Volatile Adolescence
Theory of Evolution (Chapter 2)
CHAPTER 2
ACT I
“You can’t just deny that quality time isn’t a love language—”
“Well, obviously I will! Your quality time has emphasis on quality, right? Well, I don’t see how we can spend quality time when you aren’t ready to spend 5 minutes alone with me.” I intervened, cutting her off.
“You can’t have the best of both worlds. You can’t be with your best friend and me at the same time and count that as quality time spent. Just search the definition of quality time as a love language. There! SEE? It says giving someone your “undivided attention”. How are you going to give me undivided attention when you are divided on who to talk to? We don’t have time ▬▬▬. These are going to be the last few days we can talk to each other face-to-face, and I fear you’re taking that for granted.”
“I’m not taking it for granted. Okay, you know what, I’ll come to school tomorrow. We can spend the entire day together, but we have to study too.” She suggested.
“YAYAYAY of course we’ll study, I love you,” I spoke, excitedly.
“I’ll never let you feel unloved again, I promise.” She spoke.
Oh, fuck, I’ve done it. I guess I just had to… be honest.
Dear ▬▬▬,
makeout
Do you feel the air shifting?
The way the soft breeze rushes in
through the windows,
reminds me I am no longer lifting
this heavy heart alone,
as it now has much-needed support.
Do you see the absence of structure?
Unplanned, quiet chaos taking over.
Perhaps words were the best way to go,
because conversation has brought
this heavy heart some love,
love that it never felt much.
Do you see hands falling into place?
Bodies coming closer; face to face.
Your eyes paint a picture that says
much more than a thousand words
to this heavy heart of mine,
which wants to cross the line.
Do you want our lips to meet?
Do you want our tongues to explore?
Explore worlds that want to collide,
worlds in which I want to confine.
This heavy heart has lost its weight,
No longer are its wings afraid.
- Dashmehar Singh
Dear ▬▬▬,
optimistic
“My head against the windowsill,
eyes searching for something beyond.”
Let me start from the beginning,
from the day my eyes dried, sore.
Enough water to hydrate any desert,
yet mine still wanted more.
No matter how hard I tried,
no plant could ever survive.
Roses, jasmines, and even daisies,
all dried up without much fight.
When I looked around me, I saw
the grasslands crowned by sunflowers.
The rainforest heavy with orchids, and
me, a graveyard for flowers.
Though powerless, I had nothing but hope.
My eyes wander, optimistic.
Optimism had failed before, however,
today it found me a minimalist.
Cacti.
“My head against the windowsill,
eyes had finally found what lay beyond.”
— Dashmehar Singh
Sending Me Kisses Through the Rain
I watch the clouds above each monsoon,
they weep from sunrise to sunset;
through the tranquillity of the moon.
Monsoon – the annual grieving of the clouds.
I sit out in my balcony with unwanted bugs;
Annoying – yet somehow cute.
My diary resting against my planted mug.
Raindrops destroying yet hydrating.
The smell of the soil brings me to my senses,
nostalgia floods my blood vessels
like adrenaline, jumping over the fences.
Fences guarding the sacred scarred memories.
But as the Sun fights through the clouds,
It wipes their heavy tears, easing their pain.
It reminds me of how you have always
sent me kisses through the rain.
— Dashmehar Singh
“Those are some bloody good poems, young man.”
The chair creaked in front of me.
“The last time I checked on you, you were screaming out loud, trying to understand your emotions. I guess you’ve understood them now, haven’t you?”
“No, not really.” I kept my eyes on the rain sliding down the glass. “I’ve always been aware of how I’ve felt. I’ve just… not been able to act on that awareness.”
“Well, you weren’t aware you wanted safety all along before you wrote a thousand words, did you?”
I sighed. “I guess you’re right about that. But the writing only helped me identify it. I had to talk to her for a few hours to fix everything.” My reflection in the window looked calmer than I felt.
“Yeah, obviously, she isn’t going to dream about what issues you have with her. You know this: communication can either kill a relationship or help it survive.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Communication is key.” I said it quickly, hoping that would end it.
“But now, after talking to her for ‘a few hours’, I’m assuming you’re happy, right? If I had a few hours with you, you would’ve surpassed Socrates by now.”
