Aaditya Bajpai

  • And if time’s supposed to heal, why does it ask for more of me every day?

    I spoke to the spaces between words today because they felt more honest than what I’ve become. I keep retracing conversations like they’re constellations, trying to find the shape of what broke us, but maybe it was never one shape; maybe it was a shifting thing, maybe I was the shift. Or maybe silence crept into the cracks I pretended didn’t exist, and I fed it too long, mistaking quiet for peace.

    You once said you liked the rain but hated getting wet, and I laughed like that was a metaphor and not a warning. Now I stand in every storm without an umbrella, thinking maybe this is penance or poetry, or some fusion of both where neither makes sense. I keep thinking of your voice at 2:07 a.m., how it could ask, “Are you okay?” like it had already cradled my answer. Now I only ask myself that in the voice you left behind.

    There are hours I scream internally in Morse, in backwards scripts, in letters never sent and messages unsaid, hoping you catch the wavelength of guilt I broadcast. I don’t even know if it was one thing or many tiny careless ones—like paper cuts from pages I didn’t bother to turn.

    And if time’s supposed to heal, why does it ask for more of me every day? Why do I keep rehearsing apologies in mirrors too tired to reflect anymore? I’m not asking for yesterday; I’m not asking for forgiveness wrapped in neat conclusions. I just want to know, what version of me do I have to tear apart, rebuild, unlearn, and relearn for the path to shift even slightly toward the place where you don’t look away?

    How do I make things right?
    Tell me where to begin.
    Even if I won’t like the answer.

    –aaditya

  • She leaves like dust does

    I held her name in my mouth for so long it started to turn into something else. A weight. A stone. Not a name anymore, just the residue of it. The sound of someone you once whispered to sleep now rotting behind your teeth. She loved tulips. She loved rainy days. I remember thinking I’d give her both, forever, even if it meant standing out in the storm with my hands full of flowers I didn’t know how to keep alive.

    But I never learned how to build anything without destroying something else. When she cried, I told myself it was just the weather. When she laughed, I thought maybe she was forgiving me. Maybe I’d earned a few more days. I hadn’t.

    She didn’t leave dramatically. No screaming. No suitcases. Just a quiet unraveling, like a thread pulled until the whole thing disappeared. One day she said, “I can’t do this anymore.” And then there was nothing. Not a goodbye. Not really. Just the hum of a phone screen, still glowing. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was already halfway gone myself.

    I used to be terrified of losing her. Every day, some new version of the nightmare. I rehearsed my pain like a ritual. But none of those versions prepared me for what it’s actually like. To lose someone not with a bang but with silence. A silence that doesn’t even echo. A silence so complete it makes you question if they were ever really there.

    Would I do it again? Yes. Even now. Even with the ending written in blood. Even with the sleepless nights and the sick feeling every time I saw her name on a photo someone else took. I would walk back into it with my eyes open. I would love her again. And maybe this time, I’d say all the things I kept buried. I’d be kinder. I’d listen more. I’d let her see the soft parts of me I was too ashamed to share. I’d let her know that the way she looked at the sky made me believe in something bigger than myself.

    But I don’t get to do it again. And there’s something holy in that. Something in knowing I could’ve done better that keeps me human.

    She’s not a monster in my memories. She’s that song that plays quietly in the background of everything I do. Sometimes I hum along without realizing. Sometimes I forget the words.

    And the fear of losing her? It died with the part of me that thought I could keep her. And what’s left now isn’t fear. It’s the silence. It’s the space she once filled. And it’s mine.

    -aaditya

  • I want to go back to the first day I saw a sunflower. I’d do many things differently.

    I remember the first day I saw a sunflower. Or maybe it was a streetlamp in July, drunk on the heat and guilt. Time folds weird when you’ve got regret in your mouth like old pennies. She—no, it—no, you stood in the middle of something golden and stupid and I thought, “This is what permanence must feel like.” But permanence is a lie with good lighting.

    I didn’t write the letters this time. I tied them to a pigeon’s wing, but the pigeon never came back. Maybe it read them. Maybe it burned them. Or maybe it was never a pigeon, just the part of me that wanted to confess and chew glass for forgiveness.

