Ronie Dinosaur Chapter 9 – Frooti

I never learned how to let a girl
pump me full of sweet air
until I’m a giggling balloon
bouncing in her palms like a birthday toy.

But you-my old friend-
you always knew the trick.
You’d scoop me up like a little boy,
rain monsoon kisses on my cheeks,
call me “Ronie” in that honey voice
that turned the whole world into candy floss.

I pretended to protest,
but secretly I melted-
a strawberry-ice-cream heart dripping slow
under your silver-foil laughter.

You’re silk and city lights now,
yet that girl still hides inside,
cradling me like her favourite teddy,
feeding me sugar till I sparkled.

Say “Ronie” once more-
soft as cracklers dissolving-
and I’ll stay your little boy forever,
living under the monsoon of your smile.

No way was I sliding my hand into your jeans
or grabbing you like some hungry animal.
You just had to show up as your old self,
pack special sweets for me,
pull me into your lap,
feed them to me with kisses
while I stayed shy and terrified,
yet still the man the world knows.

The world claws and queues its whole life
for the gift that was simply mine.
I played the fool on purpose,
handed you the only love I could carry-
the love that kept us both afloat.

Don’t think I was blind, my friend.
I always knew the difference:
when you wanted play,
and when the hungry girl in you
tried to snatch the candy
without paying the price.

You were my girl.
My sweetheart.
Mine.

Only you had permission
to do stupid things to me.
But-wait-what were you even trying to do?
I froze.
I held back.

Because you were too pretty,
and my touch
might’ve made you dirty.
My fingers would’ve left marks
on your silver foil.

You were my friend.
You had my respect.
You had everything-
except the one thing I was terrified to give:
the messy, hungry, real me.

You kept the stamp that said clever.
I drank the poison.
You took what you wanted.
I became what I was meant to be.

No retaliation.
No redemption.
I just miss the girl-
and the good luck she used to be.

When you sent Ram chasing a golden deer,
his life was nothing-just glitter and gleam.
But when Ravana reached inside your blouse,
you blazed: “Touch me, demon, and burn in my purity’s flame!”

A naive girl could never stand beside what we were.
Men like me-men wired for dangerous sweetness-
we fall only for the bold ones,
the women who dare to reach first,
who take what they need without trembling.
And even they,
like praying mantises dressed as clever angels,
end up devouring the very hands
that once protected them.

That was the thing I never said,
and the thing you never understood.
As a friend you loved me-it was fantasy.
But when that same friend exploited,
I stopped.

That was the roar I never let out-
the one you never heard.
You loved your little dinosaur,
but only as a harmless fantasy.

And when this trembling T-Rex finally gathered the courage
to ask you to be his forever jungle,
you looked at the ruins and said,
“Too late. The meteor already fell.”

Ronie Dinosaur’s Dinosaurni
was never found.
She left after the cannibalism-
quietly, cleanly,
with my heart still beating between her teeth.

I told you never to talk to me again.
I thought you had fooled me-which was true.
I never saw you once in the three years of college after that.
Then one ordinary afternoon,
you stepped right into my path.

“Oye, why don’t you talk to me?” you asked.
I looked around, confused whether you were speaking to me.
But I kept walking.

If I had stopped and spoken that day,
she would have smiled,
hooked one more sweet word into my mouth,
and walked away with another piece
she never returned the first time.
The weight of Ronie Dinosaur
would have grown one ghost lighter.

But I kept walking.

Tonight I have character.
I have Ronie Dinosaur.
I have snakes, I have bitches,
I have grief, shame, resilience,
and I have the weight of every ghost
I refused to let people steal from me.
These are the same ghosts
that might have danced with Shiva on the cremation ground-
wild, barefoot, laughing at fire.

It’s a heavy burden.
No one to tell.
A diesel engine parked on the heart,
pistons cold and still.

And I walk with those heavy feet down the corridor,
away from her,
after telling her-
“You must think I’m a fool,
so never talk to me again.”

Silence.

Then the night wind answers back,
almost her old honey voice, only colder:

“I have only one thing-
a name still alive on your tongue:
‘Ronie.’

Every time you say it,
I slice off one more piece of you.
Everything else-
you swallowed yourself, dinosaur.

Now tell me…
when will you leave,
or will you finally learn how to live?”

For the rest of school
I kept watching her disappear down the long green and lead street,
her ponytail swinging like a pendulum counting down my extinction.
No talk.
Only looking.
Only the ache growing teeth.

Last day of twelfth grade
she vanished for good.
Depression moved in,
heavy as wet cement.
I stopped leaving the house.
I stopped eating sunlight.

Then came the long summer of engineering entrances.
Alone in my room,
I started jogging at 4 a.m.,
blaming her with every footfall:
You broke me.
You broke me.
You broke me.
Sweat became prayer.

Push-ups became revenge.
Slowly the boy grew scales.
Ronie Dinosaur was born on that terrace-
tiny arms, giant heart,
running from ghosts that still wore her face.

First day of college
I walked into the lecture hall
armoured in new muscle and old silence.
And there she was-
not the girl who rejected me,
but a new meteor,
bright, mischievous, impossible.

Frooti.
She looked once
and chose me instantly.
First guy she spoke to.
First girl who ever spoke to me without me speaking first.

She teased,
she poked,
she climbed into my lap of shyness
and fed me cracklers of attention
until I thought it was safe to open my mouth again.
I told myself:
this time it’s just friendship.
This time no one will disappear.

But some meteors are born to fall
and some dinosaurs are born to learn
that the sky never really changes-
it only finds new ways to burn you.

Then the sky found its cruelest way yet.

I could be in second year of college
I was detained-
short of attendance,
lost the right to sit in the same classroom as you,
lost the daily sight of your silver-foil laugh
that had become my only remaining sunlight.

The jungle shrank to my room
and without a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Sober but just like addicts do
when the drug is suddenly taken away,
on 13 August, age twenty-one,
I took a blade
and opened long red rivers
down wrists and forearms-
slow, deliberate,
counting every cut like push-ups once counted heartbeats.

A scar map that still spells your name
when I flex in the mirror.

I never told you.
You never asked.
You kept your city lights.
I kept my ghosts,
heavier now-
nineteen new ones for every cut,
dancing with Shiva on the inside of my skin.

And still,
three years later,
when you stepped into my path
and asked “Oye, why don’t you talk to me?”
I kept walking-
because if I had stopped,
you would have seen the rivers under the sleeves
and maybe, just maybe,
felt something real for the first time.

But the dinosaur had already learned:
some wounds are the only things
no one is allowed to feed from again.
___________________________________________________________________
Question 8: asked here : Ronie Dinosaur Chapter 8 – Walking Alone
Why efforts must only be equal to responses and not mere reactions?

if I respect myself, so I will respect my efforts as well, and those can only be met with proper responses, not mere shallow impulsive reactions.
____________________________________________________________________
Exercise for anyone who wants to answer:
Write your answer in the comments.

Question 9: What must I have done instead of just keep walking and what she actually meant when she was asking loudly, why I don’t talk to her?

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