His laughter was evident.
“Well, not quite. I’ve written poems for many girls before. This doesn’t prove anything. I love her, sure, and we sorted the major issues we had, but I don’t know, man. I doubt she understands half the poems I write for her—”
“Why do you write for her?”
The question cut clean.
“Well, because I love her? I like writing poems for her; it’s like a way for me to express my love for her.” My fingers drummed against the desk. Even to me, it sounded rehearsed.
“But why do you feel sad when she doesn’t fully understand them, or analyse them line-by-line?”
I stared at the ceiling.
I had been trying to let go of this topic, but I guess some chairs just want their legs to be broken.
“I don’t know.” I leaned back. “It’s just that when people say my poems are ‘really good’ or ‘beautiful’ or even ‘really deep’, I doubt they really mean that. Most of the people I show my poems to don’t even get them. Till they discuss them with me, I’m not satisfied, because without doing that, you’re not doing justice to the poem, you know what I mean? Even if they don’t understand, at least discuss it with me, it’s not like I’m going to call you dumb.”
The chair shifted slightly.
“I get what you mean, but you’re also blatantly wrong. You do call people dumb when they don’t get your poems. I mean, I don’t know about people, but I do know about your conversations with her. Just the way she doesn’t notice the small things that hurt you, you don’t notice the small things that hurt her either.” He pushed the knife deeper into my stomach.
That stung more than I expected.
“You have to stop writing for other people. You’re chasing validation even through something as beautiful as poetry. You’re disgracing them. Write for yourself, the way you used to when you started. And if you’re writing poems to express your love, don’t expect it to be automatically analysed and discussed. When people compliment your poetry, they aren’t dismissing it, they are recognising your love and trying their best to reciprocate. If you want analysis so bad, just marry ChatGPT. Fucking dumbass.”
That’s it.
“Oh, come on.” I pushed the chair back with my foot. “Stop hating on every single thing I do. Yes, I’m not perfect, yes, I do chase validation through poetry. You don’t get to decide whether I’m disgracing my poems or not. You don’t get to decide whether I should write for myself or for other people.” I paused, jaw tightening. “Love is a currency, and I’ll do anything to be rich in this economy.”
I guess that ended the topic.
The Undefined Masterpiece
As your lips move,
and as your tongue coordinates
the music that comes out of your throat,
My eyes are dragged into a dance
with the monotone masterpiece.
When I look through,
I see an emotion, a feeling,
that I’ve somehow never felt before.
The intricate details that the artist
has added, making it all the better.
Only one colour: brown.
Quite the opposite of colourful.
It’s breaking the norms of abstract art.
I wouldn’t dare to call it minimalist,
I mean, “complex” doesn’t do it justice.
Never have I seen before
something so beautiful and complex
that God had to make it himself.
At its centre sits the core.
Rays emerge outward, like light,
reaching outward into the universe.
As I look closer, I see it
captured and contained by the border.
Outside the border waits a
patient white void.
Of course, death is imminent
for the universe if it ever breaks out.
Perhaps that’s why it remains contained
By the monotone masterpiece.
If the universe chooses to stay contained
in your beautiful eyes,
and if music chooses to stay
within the confines of your neck,
Wouldn’t you be the masterpiece?
Perhaps that word isn’t enough;
Your eyes are already a masterpiece,
Hence, you must be a work of art
which is yet undefined by this world of ours.
“You’re just doing this to piss me off, right?”
The chair’s voice cut through the room. I flinched.
“Oh, fuck. Can’t you go back to wherever you came from? Please? You’d be doing me a favour, almighty wise chair.”
“Listen, whether you like it or not, you can’t continue using poetry to get validation and compliments. People aren’t giving you love; they are giving your poetry love. It’s exactly what ▬▬▬ meant when she said—”
“Keep her name out of your mouth.”
The words came out exactly how I meant them to.
“I’m done with your advice. Let me live my life, too. I’m just a teenager. What if I act a little immature? What if I become an attention-seeking bitch? It’s fine. I’ll get through it. I have a loving girlfriend. That’s all I need… for now.”
Silence.
