five ways to kill your lover

1- wake them up with soft kisses
as the sunlight hits their face
and breaks into a thousand particles of stardust.
take their hand and
lead them to the mirror.
undress them slowly and gradually
slowly enough
to let them chew & digest
their own reflection.
make sure that your fingers run
all over their scars:
the thick blue-black one on their left calf
from the time their father pressed their skin
against the exhaust pipe of his bike;
the knot of the tissues
where the slits on their thighs meet;
the stretch marks on their shoulder blade
from an era when anorexia starved them to
‘four-sizes-down’ in high school.
Then, in a blink, all at once,
reveal your body
in all its resplendent pristinity
unscathed, unscarred.
Watch then revel in your body
and look back (down?) on their own.
Leave a kiss on the corner of their lips
and walk away.
Do not speak a single word,
do not.

2- as you both fight
and shatter expensive cutlery and cheap dreams,
make sure that you do not slam doors and leave.
make sure that you stay back
to make them a cup of hot chocolate
and sit by their side
as they cry on your shoulders
and struggle to hide their guilt away
beneath your neck.
take their head in your hand
and hear them apologize
and thank you and apologize
over and over again
and as they do so,
lightly, whisper into their ears
that how you are different from all the other lovers
they had taken in the past.
Repeat it religiously after every single fight
every single day
between gasps of love-making
so that when you leave,
they won’t be able to kiss another pair of lips
without feeling the warmth of your tongue in their mouth
that they won’t be able to frame a sentence
without making it sound like an apology or a thank-you note.
drown them in gratitude.

3- when they go on a trip
stop tending to their house-plants
and
abandon their pets.
give their cat a nice tuna meal
a bowl of warm milk
and leave it to its fate
in a distant neighborhood.
when they get back,
tell them that the cat ran away
and you spent days in despair
searching for it
and you are sorry
for when you were out looking, the plants died.
they will be so busy cooking you a meal
and blaming themself,
that they’ll forget to grieve over their pet.
what could be crueler
than snatching away one’s chance to mourn?
before you eat the food they made
season it generously with remorse
and say how you should have brought
dogs & succulents instead.
make everything about you.

4- listen to them, always.
listen as they tell you
how they spent their nights inside the cupboard
when they were eight
hoping to escape the cacophony of their parents’ arguments.
listen as they tell you how their old lover ridiculed them
for reading too less
for eating too less
for fucking too less
for being, just too less.
and the next time you want to talk,
shout instead.
scream, at the top of your lungs
till they crouch on the ground
eyes closed, hands on their ears.
make sure that there are no cupboards in the house
and ask them if they think that they are enough.
pry & feed on their weakness.

5- and even though you have mastered enough ways,
the trick is never to kill and always to keep.
make love to them in old bookstores
pour them rum in their favorite mug
dance with them to Presley
remember the exact number of peppercorns to grind into their morning tea
and never leave.
with enough time and food,
animals in slaughterhouse too,
begin to believe that they are cared for.
humans are no different.
you see,
some people are hungry for love
or anything that remotely resembles it.
stay. pretend. stay.

– Sanchita Dwivedi, 2019

Art- Tiina Menzel