By Swapnoja Chakraborty
Manic pixie dream girl smokes a vape.
Cinnamon-orange masks the taste
Of absence and involuntary solitude
In the humdrum tatters of her life.
During bitter encounters,
She isn’t fully realized.
Her words fall on deaf ears,
Her lips—moving messengers of whimsy—
Only to be adored,
Always to be sealed shut with a hasty kiss.
Manic pixie dream girl does fanciful eye makeup.
Inside those soulless pits,
Her dreams die in silent collisions with your grief.
Manic pixie dream girl cries with you
On your most difficult nights.
You hold her tight and let her kiss your tears away.
She has no past, no present, no future—
A fairy, granting anonymity in her warm embrace,
While her heart slowly withers,
Knowing she’ll never matter enough to be cared for.
Manic pixie dream girl falls in love.
Her love—embers
Amidst fallen, faulty pillars.
It burns in a bright red spark,
Glows pink and purple in her hair.
Your fingers, like rain, wash away the fog—
Twirling her hair
In recurrent motions of grief, envy, and self-actualization.
You shine bright,
Resplendent in your newfound catharsis.
Manic pixie dream girl watches in awe
As this familiar sight unfolds.
And so begins the inevitable decline:
The lights—too low.
The ebbs—too shallow.
The flows—lackadaisical,
Like her once-soothing voice.
She watches as you walk away.
In her silence,
You find meaning
In nights spent alone,
In the vestiges of your existence,
In starry skies and bubbling streams.
Manic pixie dream girl disappears.
She was but a dream.
In your poetry,
You capture her eyes, her hair, her effervescence—
Her love remains unrequited.
Just as suddenly as she arrived,
The rains disappear.
Her love is ashes.
She is the fire that rebuilds,
While it burns itself—
Culpable in its own nothingness.