Ego! Welcome...

She: You are the single largest demand on my time
He: Come on! You have nothing better to do than talk to me anyway
She: If not for you I would be doing a million other things
He: Fine, so go do what you want. I am not stopping you
She: Yeah right, you are not stopping me. Just that you prevented me from hanging up four times in the past hour
He: Really? I can stop calling you if that's what you want...
She: You would? You can? (snickers)
He: Are you daring me?
She: Maybe...
He: Ok, so how long before I call you next?
She: Hmm... next Wednesday??? As if you can
He: So be it. Till Wednesday then...
She: Great! Bye
He: Bye (slams the phone)
She: (Hangs up with a mischievous grin) I give him one full hour (to herself)

One hour later, there was no call. Two full days passed without a call. The week trudges along, wearier than ever. She pointedly leaves the phone out of her sight all the time. He "distracts" himself through conversations with other women, conversations he neither cares to listen to nor remembers.

Villainous Ego pitching its tent in hitherto impenetrable quarters...

Windowpane wonderings

Her hands rushed to her ears. She tried to block off the noise, but in vain, for the clamor indeed was inside her head. What everyone construed to be excitement or zest was in fact an uncontrollable restlessness. She chose to fondly call it "infinite energy" instead. It was this restlessness that endeared her to the world around her, the same restlessness that wedged itself between her and the milling masses, immovably so... It instilled in her an undying quest for happiness and a compulsive need for direction. It evoked in her the anger she needed to transcend the hopelessness that surfaced unannounced...

...she watched the river, a thousand feet below. "Is it really flowing?" all the hours she spent staring into its dark depths still left her confused. "How can a river, a flowing river be so serene? Why didn't it bring on a gush of feeling like rivers always did?" She was petulant at nature for letting her down. On the bridge over the river, cars purposefully drove past at alarming speeds. The world within the river was moving equally fast,the cars in the river were racing too, the watery traffic lights turning from bleeding red to blotchy green with mind-numbing regularity. But the river itself, caught in a timelessness of its own, remained unfazed by the urgency of the world it reflected. It refused to be anything more than a faithful mirror that completed the symmetry of nature...

...her hands were still clutching her ears, but the noise had gone away. Her senses were lulled, her mind was fuzzy, the hopelessness had momentarily relented and her restlessness had momentarily receded. "Are you really flowing? May I not have some of your inertness?" she wondered as she enviously pulled the blinds shut...

Sleepless Blues

Light, uninvited, squeezes
through the careless window slit,
Yellow grids on vacant blue,
Stories- lurk between the lines

Fluid shadows, Freeze! Please!
Hold still, that sensuous silhouette
One moment to separate
him from her

The lone moon, steps
out of its wooly den,
My darkest thoughts revealed,
in its mazelike crevices

Hunger- Five hours too early,
Take your pangs, Be gone!
Sleep - Ten years too late,
Lend your dreams, Be gone!