In the house next door

Stop hiding behind closed doors to trick me into believing that you’re okay. Stop telling me that you’re going to make it on your own because you don’t need to.

This suffocation doesn’t seem to end and I really wish to breathe, more importantly, I wish to see you breathe too. I know I am being lied to every time you look at me and say you’re fine.

I hear a stranger recite those lines to me on the screen right in front of me with tears in his eyes and a quivering voice. Right after which I feel a tear trickle down my cheek and I remember you. I pause the video and think of you.

You say no one stands by you and you say no one stays, but here I am, scared and hiding in the house next door, because you screamed at me and said you didn’t want me around anymore, but I see you through my window and I feel you suffering alone and all I want to do is to scream out loud and say, “HEY!”. Maybe then finally I will fill my lungs with air and say, “You don’t have to do this alone”.

You and I want to justify every action and reaction and the fear we live with now. However much you block me out today, I can hear every little bit of your agony just like a baby makes sounds at every speed breaker on the road when on the car’s backseat.

I want to lie to you and say that I am alright, just like you say you are too. I also want to hold your hand, smile apologetically, and hear the silence of the night, for I have no words to explain to you how I feel and neither do you. For words have only complicated things and funnily, they are what I turn to when everything else fails me. For the beauty of it is such that when you refuse to hear me and you refuse to look at me, when you refuse to appreciate my existence or take my hand, I lock myself in the house next door, peep through my window for I hear you grieving through it, I watch you hide behind doors.

I see you scream and groan in pain and I sit silently on the floor next door, weeping without making any noise, for the eternal fight in my head is that I want to be there with you, for you don’t have to do it alone, but I can’t, for you have made me and pain synonymous to each other.

The paradox I am stuck at is that I can’t show you the difference by staying away, but I only cause pain when I am closer.

So I hide in the house next door and hope to watch you sleep. When your eyes are shut and the voices that surround you have quietened, I write an ode to you. I know you will tell me you’re fine and I will smile at you, for you find comfort in the knowledge that no one else will ever know the thoughts reeling in your head and I dare not take that away from you. So I hide in the house next door, peeping through the window, scared that I might hurt you, watching you walk on the tight rope that is life.