th
my grandmother died this october she was a freak
these letters were written to her shortly after Ba means “grandmother� in Gujarati
Monday, October 22 Dear Ba, People who suffer just want to feel significant. On Saturday I heard that you died alone in an ICU in India. I want to know, were you old and fat and drooling? Did you shit yourself? Did men carry you in their arms to the bathroom? Was it your greatest fantasy? I don’t care what anyone says about you. You were not old and conservative. You were the scariest girl. You were so wild. I wish I could’ve seen you before you died. I will be as fat as you one day when I stop starving for young white male antichrists. I will die caught up in my greatest sexual fantasy. Just like you. I will die like a legend.
My friend’s boyfriend recently died and she wants to hurt herself so she’s going to have sex with the guy who always offers her a ride on her way to school. I asked her if it was her first time with a guy, but what does it even matter? Does anything have significance now? I came to school in a Mercedes. A white guy dropped me off and he was listening to a podcast about Trump. I wanted to ask him who he voted for. He was white, so you really couldn’t tell. I wanted to be trapped in there with him. I wanted him to talk about me dying. I wanted to listen, uh huh white dude, yeah. When you were 17 did some girl at school starve for you? I bet. I bet you didn’t wear socks. I bet you had blisters on your fingers and toes. I bet you had posters of naked indian ladies in your room. I bet you just stared at them and cried.
I wanted to show people that I was suffering. It’s such bullshit. The world goes on when people die unjustly. The world doesn’t give a shit. The world is in a shitty hardcore band. He wears wife beaters and he doesn’t mind calling them wife beaters. The world doesn’t care about anyone’s grandma. I wanted to take my clothes off in my math class and wait for people to notice. I wanted to walk out smiling. I didn’t do it because the world wouldn’t think it was badass. They wouldn’t be in awe. They wouldn’t look at the ugly secret tattoos I gave myself with sewing needles. They wouldn’t think to themselves, “she’s going to die like a legend.” They would stare. They would take secret videos. People would talk about it. I wouldn’t be cruel and scary and important. I would be pathetic. Nobody has taste in high school. I’m not sorry to say it.
I want to show that I am suffering. Do I matter? Am I just some dude? Do I want to die? I want to skip school, go home for the first time in 2 weeks, find my secret stash of cigarettes, smoke all the half broken ones, cough because I am pathetic, I am authentic, I am cruel to myself. I want to skip school and run around in a circle for an hour on the football field until I get so dizzy I throw up. Then I’ll lay on the grass until the world feels safe. Or dark. I don’t want to make sense to anyone else. I want to preserve my authenticity. When people look at me I just want them to be like, “Oh, I don’t get it, but she’s suffering.” That would be my greatest scenario, with the least amount of exploitation. I want to suffer and be stared at. I know you get it.
How old were you when you started to feel misunderstood, Ba? Were you born angry? I miss you. I’m afraid you never even existed at all. I shoplifted makeup yesterday. I love you. We could’ve been partners in crime. We were, we are. You were so important. You’re probably surrounded by all the other hot girls in purgatory. My heart burns all the time. I love you, I love you. Nothing matters except our bodies. You were so cool. I love you. Love, Your second granddaughter, your fucked up girl (ananya)
Monday, November 5 Dear ba, I’m supposed to be paying attention in my Spanish class. Everyone is taking notes & breathing but all I can feel is asmr. I imagined talking to my friend and telling her how much I identified with throwing up. Having so much nonsense and emotion in your body you just have to excrete it and show everybody. If I was a dog I’d only shit on the bed. If I was a girl I’d squat down by the highway near my house, my butt facing the cars, wind blowing up my skirt in my hair. I’d shit a black coil baby on the road and some dude would look at it and ask why.
Why is such a dumb question. Why aren’t YOU shitting on the side of the road because you are so sad and frail and you contain multitudes of garbage and nonsense and secret sad perverted stories about the universe----HOW did the universe fuck you over? Why aren’t YOU always screaming when people speak to you? Why is a cop out. existence does not have an answer. I don’t know WHY a 70 year old poetry professor at Middlesex County College gave birth to me. I don’t know WHY i’m eternally fourteen years old and so disgusted with my existence, I asked my friend Charlie to start calling me Guru because all I ever want to be is some awful god like figure, some guy with heavy wallet chains and JNCOS and black holes instead of eyes, so stupid and soul sucking, he asks why, why, why, why, why are you shitting on the road Ananya? Why aren’t you being a real person?
When I grow up I don’t want to exist. I want to wear only see-through clothes and cut my hair down to a sour nub. I want a scraggly black 3 strand rat tail. What I want most is to make everyone uncomfortable. When I am old like you I want to be a bitch ghost. I want to be so cruel, not like a guy god but like how you were and how every one of my girl friends are. We are manipulative and grief stricken and corrupt. We attribute our flaws to the way the universe has sincerely fucked us over. We idolize the men we hate. We beat each other up in secret. Have you ever had your hair ripped out by someone you love? I’ve fought so many girls it’s a miracle I’ve made it up to shoulder length. I am evil and I want to win everything. I don’t know what fortnite is but I want to win it. I want to kill it. I want to bring it home to all the women and children in the family and have them skin it and eat it.
A 14 year old girl invented god. This i am sure of. She has awful braces and hot cheeto fingers and she looks like she got hit by a bus and she is involving the whole entire world in her traumatic, awful, psychosexual religious creation. She wrote erotica on Wattpad about a group of sad women & some dude like Zac Efron is their savior and that’s why Zac Efron is rich and that’s why my grandparents press their lips together when they pray for all their dead brothers and sisters and that’s why i both hate god in his unattainable ness because God is a celebrity and a Jock so he gets invited to all the good parties & he sits there a corner to trip out and cry. All the girls worship his cruelty because the truth is we are all manipulative and i am manipulative and what i want most in the world is to make money off of my tears.
