matter what! Yet you know that the more attached you become to this, the more mentally damaged you grow. There is nothing here but suffering to gain. Suppose the person you are doing this for does not think of you as anyone special—just takes you like anyone else. Your presence or absence changes nothing for them! But if they were to leave, it would drain all meaning from your entire life! Where there is nothing to gain but pain and self-harm, what sense is there in remaining? Tell me.
— Speak openly!
— I have told you. I have said what there is to say.
— You are not speaking openly! Tell me!
— What is what I have written, then?
— I have read it. It all seems like smoke and shadows! Multiple people come to mind. Be specific!
— I am asking for the answer to that very question. Please. If you cannot speak now, think it over and tell me later. Take your time, but I need that answer. Do not answer on a whim!
— I have a certain personal philosophy on this matter. In short, I think this is natural and beautiful.
— This lingering suffering is beautiful? Tell me the truth! I need to reach a decision! I am exhausted, trapped in this ‘To be or not to be.’ I truly cannot bear it anymore!
— This is the truth. This is how things are. It has happened to me too. Many of the people you know—ask them, and you will learn—the same has befallen them. This is nothing new. The human heart naturally strays onto the wrong path. This wandering is normal.
— What should I do? That is what I want to know! Cannot I receive some guidance, dear? Is death the only fate of love?
…Is the picture not beautiful? Just like me!
— It truly is beautiful! One wants to reach out and touch it.
— Have you eaten? What do you make of this picture of yours?
— It is a most beloved picture to me.
— Really? You simply love to look away while taking photographs?
— Yes.
— If I were to send you a gift, would you accept it?
— What sort?
— Say, something of your choosing! I would certainly send nothing that would shame you! Will you not accept my gift? By now, surely you know me! Why ask so many questions! A bird has finally found freedom! But alas, by then it had forgotten how to fly. The bird will not leave, does not wish to leave—it wants to return to its cage of its own accord! It will go nowhere now, it will stay here. The bird has nowhere else to go. Even if it did, it has no strength to reach there. It has forgotten how to fly, it has chosen to remain captive. It no longer has the strength or the will to live free. What suffering! What suffering! After being separated from you, I will forget how to love. Don’t leave me! How would I forget you? Please suggest me…I do not know what spell I am caught in!
Why did I fall in love so completely with someone in just seventy-five days? Someone I never even saw, and yet I’ve bound myself to them in such longing? Who says you cannot love someone from the virtual world? Let them come and see Niraja once! Mental maturity comes through wounds. Haven’t I received my share of blows in life? Which other girl has had to grow up enduring such torment? And yet why did I commit such a mistake? Tell me—can one rise again at this age, after being struck like this?
You never write anything for me except a word or two! Does that mean I should assume you don’t actually read what I write? Or are you avoiding me? Perhaps this suits you, perhaps this is natural for you. But your such indifference torments me! I haven’t learned to swallow pain like you do, not yet. Mountainous suffering from so many others barely touches me, and yet your slightest neglect crushes me, tears me apart! I’ve mistreated you to forget you, blocked you everywhere, unfriended you. But I couldn’t do it! Once I’ve let someone sit so firmly in my heart with such tenderness, what good is removing them from every corner of my phone? Is this just the foolishness of my Facebook? Or is it love arriving at the wrong hour? Which one is it? I have so little control over myself. Why am I like this?
And there you sit, thinking of me like any other person among five, feeling nothing for me at all! You don’t even read my messages. Why did God send you to me again? Only to hurt me once more? What wrong have I done? Why must I keep falling in love with the wrong people? Why does love’s fire keep burning me this way? Love requires two hearts! What happens with one-sided love is—irritation! I’m irritating you, isn’t that so? If that’s how you see it, then tell me directly: don’t bother me this way! I’ll leave! I know that much, and yet I want to hear it from you. Of course, you’ve said many times that I disturb your peace of mind! Write it once with your own hand and send it: don’t trouble me this way! I really will go away! Just two lines… why won’t you write them? When you see that the other person is making a mistake by loving you, write them just two lines for their sake and push them away completely! It’s such a simple thing! You write so much on Facebook, and you cannot write two lines for this wretched person tormented by your indifference? I’ve received nothing in life—today I’m asking you for just one thing: explicit neglect. Won’t you give me even this? You can stand on stages and inspire thousands of people with dreams, and you cannot tell this troublesome, suffering soul these simple words to make her go away?
