tag:words.ankit.io,2014:/feedAnkit Ranjan2019-07-16T20:04:02-07:00Ankit Ranjanhttp://words.ankit.iome@ankit.ioSvbtle.comtag:words.ankit.io,2014:Post/letters2019-07-16T20:04:02-07:002019-07-16T20:04:02-07:00Some Unsent Love Letters<p>I will write you two letters and send you one. The first is what you expect. It starts with a foray into my day-to-day life here, and then covers some half-baked concepts that have been bouncing around my head, and ends with a plea for you to share some of your life with me. The second, this, is honest.</p>
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<p>See through my eyes for a minute. Feel the way they open up when you’re in the room.</p>
<p>You give the world color and moments meaning. You’re the brightest person I know. You attract with such soft warmth that outshines the sun back home. The way you are — the way you smile, the way you look, the way you sit with your legs tucked beneath you and your back arced like art — it absorbs me. The way you move makes me wish I could draw. Around you, my chest tightens and I hear each breath as it fills me. I fill with warmth every time I think you care. Every game we play or joke we crack makes my day. </p>
<p>You make me who I want to be. You’re good because you are, not because you’re lost. I wish you saw the you I see.</p>
<p>My friends catch me smiling when I recall a joke you crack or a game we play, and they know I’m falling. But they can’t know how I feel, no matter how much I tell them I <em>really</em> like you. Words just scratch the surface. They just suggest. Imply. Hint. I wish you could hear what I want to say.</p>
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<p>I wonder who you are.</p>
<p>You’re beautiful. Smiling and focused. Sliding around the room. I wish I knew you, and how you thought and how you spoke. Your curls bounce with each step to the chagrin of your struggling headband. I love that. I love the tuft which falls above your bright eyes and frames your face. And your face is a novel, flipping between charm and frustration as you whip between customers and a broken oven in the back.</p>
<p>I want to know you. I want to know what you see in the morning before you leave for work, and if it’s anything at all like what I see now. I wonder if you know how quickly you enchant me. Would it scare you, or excite you, or just not matter?</p>
<p>I wonder what I look like to you, and whether you’d like me. Do we like the same music or the same books? Would you feel what I feel when you look at a million lights from an airplane window after dark, or into the water on a riverbank? Are you kind enough to pretend?</p>
<p>I wonder what you’d think if you could read my mind. Maybe you’d find me sweet. Maybe a creep. You make me wonder.</p>
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<p>I want a hug. I’ve been thinking a lot about you. I’m sad that you’re no longer in my life, and that you don’t want to be. Guilty that I hurt you, especially because, honestly, I’m so fragile, and I’m much worse with you than you are with me. You’re a mirror from which I can see everything wrong with me: how I’m selfish and thoughtless. I try to see me through your eyes, with all your knowledge of my worst parts. I’m filthy. But honestly, I’m just mad that you’re not holding up your end of the bargain and actually putting in a little effort into being friends with me. You made a promise, just like I did, but at least I’ve been trying. </p>
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<p>You mentioned marriage in your letter. My fixed perspective is changing. I love you more than I’ve loved anyone, but I know I know so little. I was (and am, kind of still) eager for marriage, because it provides a fixture in an uncertain world. But if we marry, I want our marriage to be in harmony with all else that we choose to do. I hope — really, really hope — that this works. </p>
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<p>It’s Tuesday night and I have more work to do than you can imagine. It’s raining outside, and I can hear the bass of electric music through my neighbor’s wall, and I need to go to the library to pick up a textbook and get going on an essay but all I can think about are your labored breaths.</p>
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<p>Love’s felt like a lot of things to me. Sometimes it feels urgent, like there’s fire coursing through my nerves and my heart’s about to blow and I just need to run or jump or shout because it’s burning — I mean, really burning, in all the bits of me, creeping out from my chest to explode across my back and arms and legs with such heat. I felt that before seeing you in the summer, on the plane. It comes with an eagerness to move and a desperation for life.</p>
<p>Sometimes love feels slower, warmer. Maybe like a cloudfront at sunrise. I can feel my body fill up bit by bit. It soaks into me. It’s the love when I watch you wake up, or work, or get ready. It’s the love of a quiet smile.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s dark. It can feel like my blood is turning into lead and I begin to lose sense of in my extremities. My failure chokes me. It makes me feel like falling into a great big lake and letting the weight of my failure pull me down deeper and deeper as I watch the moonlight grow distant. I felt that a year ago.</p>
<p>Right now it’s just a little tingle. A rush up my forehead and down my spine, teasing. It’s filling and warming and delightful. I love it; I love you. I can’t wait to be next to you, enjoying sunbeams in the grass or the sound of rain by a fireplace.</p>
