A Vintage Print

 At 11:56 PM, you lit a cigarette. You waited for 5 hours — someone will text. There's Instagram and there's Snapchat. The WhatsApp icon with it's Chris Hemsworth Jawline-like Phone symbol isn't ringing. You have stayed up this late and you have already followed all the rules that 700 self-help books and Andrew Tate told you in his Billion Dollar accent — "The trick to impress everyone". It should have worked by now. Someone should have asked you about your dinner plans and if you like to watch rains. The girl you threw a candy bar at in highschool is getting married and she hasn't invited you - but that was before you learnt to become Alpha. You are now cool. The Heath Ledger. You have checked your phone 78 times now and your mother has called you 50 times and your dad is tired of you tiring your mother who is tired because you are tired. So you light another cigarette and you stand in your balcony and watch a dusty city rusting itself under the spit of i...

To an old friend who no longers talks with me,⠀ ⠀ We were 12 when we first talked about our crushes, and 14 when we first talked about a heartbreak. Your hand cradled around my chest with the utmost honesty. There was this pain in your voice, that made me want to split open earth. I remember the way your tears rested on my shirt buttons — almost sad, almost broken. We were 6 when we would run around the society building, wearing torn capris and holed Tees. The weird games we would play — the garage walls never growing tired of our giggles as we play another game of hiding and seek at 8 p.m.⠀ ⠀ “You are too bad at hiding. I will always find you”, you'd say. I remember the taste of an afternoon lemonade being squeezed by our dusty hands after a game of cricket. You always had a way with games. You'd never lose. Your way of escaping out of the slimmest of positions — always the winning move. Perhaps, that's how you learned to run away too. ⠀ ⠀ I miss you, a lot more than I cou...