Please, don’t stay silent! Speak! I don’t want to see you in my world anymore! I’m exhausted. I’m giving up. I’m begging you with folded hands. In these seventy-five days, I haven’t slept properly for even seventy-five hours! I haven’t even opened my law books once! To survive, I desperately need my job. People like me, however humble, we need a job. Will you not even let me have that? Your presence is turning my world upside down! I think—perhaps it was the Banolata Sen of Natore who once gave me a moment’s peace! Why did you come to be my Banolata Sen, the peace in my life?
# Why do such people always come into my life—those who cannot stay, whose hands I cannot hold to walk the rest of my days?
A brief reply from you, and I’m seized with laughter! I could spend the entire day gazing at that small message. I need nothing more to be happy—even two words from you shine like priceless gems to me. Yet you have not valued me in the slightest. You will remain in my life like “Memories in March,” while I—I will be your “Memories in November.”
From a distance, I clasp your feet and tell you: truly, I have fallen in love with you. I lie prostrate before you, looking into your eyes, saying: truly, I love you. A person’s tears do not lie. Do not turn me away! I do not wish to stay with you, I ask for no rights, I will make no demands—only, do not cast me out! Please, humiliate me. Humiliate me so thoroughly (just as before) that I forget even your name! Cannot love me—cannot you slap this unruly girl’s cheeks hard enough twice? Cannot draw me close—cannot push me away? Cannot make space—cannot throw me out?
Do this for me, please, please, *please please, please please, please please*. I will not remain suspended in this “To be or not to be”! I cannot walk this path, nor can I go that way. It is too much! Enough is enough! No more!
I have decided—I will no longer use Facebook. There was a time I suffered terribly. You know, I could not sit for the fortieth BCS exam, all because of this. All my classmates took the first BCS, and I shut my door and wept like a madwoman. I stood in the middle of the street before a bus. It is strange—I was never hit. Why, I do not know. Perhaps if I died, there would be no one to mourn me, so God himself will not let me die. You think of me as you do—inhumane, stubborn, and such—but truly I am none of these things. I am an acutely sensitive person who wounds herself. Dark shadows mark the space beneath my beautiful eyes (everyone says they are beautiful) only from crying all night long. My life is passing away in tears.
I loved my father more than anyone in this world. I never had the chance to tell him so. By my father’s name, I swear to you: I fell in love with you without thinking of anything. Deeply. But I understand now—I must leave this behind. If I do not escape from here, everything will be destroyed. I will be utterly ruined.
Whom have I loved? Someone beyond my reach, someone who does not even read my words properly, someone who is like a television celebrity to my life—distant, untouchable. I will forget you. I wish to forget you. Wish to. Please, humiliate me instead! Please! Humiliate me deeply! Or else tell me: you shameless girl, why do you bother me so? Have you no shame? Are you a streetwalker? Get away from here! Please, say something like that! For my own good, push me away from you. If one person is absent from your life, it will harm neither you nor the world. Why did I write “you”… you will feel nothing at all.
Perhaps I wanted to believe that if I left, you’d feel at least a little something, that you’d miss me, that something would go wrong in your life…so I wrote all this down.
– Good morning! Why are you so agitated? You love me, it’s not as if you’ve committed murder.
– Is this all you have to say in reply to so much I’ve written? Fine, then I suppose I have to worry about myself now!
– Does writing more words equal more love? Where did you pick up this theory?
– I don’t love well…is that it? I have no desire to sit here with scales measuring love! I need to reach a decision! And I need to reach it fast! Block me. Now! Immediately! Look, there’s one thing I simply cannot understand—what’s the problem with blocking me? There was a time when you’d block people so readily. You’d block them at the drop of a hat, so many people lived on your blocklist and they hated you in droves! You yourself once told me there are at least twenty-five thousand people on your blocklist! Am I not even worthy of being blocked by you? Just because you used to block people carelessly in childhood doesn’t mean you can’t do it now, surely!
Are you listening to me at all? I want to get separated from your name, fame everything. You don’t listen to the agony of a wounded heart. You are a selfish man! If you had listened to the untold pain, you would have felt me, you would have realized the intrinsic meaning of the line—Memories in November! I want to forget you. Help me forget you. I’m begging you on my knees! Block me! Start hurting me with your forceful words!
– Why won’t you pick up the phone?
– I don’t want to…and I won’t. You will ever be remembered as Memories in November! How would I forget you? No genuine lover can ever do it. I won’t forget you, believe me.