The chair didn’t respond.
I leaned back, folding my arms.
“Yeah. Stay quiet.”
My jaw tightened.
“Like the little ***** you are.”
Dear ▬▬▬,
Growth is nice, maturity is nice, but you know what’s nicer?
Regression, immaturity. Making mistakes, experiencing life. I’m 15, you’re turning 16 soon. Don’t you think sometimes that we are committing a little early? Don’t get me wrong, I love you, and there’s no one else I’d rather marry, but sometimes I just wonder if our school is the only world I know.
My friends are in our school; I haven’t talked to many people online. And the ones I talked to, well, connections were severed.
I remember myself in 8th grade, I was so cringe. I mean, I didn’t know how to communicate, how to express myself. I was sad, but not depressed. I didn’t know how to converse with people, and slowly I started falling out with everyone I knew. I only wanted to talk to you, mostly because I loved you. That love made me think that perhaps you could be moulded, or automatically change into the loving machine I need.
Of course, that never happened. I was the loving machine all along. It makes me really sad. I just want to talk to myself when I was in 8th, because my memory is insufficient for me to psycho-analyse myself.
Now, of course, it’s much better. But it’s too late. You’re leaving school, we’re not going to meet much, and even when we do, it’s going to be for a few hours, maybe even less than that. I know I can survive, and I mean, what kind of love is it if you don’t fight for it, right?
I don’t know. I think about you every fucking minute of the day. Our board examinations are in a few days. What am I doing? I just want to curl up and die. And these dreams don’t help.
What dreams, you may ask?
I have these dreams, dreams that go quite far. Dreams that break certain boundaries. I try to forget them, I try not to dream, but I’d be lying if I didn’t like them.
Nobody else has ever been in my dreams, well, these kinds of dreams. Not even celebrities. Only you.
It’s weird, it’s awkward, honestly. Sometimes I write it down just to dream about it. It’s like my own drug.
It’s not sex, no. It’s different. I know what lust feels like, believe me, I know. It’s romance – a romance I cannot yet define. I wrote “makeout” trying to describe one of these dreams. But in my poems, I’ve adopted a calmer, more observant lens. The fire that once used to be in my poetry has now been replaced by layered implicit meanings and metaphors.
Does it make the poems deeper? Yes.
Does it adversely affect the raw and authentic emotion that my poems once had? Also, yes.
I’m going to try writing those kinds of poems, just unapologetically in your face. Like throwing a leather ball at your face with full force.
It’ll leave a mark.
“You weren’t kidding about the immaturity thing after all.”
The chair’s voice came from behind me again. Calm. Almost patient.
“What do you want?”
“Listen. I get you. I understand what you’re trying to say. You don’t want to chase maturity because you want to experience being immature first, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, so I’m not telling you to become an all-knowing saint either. What you did in this piece right here, it shows maturity, whether you like it or not. Being honest is being mature. Being able to articulate your emotions the way you do is being mature.”
I turned slightly in my seat, just enough to acknowledge it, not enough to fully face it.
“What are you trying to say, huh? I just wrote my mind because there was a lot on it. Some of the topics I’m talking about aren’t even related to each other. It’s by far one of my weakest pieces.”
“First of all, it’s not one of your weakest pieces. Second of all, what was I telling you to do all along? Write your mind. Write for yourself. That’s what you did here. You weren’t asking for sympathy or validation from anyone. You were just being honest. Being you. That’s what I was talking about.”
He paused.
“You can stay mad at me, or you can try to understand what I’m telling you. The moment you start writing for yourself, to understand yourself, to understand your mistakes, that’s when people will love you for being you. And I know that’s what you’ve always wanted. To be loved unconditionally. Without your music, without your body, without your jokes, without everything that defines you—”
“Yeah, yeah, alright, wise man.” I rubbed my face, slower this time. “I got you. That’s enough for now. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, young man.”
The chair didn’t creak after that.
I didn’t turn around.
For a moment, I just stared at my pen. The ink was still; it was waiting for me. I saw its marks on one of my weakest pieces.
One of my weakest pieces?
Maybe not.
It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t structured. It wasn’t impressive.
It was mine.
