Kinesin In Crimson Poem by Gagan Khurana

Introduction

My pulse is a rhythm of slow betrayal,
kept by kinesin in a temple begging for ruin.

What is Kinesin?

Whenever you feel like life has no meaning,
remember the tiny kinesin protein in your body,
tirelessly walking every day,
carrying molecules of happiness because
your body has not given up on you yet.

If kinesin stops, I stop.
But it never does.
The bastard has not yet been pinned by my depression.

Kinesin is the monk of my veins,
steady, patient, never asking for reward.
It walks in silence,
carrying life across the broken corridors of my body.
But silence outside does not match silence inside.
The dissonance becomes this poem.

Poem

Something has shifted, not outside but inside.

My silence is no longer silence,
it is a sentence,
the price of shouting at myself too long.

I punched the mirror in a fit of regret.
Not to shatter glass,
but to slice open the face I could no longer wear.
My blood was quick to answer,
crawling over my skin,
dripping from my knuckles in slow rivulets,
pooling in the hollows of my palm.

Blood first learned my hand, then stained my phone.
Her number trembled on the screen.
Each dial left a red trace,
a tally, a plea.
I called her twenty more times.
Pain fell out of focus.
Blood reached the tiles.
She ended every call without a word.
Not hearing her voice was worse than hearing her rage.

Kinesin, where are you?
Have you too abandoned me?
I need your serotonin now,
in this collapsing trench of my mind.

I reached for her kind words;
kinesin, carry them back before they turn to ash.

I begged her to speak with me once;
kinesin, curb the pull that drags me toward her voice.

She said, Don't be a desperate moron;
kinesin, cool the fire in my chest,
let my heartbeat find its rhythm again.

She said, You mean nothing to me;
kinesin, slow the pulse that threatens to burst.

My thoughts circle her endlessly;
kinesin, untangle them before they strangle me.

I pressed her number again and again,
wishing she'd pick once.
Kinesin, restrain my hope
before it rots into madness.

Her absence is a blade in my chest;
kinesin, shield me before it tears me apart.

I turned my back on laughter.
Kinesin, pulse through the circuits
that still remember joy.

My friends say, You have changed.
Kinesin, bring back the Gagan who
joked in the chaos,
cheered in the streets,
dissolute and free.

A hundred thoughts loop like chain-links.
Kinesin, break one
before it binds me completely.

Insomnia mocks me.
Kinesin, carry one heartbeat of calm
to the edge of ruin.

I sink deeper into depression.
Kinesin, raise me inch by inch
before death claims me.

Kinesin, though the map is lost
and the compass broken,
there is still a track.
Walk it.
Tell the heart to beat a rhythm
that is not her name.

Let this blood carve on the floor
a scripture of torment;
so even if I collapse,
the pain testifies:
I once loved beyond sanity.

My palms confessed in red,
on the pages torn from what we were.
The story ends in bloodstains now,
where once was written: Evermore.



© Gagan Khurana