Here it is: After high school I’m going to hole up in my room for several days and punch holes into my zac efron posters and cry into tiny ziploc bags and my friend Charlie will put labels over the bags like “she’s crying because men don’t understand why she has to shit on the road” and we will ship them to god like figures who peaked in high school. In Ohio somebody’s dad and brother will open me and ask whywhywhywhywhwywhywhy because if there is one thing I can count on god for, it’s that he’s real and I’m not. Sincerely, Ananya (Guru?) Pandya
Wednesday, November 7 Dear Ba, it is 1:51 AM. I was just watching a movie on Netflix called Duck Butter which is supposed to be all niche and indie and after you watch it you have to sit in silence and stare at a wall and think you’re smarter than everyone else while simultaneously hating yourself.There’s this girl in it who’s just like me. She’s a con artist. She’s a singer but she’s a terrible singer. When she’s up on stage nobody cares so makes out with a girl in the audience and everyone starts roaring and drinking and dancing and maybe there is no god or maybe god is here, in girls that make out with other girls for other people’s pleasure. Idk. She isn’t a singer now, she’s an entertainer. It’s all about being looked at, causing a reaction. The girl is a con artist. She flips her hair to the side. She licks her lips, she always smiles without her teeth. It’s all a show for somebody else.
Today I filmed myself crying on the road. I started taking videos and documenting everything when Ranjani first started showing signs that she was sick and now it’s slowly escalated into sheer exploitation. Sometimes I don’t feel good when I film myself when I’m vulnerable and put it on the internet. I think I’m too pretentious. Ba, everyone I know is boring and they don’t deserve me. They should be paying to see me cry. This guy I know asked me why all my poems are about sex and I wanted to punch him. I said “sometimes sex is the only power a teenage girl has” and then he started talking about “our generation” and how “we can change things” and i listened and nodded my head for yes-no yeah-uh-huh and I felt like I was going to die. This is it. This is the poem: sometimes you have to listen sometimes you have to lie there, nod your head, and wait for it to be over.
Sex is not for men. Last year I almost had sex with a guy with really bad breath. He asked me if I was a lesbian and then he asked me to come with him to the bathroom. We sat on the toilet and I told him my mother left me and he said “I hate my family” and then everything he did to me hurt. He messaged me on instagram yesterday and asked what I was doing. I said “being existential and staring at a wall” he said “That sounds mad artistic” and then when I didn’t respond he blocked me. It felt so bad, I almost sent him a picture of my boobs. I was trying to say “I am so much better than you, you don’t deserve me, I hope you’re crying in the bathroom right now. I hope you’re crying on the road. I hope you take a video. And I hope you are stupid enough to think it’s mad artistic.”
I feel as old as you Ba, and you are dead. My poems aren’t about sex. My poems are about the void. Sex is merely a poor metaphor, a shitty way to get people to look at me, stare. I always get a reaction. Here’s a prayer: God, one day I want to pour everyone a drink. I want to dance with everyone. I want to be in the bathroom with everyone I hate. I’m an entertainer, a con. I’m not doing this for me. Love, Your Fucked Up Girl, Ananya (Guru) P.S I love you and I wonder if you only had sex with my grandpa because he was basic and I hope you are not sad because of that!
Sunday, november 11 Dear Ba, You found god because you needed a man to follow. I found the void because I needed a god to follow. The void is extreme emptiness. It can be a place or even a person. The void is my body. Extreme nothingness. A barren wasteland they will have some sort of bohemian music festival at. A place where justin bieber can grow out his mustache into so-muchness He is so muchness it is absolute nothingness. Justin bieber is a cruel god. my psychiatrist tries to convince me i exist, i’m like, honey are you dumb? like every male popstar, i am an amalgamation of the fantasies of suffering women, beauty is unattainable and women need it.
i’m Justin Timberlake, i’m Axl Rose, i’m every awful guy that invited you to the backroom for a private concert, every awful guy that said this one’s for you on the radio, but there are a million you’s pressing your ear to the window, wet and damp outside because it’s raining, there are a million you’s trying to sop up the world and sop up the songs and the girlblood. This one’s for you grandma. A dude shaves his beard, cuts a small gash in his skin by accident, this one’s for you grandma. A dude invites me into his car and promises to drive me to school I say yes. This one’s for you grandma.
A dude says he knows me like he knows his mother and he worships his mother and holds her hand in church and wears sweater vests to school unironically and tells me i am a mystery, a void, so intriguing. He says we are friends. On the day you died I went to school and prayed to men like you prayed to men and i told him my grandma died and he said sorry, i don’t really have feelings, i don’t really know how to sympathize, i don’t really care about other people’s problems, i don’t really know what to say. i spit on his face when we kiss. This one’s for you grandma.
It’s all the same. Saliva, spit, water, blood, beards, shaving your legs over the toilet. The hair floating in the toilet water, rockstars floating over crowds, drugged out in the beach, coughing out algae, drug test, dark orange piss. Their mother’s crying, their mothers shaking their heads. Holding their sons hands firmly in court. A drive back home, windows blasting, the dj goes, This one’s for you, this one’s for you… I listen to the radio and fall in love with nothingness. The rockstar’s grandmother listens to the radio and falls in love with nothingness. I am writing a letter to my favorite rockstar right now, I say, this one’s for you...this one’s for you… For you, from me. Ananya.
Rest in pee i love you bitch i ain’t never gonna stop lovin u bitch
th