I think that matters more to me than being rated a 9.7/10 by ChatGPT for my “psychological depth as a young writer”.
I guess writing for myself isn’t so bad after all.
I opened my diary and began writing.
ACT II
Dear ▬▬▬,
Red Marks the Spot
Music playing from my speaker,
while you’re talking about
your new favourite song.
I’m listening, like always.
I just don’t know what to say.
My focus is on the red.
Your cheeks, they’re red
But your lips are redder.
I guess red marks the spot.
I moved closer, but paused,
couldn’t go for the treasure just yet,
So, I settled for the softer red.
You stopped talking, I stopped listening.
Your cheeks are turning redder
from my touch.
In the end, I didn’t have to go looking
for the treasure myself;
since it had already found me.
- Dashmehar Singh
five hundred five
My hands on my keyboard,
505 fading into my ears.
I close my eyes – to think.
Trying to see everything clear.
I feel my pulse in my hands,
I hear the ticks of my wristwatch.
The chaos in my mind is clearing,
just like the fog outside my porch.
The song starts; my fingers move.
The poem is writing itself.
Metaphors rise without strain.
Finished it all by myself.
“But I crumble completely when you
cry.
It seems like once again you’ve had to
greet me with goodbye.
I’m always just about to go and
spoil a surprise,
take my hands off of your eyes
too soon.”
Only memories I write about,
never wrote about the present.
Ironic that the time forever gone,
seems better than a gift, a present.
This isn’t really a poem;
It’s more of an articulation
of the extremely weird spectrum
which you call my brilliant mind.
ACT III
Dear ▬▬▬,
Sometimes I wonder, what if it did not end up that way? What if we were still talking, still friends, still… more than that.
The thing about maturity is that you realise you aren’t able to follow your own advice. You realise that the reasons they left you were justified. You realise the way you acted wasn’t fair to them. You realise that it’s way too late to start realising now.
In my life, I’ve only had romantic relationships with three women. I like to classify them as:
1. The First Love.
2. The Desperate Attempt at moving on from the first.
3. The Realisation.
I learnt how to love – how to put someone on a pedestal – before I learnt who I was. My identity was “the guy who loves that girl who doesn’t love him back”. Not amongst my friends or classmates, no. That was who I was to myself.
Perhaps that’s why I went running back to her, even though I knew inside that reading the same book twice wouldn’t change the ending. It’s cliché, but it’s true. I think I wasn’t ready to accept that we weren’t meant for each other. I was stubborn; I didn’t want to move on. Well, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
So, when I finally got fed up with seeing her with someone other than me, I tried finding someone else. And nowadays, it’s really not that difficult to find someone to talk to. Someone you can be friends with; someone you can be… more than friends with.
Just like that, two teenagers with broken hearts started dating in the hopes that they could move on from the one who broke their hearts in the first place.
Sadly, one of them would never be able to move on. And the other one, well, they fell for someone who was never theirs to begin with.
I think about her a lot. I regret the way I started distancing myself. I regret that I wasn’t able to give her the attention she needed from me.
But I don’t regret that phase in my life because I started writing to understand how I felt, what I felt. I started finding the flaws in myself, and I started fixing them as much as I could. I could never regret a part of my life that ended up shaping the better me.
I don’t know what she learnt or realised from our short relationship, but hopefully, she looks back at it and smiles. Not because of the regret of us never lasting, but because we were once more than acquaintances; we were once… more than friends.
After that endeavour, I began talking to a lot more people on the internet. Most of them were, well, ordinary to say the least. But some of them? They were diamonds in a landfill, rare, unexpected, but somehow still shining despite where I found them.
One of those diamonds was the one I classified as “The Realisation”. We became friends in late February of 2025. We got pretty close by April, and my friends at school often shipped her and me, though I had no such feelings for her.
By the end of May, however, I did not feel that way. I thought I had developed feelings for her, and by June, I confessed. She reciprocated. I wrote poems for her, talked to her every day.
I often confuse being “platonically close” with someone as “having romantic feelings” for them. This wasn’t the last time I made that mistake either; I made it again a few months later, but that’s a story for another time.