– Why won’t you pick up the phone?
– Block me!…Simply block me!
– It’s starting again! What happens to you sometimes?
– I’m like this! I’m bad. I’m a madwoman…the madwoman in the attic! Block me! Why are you calling me? Don’t call me. What’s the problem with blocking? You’ll block me right now! Right now! Have you gotten anything good from me in these three months? You haven’t, have you! Then why won’t you let me go? Everything about me is bad, bad, and bad! Whatever you want to say, whatever you want to humiliate me with…write it and send it. Pour your fiercest rage down upon me! When you call and insult me nicely, it hurts! I won’t pick up the phone. Write whatever you have to say here and send it. I’m human too! I hurt too, I weep till my chest heaves!
– Facebook blocking! Does it matter at all? As I’ve told you many times, it’s just a feature of a website. It signifies nothing to me.
– It means everything to me! If you block me, I won’t be able to see you anymore. Block me! I’m begging you again, on my knees!
– Ha ha ha! Why has this Facebook thing become so big in your life?
– Because I received the biggest blow of my life from this place, and I’m about to receive the second one by my own choice! Don’t laugh! Block me today! Please, stop deriving this sadistic pleasure! I am serious! You have no right to laugh at people’s emotions.
– Let me give you some advice. Don’t center your feelings and your sense of control around Facebook.
– But that’s what you’re doing to me! So you don’t even read what I say, let alone feel it!
Think about it—why should I keep reading all this? If my feelings were confined to Facebook, I could have loved dozens of boys! If I kept you locked away on Facebook alone, I wouldn’t have nursed such fierce affection for you! After all this humiliation, I wouldn’t be sending you these mountains of texts!
– What’s wrong with you sometimes?
– And why did you call me? To insult me with honeyed words! It’s so hard for you to speak kindly to me! Always the same refrain—I cause you emotional pain, I behave badly, I’m rude, I’m inhuman… and what else! Besides these few things, do you have anything else to say about me? Nothing!
– I read every word you say. Please be out of only what you think.
– Why are you calling me? Whatever insults you have to deliver, write them instead! Don’t call people up to humiliate them like that! I suffer too! I’m human too! How many more times must I say it? I’m begging you—block me! I can’t bring myself to do it, that’s why I keep asking you over and over! If you block me, at least I can convince myself—this person has no trace of feeling left in their heart for me, which is why they’ve blocked me! Who am I tormenting myself thinking about? Someone who can’t bear my existence and has already blocked me? I used to live in a closed room before, and I’ll live there again! Let me be locked away in that darkness, please! This open air and light are suffocating me. Has anyone ever begged you like this before, on bended knee? No one has! I’m the one begging—block me!
Why do you keep calling over and over? Why are you deepening my pain? What are you gaining from this? Please, understand my suffering! You’re the one who says that whoever breathes peacefully without you is choking to death without you—so why don’t you understand my situation? I know there’s not even a hair’s breadth of feeling for me in your heart! I’m not possessive! Like Tithi’s blue towel, even if you don’t reply, my whole world turns upside down! I’m lingering in your life one-sidedly, while you’re somewhere completely different! This weakness toward someone is pulling me away from my goals! I’ve gotten nothing in life, and I won’t reach my destination. You’re enjoying seeing me so defeated, so powerless, so helpless? I’ve never begged anyone’s feet except one person! I told them not to leave me! And I’m telling you to push me away! Please, push me away.
– Did you eat breakfast? Where are you now? What are you doing? Tell me about your studies…
– You’re avoiding this, aren’t you? Go on, go! One day you’ll understand! You will! I’m thinking of deactivating Facebook! In a few days I’ll commit suicide! I don’t care about all those BCS exams and whatever else!
– What else are you thinking about? Share it with me. Maybe I can give you some better plans!
– You’re getting sadistic pleasure out of this! Aren’t you? Go ahead, enjoy! When someone realizes their own importance, this is what they do! They think, she won’t leave me anyway, she’s trapped… so why not play games! It’s a common act with boys! And we girls, shameless as we are, tolerate this performance day after day!
– I’m not like that. You always overreact. And you judge so very quickly!
– Everything’s my fault! My fault, my fault, everything my fault!
# A Conversation on Being Seen
O God, this man sees only faults in Nira! What a wonder—there’s nothing good in me at all! That’s right! You’re always misjudging me! I’m not good! I’m nobody! Whether I’m called good or bad, it’s all bad! Bah!