    Do you know how many syllables are in I’m sorry when you whisper it into a night that doesn’t want to hear you? More than language allows. More than my mouth can manage.

    I rearranged the clocks. Pushed the minutes back into their eggshells. Unsaid everything except the part where I watched you walk away like a promise I never earned. If I could, I’d pluck every second off the stem, eat the seeds raw, spit out time like venom, and begin again at the point where I should have stayed.

    I didn’t write the letters. I carved them into mirrors. They bled backwards. My hands still smell like ink and something heavier.

    I’d undo all of it. Every stupid metaphor. Every petal I mistook for truth. Every word I placed between us like a wall. I’d do anything to make it right, even if it means remembering the sunflower wrong, just so I could love it better.

    -aaditya

  • Oranges and You, Again

    I once sat by a broken clock that ran backwards and thought it was wiser than me. It hummed in rusted circles, and I, a fool with open hands, kept asking it for the right time. The trees around whispered sideways, and the river bent into knots, laughing with its back turned. I didn’t mind. I kept waiting.

    You were somewhere in the smoke, maybe dancing, maybe just breathing, maybe peeling sunlight off an orange, one slow curl at a time. I didn’t know. I just knew the sky had changed its spelling the day I saw you.

    Sometimes, I carry a basket full of rain to the hill where all the forgotten things are sleeping. I’d empty it there, thinking maybe you’d find a drop and recognise it as mine. Sometimes I planted chairs in the dirt, hoping one would grow into a table for two. Nothing ever sprouted, but I kept sitting anyway, waiting for the feast.

    The birds stitched holes in the clouds with threads of melted snow, and the ground became soft enough to write names in with my bare feet. I wrote yours until the letters got tired of standing straight and lay down to sleep. I didn’t mind. I kept walking.

    There are rooms in my heart where the windows are stuck half-open and the rain drips inside when it wants. I never fix them. Maybe one day, you’ll come and sit inside, knees tucked, shoulders warm, holding an orange between us, peeling it slowly, the juice running down our thumbs like tiny suns.

    And I will wait. Through every crooked hour, every river that forgets where it’s going, every chair that refuses to bloom, every letter that collapses into dirt.  

    It’s my 5th April, waiting for you. I will wait.  

    Just to share an orange with you.

    -aaditya

  • The Lamppost

    There is a lamppost on the corner of a road no one remembers being built.

    It stands with a spine bent slightly backward as if surprised to still be standing. The light it casts isn’t gold, not quite. It’s that color just before a dream ends but before you know you’re waking up. It doesn’t flicker but you imagine it would if you blinked at the wrong time. And it does blink, with the wind maybe or with the memory of someone once leaning on it, half drunk with hope or half sure it wouldn’t last.

    The evening folds in around it, the kind that doesn’t quite settle. That blue which still believes in the sun though the sun has long walked off. And in that bruise-colored hush, the lamppost is alone but not lonely. There’s a difference.

    Sometimes, you find yourself staring at it as if it might explain something. The way it holds light as though it’s been entrusted with warmth it didn’t ask for. As though someone once whispered to it, hold this, just for a little while, and forgot to return. You think maybe that’s what love is, the holding of something bright without knowing if anyone will come back for it.

    You walk past and it doesn’t call, not in words, but in a hum low enough to miss if you’re too sure of yourself. It hums like old lullabies in languages that didn’t survive. Grief maybe. Or memory. Which are not always different things.

    It never moves. Never grows. But still, somehow, it changes. And in that change, you see yourself, heart first and blurred. Because love leaves footprints. And grief walks in them barefoot.

    You don’t know why it matters. But the lamppost knows. And it keeps burning. Because to stop would mean admitting that some things don’t return. And maybe it still believes.

    Maybe so do you.

    -aaditya

  • Spilled Water and Chopsticks

    The glow of neon catches your skin—
    pink and purple painting shadows on the curve of your cheek.
    We are haloed in “good vibes only,”
    but the way you look at me is the only gospel I believe.

    You wrestle with chopsticks,
    a clumsy dance of wood and slick noodles.
    Every spicy mouthful steals a blink,
    your lashes flutter twice like a nervous spell—
    and I am enchanted.

