Aaditya Bajpai

  • If you’re out there, eyes closed, I hope they open in a world where you remember how I held the screwdriver wrong but tried anyway.

    I left the tap running again. Not for the water, not even by mistake, but because I needed to hear something constant. The sound covers the slow erosion, the way your voice echoes less and less in the furniture. It’s strange, how absence doesn’t shout but hums. Like a fridge left unplugged, still warm inside. I tried to fix it by rearranging the chairs, hoping the shape of the room would summon you back. But now the walls look confused, and so do I.

    I keep thinking if I could just find the right frequency, between apology and defiance, I could broadcast the version of us that never cracked. But radios don’t speak tree. And lately, I’ve been turning into one: rings of memory tightening around hollow bark, reaching out with broken branches that pretend to bloom. Do you remember the apricot season? I bit into one and tasted your name, rotten at the pit. I kept eating.

    They told me not to swim in the lake after dusk, but I went anyway, arms tired from holding all the “what ifs” above water. I thought maybe if I drowned in something that wasn’t metaphor, you’d see it on the news and call. But you never liked water. Said it reminded you of things slipping. Maybe that’s why you left like a tide no one noticed pulling back, taking my reflection with you. I’ve been trying to skip stones with my grief but it just sinks.

    I know, rights and wrongs are carved in wet cement, and we never agreed on when it dried. You said rules were for people who forgot how to love, and I laughed like a coward. If I could go back, I’d let your madness win more often. You were always trying to show me the other side of the page, but I kept tracing the lines that were already written. Now I fold paper cranes hoping they’ll fly toward wherever you’re not pretending.

    It’s that time again. The clocks slow, the air thickens, and I find myself lagging behind days that never looked back. I miss you in the way the mirror fogs before a face appears. In the way my hand still reaches for a switch that no longer lights anything. If you’re out there, eyes closed, I hope they open in a world where you remember how I held the screwdriver wrong but tried anyway. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe this was never about fixing. Maybe I just needed to be seen breaking.

    –aaditya

  • 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

  • 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

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