– But everything about you is good! Good heavens, this girl can really do it!
– Irony! See? Don’t bother, I understand these things! I’m not such a fool!
– And what else do you understand, ma’am?
– Even though I’m an atheist, I believe in God’s invisible power! With complete faith in that power, I say: You have to recall me silently, I can assure you. You can never ever forget me. If you truly hold literature in your heart, then this irritation, this overreaction, this rudeness—it will make you think, if only once! I’ll leave Facebook today! In a few days I’ll commit suicide! I want to get relieved! Death is the gateway to eternal relief!
– Calm down a bit now. Please! Committing suicide so often isn’t right—it’ll ruin your health.
– Delight in Disorder! Robert Herrick’s poem. Have you read it? Read it—it’ll touch your heart! All neat and tidy, ornamented love touches everyone’s hearts, I admit it! But true heartfelt touch should come from a madman’s love! He who does not know how to mask himself knows best how to love. When someone loves you like a madman, know this: there’s nothing false in that love, no masquerade, no cunning. Everything there is heart-wrought, pure and simple! If you cannot accept that, then no one in this world is more unfortunate than you. I am that madman who loved you without thinking twice! That final part of the film Shabdh—we speak, but no one listens to anyone. When the doctor screams, calling someone abnormal, who decides what’s right and what’s wrong? Society does! By what logic or authority? Does someone become abnormal just by not fitting in with ten ordinary people? Who decides that those ten are the ones who are right? Society? Or time itself?
You are my seventy-five days of love! You are my memories in November! If you truly hold literature in your heart, then one day you will think: would that this person would stop bothering me! Would that she would stop overreacting! Would that I need never call her rude again! You have to recall all my memories silently. Whoever hasn’t felt, looking at this face, that *she needs to be loved*—there’s nothing more to say to them! Whoever hasn’t realized, even in closeness with me, that this girl is a simple, unguarded, unvarnished human being, standing outside the entire decorated society—I would tell them they have seen very little of life! Even if they score high in school exams, in life’s accounting they deserve nothing but a zero! Your entire life is a zero…a big zero! Goodbye forever! I’ll commit suicide in a few days!
– Listen, girl! Let a zero hold a one!
– I will commit suicide today or tomorrow. It’s my last destination. You have ignored my feelings. You have never tried to understand the wounded heart.
– Don’t think about all this. Just have lunch. Please! If the world means you must leave it whenever someone fails to honor your feelings, that makes no sense. To leave the world is to give them the victory. Instead, stay alive and show them that whether they value you or not is of no consequence to you whatsoever!
Am I truly the person whose feelings you wouldn’t give a brass farthing for?
– Whether I exist or not, it matters nothing to this world anyway! Listen, let me ask you something. If I stop sending these long messages, will you be happy about me? Tell me the truth! Really tell me! Don’t you think I’m mentally unstable? No one listens to what I say, no one feels my pain! You’re not even the person who could feel my pain. You’re not responsible for feeling everyone’s suffering. Do you think that’s all yours? You know, I have no world of my own. How does a person exist without their own world! Are you truly annoyed with me? Tell me once! Tell me the truth. Truth is hard, but I can bear it. I’ve learned to accept truth. There’s a song I love dearly, by Nachiketa. *This time, wearing itself away,* / *accepts its defeat,* / *life falls to dust, losing its store,* / *he whose name drifts on the cloudy wind* — *I refuse to accept he is far away.*
– I enjoy reading your words. But you often become quite restless. It frightens me.
– Answer me directly! Do I annoy you or not?
– No, you don’t.
– Then why do you avoid everything I say? I studied literature! And not just to pass. I fell in love with literature itself, and that’s why I studied it. I didn’t merely see the letters on the page — I felt them with my heart. I’ve read the writers’ work, yes, but I’ve read the writers’ minds far more! I’ve read far more of what lies unwritten than what’s there in black and white. I’ve learned the essence of literature by touching, over and over, my own life and the lives of those around me. Even if I can’t write about life the way you do, I understand so much! If I don’t annoy you, will you be happy? Give me an answer.
– I understand that you’ll stay with me!
– I’m asking for an answer! I know you don’t read a single line of mine! You don’t even try to understand a word! Because you think I’m mentally unstable! If you’re an honest person, answer me — if I stop annoying you, will you be happy or not?
– I read every single line of yours. Of course I do. It moves me to read, it moves me to feel. I want you to be here.