You Know Corporate Life is Slowly Getting to You When...

1. Your everyday college jeans somehow 'feel' different and lie in the deepest, darkest corner of your closet for days on end.

2. Your waistline gradually starts expanding (despite that expensive FitnessOne membership), and you try to make yourself feel better by looking at the waistlines of your college mates..who are, obviously, in the same boat as you.

3. You dread Monday mornings like never before and spend half of Sunday brooding over Monday, even though you know it's an inevitable occurrence.

4. Every 3-day weekend feels like Christmas. And gets over too early. Never before did you realize how short 72 hours can be.

5. You start every week thinking you're going to do 'something different this weekend'. And then end up doing the same things with the same people in the same places, and spend all of Saturday morning with orange juice and Aspirin.

6. As opposed to earlier when you went to dinner with your friends and tried to push the bill off to someone else to pay, you now play the check-grabbing-game each time.

7. For those of you who take public transport...you wonder why you can never get a seat on the train anymore. Remember those 'rush hour' nightmare stories? You're part of the 'rush hour' crowd now.

8. Lunch Break is the most eventful occurrence on an average weekday. Some days, you wake up in the morning contemplating how you're going to spend that one glorious hour of freedom - where you're going to eat, who you're going to meet, and so on. And sometimes, you even plan your office clothes according to what's going to happen at lunchtime.

9. You're suddenly hounded by banks trying to give you more and more credit cards. And you have a dozen stuffed into your wallet, and struggle to keep track of when the bills are due.

10. You're a zombie on Monday, still worse on Tuesday, hit rock bottom on Wednesday, cheer up a little on Thursday at the prospect of Friday, and finally, on Friday, you come back to life!!

This is why.

You painted my windows in shades of red so I wouldn't have to look at the blank faces of the buildings outside.
You forgot that I could open these windows.

You tried all you could to ensure I would feel loved, even all alone.
You didn't know that telephone calls can never be any substitute for lazy Sunday afternoons and coffee-talk.

You gave me everything I asked for.
You didn't know that what I needed the most was something I just couldn't ask of you.

You assured me that I was going to be fine, and that I was strong enough. That I was the strongest you'd ever known anyone to be.
You didn't see that for once in my life, I wanted 'being strong' to be an option, not a compulsion.

You drew my whole life out on a map and placed it beside me for comfort.
You didn't know me enough to know that I enjoy being lost and I can't read maps.

You promised you'd come back, and lived up to the promise every single time.
You didn't promise to never go away again.

You left no room for mistakes...you were the quintessential perfectionist, and how could I ever find fault with you?
You failed to understand that life also involves letting yourself go, screwing up, and still waking up in the morning with the realization that you're loved.

Ctrl + Z

Have you ever taken a step back on purpose?

When you knew that there was someplace you could get to, and you knew the way there.. And you knew the destination would justify the long and arduous journey. And you also knew that you had it in you to make your dreams materialize, that there was not a thing you were lacking, not a thorn in your step or a barricade of any kind...Despite the conviction that you could make it if you just tried a little...have you ever had to stop entirely and just turn around?

This is not going to be because I'm lazy. It's not going to be because I lack ambition or ability. This is not going to be my way of saying goodbye or my way of shutting out things that never made me happy to begin with.

This is just going to be about priorities. About knowing, that sometimes, one or the other way is reality. And that you need to let go of some dreams....just so that the more important ones can actually materialize.

This is going to be my ode to you.

This is going to the most I've ever gained from something I've willingly undone.

Photochromatic.

They're everywhere. Drawing memory lines down uncharted territories. Making me feel like some moments can actually be stopped forever, held on to and re-lived at will. From an old photo album, or from my phone, or even from my Recycle Bin.

We were denied the ability to forget the day the camera was invented.

Faces smiling on appropriate occasions, best friends with their arms wrapped around each other.. Former lovers looking starry eyed once, awkward with progression, only to ultimately find their ways into different picture frames. The proud mother of a not-so-proud graduating child. The candles on a cake, multiplying with time, ultimately consuming the lens and hiding the cake... School uniforms maturing into business suits. The passage of time, artfully captured.

Faces, happy faces. Expressionless faces. Hardly any crying faces. Faces of friends gone by... of family, teachers, co-workers. Images of institutions, of places visited. New friends made, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries...Every one of life's important milestones documented so easily.

We take photo frames for granted. Sometimes, they're all we have.

And you ask me why.

We were in a little box, and it was good.

You were something of an illusion. A fragment of a life I'd always wanted, but would never be gutsy enough to have.

You were a chance. A roulette wheel with positive odds...an enigma that promised to stay, a childhood dream that was missing its bows but had every single musical note in place.

You were in the nightsky's charmed constellations. And when you looked up at them with me, I saw things I didn't know existed before.

You were a wax statue...so perfect in its form, and yet, so incredibly unreal.

You were a fairy tale's own version of a fairy tale. You put the dream back in dreaming, the think back in thinking, the want back in wanting.

And then, like every good thing...you faded. And our little box turned over, opened up, and sent us spinning out.

Strange Change

"Wondering how orange it is in here", you said, in response to my question - you know, the one that somehow made the air thicken. And I knew what you meant. Your evasiveness a testimony to the wall I knew we'd built over the years that came and went. The wall I knew we shouldn't break, ever, because the flood it constrained was simply too much to handle, for either of us.

It's the strangest feeling in the world when you sit facing someone, and you know that you know them inside out - but you just can't reach out. Whats even worse is knowing that this barrage of emotion that they've evoked in you is totally lost on them.

And then you lit another cigarette, drawing a ragged breath and letting out the puff of smoke - signature you. And that ever-familiar scent of cigarette smoke and your perfume mixing with the night's air. I wondered then, what I seemed like to you. Was I older? Stronger, maybe? A fleeting thought, an oddly selfish one - I was hoping you'd missed me as much as I had missed you.

And then, you flicked the ash off - a mannerism that had become a part of your reflexes. And ever so silently, as only you can do, you spoke...and for the first time, I did not listen. I don't remember a thing you said that night. It troubled me that you could be so...normal. That here I was, shaking like a leaf, unable to look you in the eye...and there you were, seeming not even like a long-lost friend but more like an everyday afterwork buddy. What were you thinking?

And in those minutes, listening to you talk about mundane, uninteresting things, I realized how these torrential changes had somehow managed to erode everything we ever used to be. And I knew we wouldn't be seeing each other again because sometimes, two people just become empty shells that resonate with the sound of the past...a past that is eventually forgotten when the present and the future become too real to ignore.

Walls

It's not all distance, space, and time

The Prophet looked at me,
There's a fourth dimension, one that moves
And there's nothing you can't be.

But still sometimes, these demons come
As the nightsky curtains fall
And if you dreamt the dreams I dream
You wouldn't sleep at all

I've gone back in time, and forward

I've traveled diagonally too

But fate, she's stubborn now, and I

Can't help but think of you

My walls are made of you, my love

You're in every single one

I'm trying to save myself from this

Anomaly I've become

And I live within my fortress

While I watch the world outside

I once wanted to be like them

But I'm better off inside.