REST IN PEACE – Ruchi Acharya

March 27, 2026

We have lived a long life, a long time ago.
When I close my eyes, I see a cluster
of broken dreams,
never fulfilled,
never ventured,
never breathed into being.

My heart is like a stubborn devotee,
never letting the vision of God
slip from its trembling sight.
I dream within a dream
and lay down my blood,
my sweat, my marrow
as a monthly tithe at the altar—
the unasked, unnamed offerings.

Wine and bread, rosemary and faith;
silence hung between love and breath,
violence wedged between mind and heart,
grinding down the last reserves
of hope and strength.

My favourite god passed away first,
and then my lover, second.
It hurts; for the first time,
the soul learned how to bleed.
A cureless mind in careless time—
I unraveled a little more
with every day pass by.

Kissing his lips feels like
bathing in borrowed sunlight.
Touching his skin to mine
feels like dead cells revitalised.
Losing him felt like thousand times I died.

Out in the galaxy,
I fell—unanchored, undone—
at my lowest orbit.
I stitched myself together
With invisible threads of hope,
holding space for pain in the evergreen void.
Bless the almighty supreme.
I miss him to the earth and back.

Rest in peace, pretty me.

2. ENVY OF THE LIVING SELF
I envy my bipolar high,
watching the horizon loudly fold itself shut.
I envy my bipolar low—
how it can sound the ocean’s deepest chambers,
yet fall silent when agony ferments in my chest
beneath a maleficent, twisted love below.
I envy the normal me surrenders
to the smooth procession of blood-flow,
buoyant with rapid heartbeats—
carried smiling on the surface,
while beneath, they spiral into a vortex
of despair like a road-rage show.
I envy the healthy version of me,
tossing a coin into the Flora Fountain of wishes,
hoping—absurdly—to find a true lover.
No.
I am drunk now,
vomiting hopelessness kisses
into that same fountain—
cursing every narcissist, snake-scaled, ever-breeding thing.
Oh, Flora fountain—
what have you done to me?
I envy the shenanigans avatar within,
prowling unacceptable houses of horror,
leaving chaos in every touched metropolitan city.
Like the ebb and pull of a lost boat,
I float—directionless—
at the mercy of a sea
that refuses to name a shore to me.
My nightmares quench a thirst
for recognition and respect—
from a dead father, sudden outbursts,
from a watching society, fake happiness dwindlers.
I roll up my sleeves,
and here I am—
boxed inside a four-by-four room,
fighting my guardian angel
who turned me against me
by becoming me.

 
3. MIND-LOCKED CEMETERIES
Life sickled the younger version of me
when I reached my thirty,
with anxious heartbeats and overcast weather
drifting miserably.
I stand by half-curtained windows,
sipping a homemade pink martini.

We’re hopeless idealists, lucky dim souls,
or unlucky mavericks,
scavenging for peace, hiding in cold bathrooms
with our over-written limericks.
I miss her quietly, I miss her loud
in my mind-locked cemeteries.
Growing out of my blanket isn’t easy.

We’re neither friends nor enemies—
just random strangers
carrying borrowed memories.
The sound of losing you,
the colour of silence
in winter morning dews.

Pitch-black skies filtering through skeletal trees—
God made us beautifully,so beautifully,
that our existence
makes someone happy.
And tonight,
that someone is me.