Somewhere in the middle of talking every day and writing poems for her, I forgot what “love” actually meant. I opened up to her about my mental health issues, and she supported me. She listened to me. Perhaps she shouldn’t have done that.
Since that day, all I really talked about was the negative things happening in my life. Whenever we had a long conversation, it would just be my trauma-dumping. It ruined the relationship, quite frankly. I thought we were getting closer, when in reality, she was drifting away.
The reason we separated is quite similar, but it’s a little more complicated than that. The point I’m trying to make is that I learned something very important from that relationship.
Love isn’t trauma-dumping.
Love isn’t obsession.
Love isn’t absolute dependency.
Love isn’t found through desperation.
Love isn’t putting someone on a pedestal.
And love is never found through sacrificing your own values, your self-respect, and your identity.
Love is a symbiotic relationship where both individuals are interdependent on each other. They are honest with each other, they are affectionate with each other, but more importantly, they’re always safe. Because that’s always what it has been about.
Safety.
The terrace was quieter than I expected.
I could see the traffic jam at the intersection nearby. I could see red on top of distant buildings, distant traffic-lights, and distant cars. Faint sounds of honking and barking dogs sounded somewhat peaceful under the moonlight.
I stood near the edge, not looking down. Just forward. I had written down everything on my mind, yet it still felt a little heavy.
“Four years”, I thought to myself as I looked onward.
It took me four years to fall in love. To change my personality. To get my heart broken. To become obsessed. To crave obsession. To date out of desperation. To break up. To date someone because we were too close as friends. To dump all my trauma onto them and then leave them for the one who broke me all those years ago.
The cold wind pushed against my shirt.
And I’m still with the one who broke me so many fucking times over so many fucking years.
I laughed under my breath. It disappeared into the air.
“What’s the point of all of this wisdom if I can’t utilise it?” The night didn’t answer.
“I am a contradiction to my own reflection.”
The silence was deafening. Nobody to validate me now. Nobody to love me now. Nobody to mock me now. It felt relieving… but unlikely.
“Not quite, young man.”
Of course, the voice came from behind me.
I didn’t flinch this time.
The chair stood a few steps away, his legs steady on the concrete, unmoved by the wind.
I turned around slowly.
“You’ve always wanted safety,” he said. “Whether that be through control, or mutual affection. You’ve always wanted safety.”
I started pacing along the edge, not too close, just enough to feel the openness around me.
“You fear abandonment. You don’t want to be alone after you give everything to the other person. For years, you thought control was safety. Manipulation was safety. Obsession was safety.”
The city lights flickered below, indifferent.
“But today,” the chair continued, “you realised the only sustainable safety is mutual. Mutual affection. Mutual choice.”
I stopped walking.
“You said it yourself. Obsession and control aren’t sustainable. They ruin relationships. And now, you’re getting that safety from the one who once took it from you.”
He spoke with a burning passion that I had never seen before. The wind picked up, but he slowed down.
“It’s ironic. But irony doesn’t mean it’s doomed. Reading the same book twice doesn’t change the ending. But the writer can always write a new book. A new book with a new ending, with the same characters but a different setting. The writer can always write a sequel, young man.”
He paused, with a smile on his wooden face.
“And you are quite the writer, dare I say.”
Something inside me steadied.
“I did it.” The words came out into the night.
“I finally did it. Oh my god. I fucking did it.”
I stepped back from the edge without thinking about it. My heartbeat wasn’t racing anymore.
“I’m proud of you, young—”
“Shut it.”
I walked towards the chair.
“I don’t want to hear you speak again.”
The wind pushed past us both.
For a second, I just stood there, looking at it. At the thing that had followed me for the last four years. It corrected me, mocked me, guided me. My heart was split in two – should I do it or not?
I made my decision in a second. There wasn’t much to think about.
“Goodbye”, I said as I grabbed his scarred leg. The one I had duct-taped when I was young. It snapped. He let out a final, painful creak. As I picked him up over my head, grabbing two of his remaining legs, with one throw, he was flying off. He hit the concrete below with a thud, and his pieces scattered.
The terrace felt larger without him.
“I don’t need you anymore.” The city carried the words away.
“Thanks for the help, wise one.”
yeet your conscience 😎