Pochemuchka (a person who asks too many questions)

‘Pochemuchka’ – A Russian word for a person who asks too many questions.

Anwar,

Can you see the clouds growing into shapeless balloons, tired of getting bigger, and wanting to be ruptured? Can you count the number of times they have woken up from their sleep to discard their nightmares in my dreams? If I tell you that I can see one word everytime I gaze at the clouds, will you travel all your way to read it too?

If I tell you that your promises weigh more than my metaphors, will you still ask me not to hold my metaphors on my tongue?

Anwar,

I know there are too many question marks resting on my tongue, and I wonder why they transform themselves into bullets every time they reach to you, and into atomic bombs when they can’t. I wonder why they change their meaning everytime you look at them and vanish when you don’t.

I wonder what there is when you aren’t, and what there isn’t when you are. And what there is when you are and what there isn’t when you aren’t.

Anwar,

Do you remember when you told me that we can calculate the exact number of stars in the sky if we sat together for three hundred more years; and if we spend the exact time in calculating the number of questions I ask you every day, we’ll run out of time?

I know you are miles away, but I wish you could see that skies are out of stars, tonight.

And so am I.

There are no more questions hanging on my lips and I swear if there were any, I’d swallow them. Metaphors are not my language and the question mark is not my favourite punctuation anymore.

Anwar,

But, instead- there are clouds growing bigger every second into shapeless balloons, like parts of my body that harbour love, wishing if you could come to rupture it; there are 4783 times I have woken up from my sleep, which means that I had about 47883 nightmares I want to tell you about; the one word that I read before has expanded into four – from ‘toujours’ to ‘La tristesse durera toujours ‘. (‘forever’ to ‘this sadness will last forever’) The same words that Van Gogh uttered to his brother, before he died.

And now, your fake promises are easier to hold on my tongue than my own metaphors.

There aren’t any questions anymore, but everything else except them.

Anwar,

I wish you could come back again and we’d watch the sky losing its stars, like children lose their teeth, like we’d be losing each other.

I wish you could come back again so we could see the clouds running away from each other, like the children in our towns do, like we’d be running from each other for the rest of our lives.

I wish you could come so we could see the sky turning into a smoke city like the teenagers would have transformed their hearts if cigarettes were as big as their obsessions, like we’d be turning ourselves into, after we part our ways.

Anwar,

I have now forgotten the art of asking questions, for I couldn’t make you remember the art of loving me. But do you have the strength to make me learn it all again?

~ Eshwarya

(Photography by : Arif Khan )