tag:words.ankit.io,2014:Post/evening2019-06-27T14:00:52-07:002019-06-27T14:00:52-07:00Evening<p>I recently had a strange experience for which I am still finding the words. I met a girl online. We quickly arranged to meet after work. She was smart and charming, and we got along well. After dinner, we went on a walk that took us to the door of her house. I kissed her and she asked if I wanted to come inside.</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to explain what happened next. We continued to kiss in her room. I asked whether she wanted me to take off her shirt, and she said yes. I asked again before taking off her bra, and she told me that I didn’t need to keep asking. She took off the rest of her clothes and I took off mine. I felt happy and lucky. But it changed. She got on top of me and began to have sex with me. I wasn’t expecting that and it happened really fast. By the time I grasped what was going on and realized I didn’t want to, it felt wrong to say we should stop. I felt confused and dissociated.</p>
<p>Things felt cold afterward. She was angry that I wasn’t wearing a condom, which confused me even more. I never felt like I had the time to make a choice. I left her house to find a pharmacy and tried to make sense of what had happened. It was hard to reconcile why I felt so bad. I should have been happy — what guy wouldn’t be after sleeping with an attractive girl? — but instead I felt terrible. I called my roommate and tried to explain, but I didn’t even know what to say. I tried again with my dad. How I was feeling felt beyond comprehension.</p>
<p>Back at her house, I apologized. I gave her the contraception, we made brief small talk, and I left to go home. The train ride down felt forever.</p>
<p>The experience has kept coming back to my mind. Some thoughts recur:</p>
<ul>
<li>It’s my fault that this happened. I should have said no. She couldn’t have known that I didn’t want it to happen.</li>
<li>It’s not that big a deal and I’m stupid for feeling bad. It’s just sex and I should get over it. I’ve done all there is to do so there’s no point in being mopey.</li>
<li>I know many people who have gone through a lot worse. I don’t deserve to feel bad for myself.</li>
<li>What would this be if she were a boy and I were a girl?</li>
</ul>
<p>I’ve found it hard to explain to people how this experience affected me. I felt like I shouldn’t be too unhappy about getting laid, but this experience really got to me, and I felt so out of control. I couldn’t control my body in the moment, and I couldn’t control my mind afterward. My thoughts drift back to it in idle moments and they just keep going in circles.</p>
<p>Writing this down is one act of control. Putting words to the experience gives me power over it, but there are still some words I’m not sure I should use. The last few days have made me think a lot about consent, control, and what it’s like to be a man. Growing up in a progressive community, I’ve been taught about consent a couple of times. And each of those times, there’s an implicit narrative when talking about heterosexual encounters, where a boy asks for a girl’s consent and it is up to her to say no. I don’t think what she did was malicious, but just a result of what we think about men saying no. She didn’t think I would, and I didn’t think I could.</p>
<p>It’s hard to know what to change. Maybe the way we explain consent, or the way we talk about male sexuality, or the way we teach women to talk about what they want, or maybe something else. I’m not sure. I find it hard to share this because I feel wrong begging attention to my problems with so much worse going on. But I also want to highlight the importance of consent and the feelings that can come with sex in a situation that we don’t talk about too much. In so many ways I’m lucky. My parents and my friends have been really understanding, and a lot of the conflict I feel comes from within. But even with all these sources of support, it’s so difficult to talk about how I really feel while I privately feel guilt, shame, and weakness. In sharing this, I want to give another bit of context to a broader conversation, and help others who might have similar experiences to mine feel a bit more comfortable talking about feelings they have.</p>
tag:words.ankit.io,2014:Post/please2016-10-11T19:38:53-07:002016-10-11T19:38:53-07:00Please<p>If you hush real quiet and you listen real slow, you’ll find there’s a sense of rhythm to the world. It’s there in the trees, in the ocean, in the sky on your sad October day, and it beats in time with the music of motion. Motion, motion, motion: tick, tock, tick. Have you ever heard that song in the middle of the night, well on your way to sleep amidst the faeries and daemons of your childhood past?</p>
<p>Listen to the silence. Listen, listen, listen. It has lots to tell you and you have lots to hear.</p>
<p>How often do you lie? Every day, every hour, every second? How big do you lie? How far and how wide?</p>
<p>To whom do you lie? (With whom do you lie, alone and well on your way?) About what do you lie?</p>
<p>There is no such thing as nothing. “It’s the silence between the notes that makes the music.”</p>
<p>How often do you try?</p>
<p>Do you try to try? Do you try to try to try? How many tries does it take to tell the truth?</p>
<p>Slip between the silences between the notes between the music between the minutes between the days between the years of a life. Slip between the sounds and thoughts and words and bright-blue blouses and secret kisses and work out sneakers and slow claps and bicycle clicks. Slip between the stacks of unread books and twice-worn clothes across your bedroom floor. Slip between the woven fingers of crying friends and secret lovers. Slip into the stutter between what you should and shouldn’t say. Slip between the up and down and in and out of where you are and aren’t. Slip between, and you will find me.</p>
<p>Where am I? Who am I? What am I?</p>
<p>Sound is the forest of the war between us. Read me out; read me in. Read to me.</p>
<p>To whom did you last read? When and how and what? Describe it; describe the feeling; tell me.</p>