    My food cools, untouched.
    Yours vanishes, each bite disappearing
    into the story of your hunger.
    When I offer you more,
    you laugh,
    slide your plate too far,
    topple the glass of water between us.

    “Why didn’t I drink this?” you mutter,
    grabbing napkins like they’re answers.
    I want to ask if you are always this messy
    with things you care for.
    But I only watch
    as you swipe at the spill,
    as though it’s urgent.

    When it’s cleaned,
    I pull my plate between us,
    a quiet offering,
    a bridge.
    You lean forward,
    foreheads grazing—
    a fragile hello.

    “Don’t move,” you whisper,
    your breath pooling in the air between us.
    “Stay like this. Close.
    Like elephants. Did you know they do this?
    Heads together, a greeting.”

    I don’t tell you
    I already knew.
    I don’t tell you
    I want every moment with you
    to feel like this—
    strange, and full,
    and alive.

    aaditya.

  • December

    December stands still, yet moves within itself,
    a solemn breath before the year exhales.
    The air whispers secrets of frost and fire,
    a quiet warmth nestled in the heart of cold.

    Beneath bare trees, life lingers,
    fragile as the glass ornaments we cradle,
    shining and trembling,
    aware of their fragility.

    It is the month of hands—
    hands to hold close,
    hands to wave goodbye.
    Snow falls like memory,
    each flake a piece of what was,
    melting as it lands.

    The sky wears both dawn and dusk together,
    an endless twilight
    where time folds in on itself.
    The past feels closer,
    the future a breath you cannot catch.

    Love in December is fierce,
    burning against the chill,
    because it knows it must.
    Because it knows
    it will soon have to let go.

    And so, we wrap the year in ribbons,
    in the ache of holding on,
    in the grace of release.
    December, you are the stillness of endings,
    the weight of beginnings,
    a lesson in everything
    we can never quite keep.

    aaditya

  • Have I Gone Gray?

    I Often wonder what it would be like if the world had no colors?

    Without blue to mark the sky, how would I even know where the ground ends or begins? The sky wouldn’t care; it never does. It’s me—I need the blue, the reassurance. But without color, would I even need reassurance? It would all be the same. A shapeless, blank thing, indifferent to whether I saw it or not.

    No. If there were no colors, would I still feel anything? Would love still have a place in this strange, hollow space? Colors bleed into everything—maybe feelings are just the shades I wear inside. A soft red for love, a cold blue for sadness. If they disappeared, what would that leave me with? Could I still feel love without the red? Would I even know if she was next to me?

    Maybe I wouldn’t need to feel her anymore. Maybe warmth would exist without the red to dress it. Maybe it’s all just a glow, like two moons caught in orbit. But even moons need light. Without the sun, they’re nothing. Am I nothing? Am I just a reflection, existing only because of something else? Something that isn’t there?

    But… maybe that’s not emptiness. Maybe it’s the beginning of something else, something beyond the colors that have fooled me into believing they mattered. Perhaps the love remains, even when I can’t see it.

    What if color is love? What if red isn’t just a hue, but the pulse in my chest? If I lose that red, what happens to love? Would I even be able to touch her in a colorless world? Can touch exist without the proof of color? Without the feel of warmth against skin?

    Maybe I wouldn’t need hands anymore. Maybe I wouldn’t need to touch. I could just exist, like a thought floating in endless gray, sensing without seeing. Knowing without proof. A love that doesn’t ask for evidence. But… can love survive without proof? Wouldn’t it all fade, blur into the same endless shade, like a flat line on a blank canvas?

    Hasn’t it already?

    Maybe life itself is just nothing layered on nothing, a story told through colors I never even chose. If I stripped it all away, what would remain? Would I recognize what’s beneath? Or maybe I’ve already seen it—and I’ve forgotten. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to this same thought, the same question. What if there are no colors? What if there never were?

    I think I’ve already had this conversation with myself. Over and over. Like an echo trapped inside my mind, circling back to the same point.

    A thousand times, and yet, here I am. Still searching for color in a world that might have never had any. Or maybe… the world never lost its color. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the one who’s gone gray. And I don’t even realize it.

    (Aaditya, 2:00 AM, 26/09/24)

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