<p>Of what were you last scared? with the fear of the chase — the fear of being followed. Was it night? Was it on the street? Did you turn and turn and turn and find no way out?</p>
<p>Describe him. Describe the wispy blonde hair on his etched face, with gross, brown creases dragged through his visage. Describe the slopping nose and ears. Describe the way his varicose limbs and beady eyes chased you — hunting. Describe his stained teeth and droopy smile — full-faced and fleshy. Describe the screech of brakes and the sound of silence. Describe the clunk and clap and humph and scream, the pitter-patter of the drips and the stomping of your furious clip. Describe it.</p>
<p>Describe the way she touched you and the way it felt. Did you know her? Did she know you? Describe that night after the disco, when the strobes had dimmed and the sound had gone and it was just you two in that beat up car with lights on the dash and lights in the sky. Describe the view; describe the city; describe her. Was this your first? Describe the sounds of nothing but her and you and the novelty of the night; describe the stereotype; describe her. Describe the jump and thrill. Describe the shush and hiss and gasp. Don’t rush. Describe the music — did you really think this far? Describe her. Describe congruence, contour, contact: fit. Describe your yin and her yang. Describe them.</p>
<p>There is not much time now. Describe the pressure; how did that feel? Describe the lies; why won’t you tell me? Describe the pressure; sweetheart. Describe the lies; it’s not you.</p>
<p>Describe the pressure. It’s nighttime. The pressure. You’re on your phone again, isn’t it late? The pressure. She’s asleep. The pressure. You’re awake. The pressure. You’re awake. The pressure. Why won’t you sleep? The pressure. You’re awake.</p>
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<p>Describe the mountains to me. Describe the wind and mist as you’re there, all alone. The only ones who care think you’re home in bed, asleep and well. How can you be sad in a world like this? (How can’t you?) It’s all in your head. (You’re right.) Just let go. (You don’t know how much I want to.)</p>
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<p>A setting sun makes hills throw shadows. The sky is violet and red and blue in unspeakable blends; the air is afire and every cloud glows red-pink. Wafts of mist collect beyond the hills, toward the sea, toward the water. Shadows grow and we become our silhouettes. There’s a buzz on the lake. Far off, toward the north, amongst high-rise shelters of undone work and inertial progress, where the good clock out and the best clock in, where cars trickle-zip along the venous necklaces of the intra- and interstates to bring there to here and B to A, (under the hill where Mom would take you to see them — the ruby-diamond necklaces — and sometimes you’d both just sit there and watch and gape and once even cry because it was so beautiful and nobody else would get it), where murder and marriage turned from fiction to truth, where bridges filled and terrified, where underground tunnels house the less-than-lucky and the more-than-fortunate, where handcuffs and locked doors saved you from yourself, where there are girls just like you on hills just like these — far off, lights come on. Each light is the same and each light is special. It’s getting darker now. Can you see me? </p>
<p><em>Ruleta rusa</em>. The pressure.</p>
<p>Describe that night on the beach. Where were you? Describe the stars; constellations and a perfect night sky. You’re so far away from anyone and everything. Describe the juicy moon and shimmering waves. Describe a blue-white.</p>
<p><em>Astros</em>, not <em>estrellas</em>.</p>
<p><em>Describe it to me.</em> No. <em>Describe it to me.</em> No. <em>Describe it to me.</em> No. <em>Describe it to me.</em> Okay.</p>
<p>Okay. Ok. O.K. But how are <em>you</em>?</p>
<p>Describe that time in her room, when the air was cool on your skins but the blanket was just too far, when October had past and the clouds choked that once-beautiful sunset to just a dull dimming. Describe the breeze, crisp, chill. Describe fucking; describe loving. Describe the whispers that passed between those two bodies — describe your secrets; describe hers. Describe the silence that said more than anything else.</p>
<p>Where are my glasses? Where’s my glass? It’s okay I’m fine. I’m ok. I’m O.K. But how are <em>you</em>?</p>
<p>Shhh now listen sweetheart before they have to go. The forest rings with birdsong. Shhh hear them call. Shhh. Gramps was a birder — did you know? Yeah he’d go out, Leica in hand (oh what a camera), early wee-hours of the morning, like 3-4AM we’re talking here, and he’d don that green cap and blocky vest and step into the chill — yes, the forest — and he’d be there and just listen. And then one time he'— shhh did you hear that? Triplets; it’s a mockingbird. Triplets. Did you hear that? Shhh; listen.</p>
<p>Describe the days you spent in the forest, ready for anything. Describe running through brambles and ferns, clipping undergrowth to make a world in your image, planning and plotting and chipping; describe the thrill of creation and the rush of destruction. Describe Juliet; her eyes. Describe her enthusiasm. Describe her vigor. Describe her vim.</p>
<p>Why are you running? After what are you chasing?</p>
<p>Describe his hands; were you asleep? Describe the stare on the street. Describe the thumping of his steps as you were chased. Why are you running, sweetheart? Come back, sweetheart. Please.</p>
<p>Pretty please. Prettier than you’d ever be. Take off the makeup, it’s just our first. Please. Please. Please.</p>
<p>Why is this so special? Every light is thoughtful and every light shows care. Every light is replaceable and every light is unique. To light is to see what you would otherwise not; to care is to feel what you would otherwise not.</p>
<p>You are alone but not lonely. The night is quiet and the lights are on. Hush — listen.</p>