Separation

I have worked on many scenarios in my mind. None of the scenarios actually ended up with I having you in my life.

The glaciers will have to melt someday, and so you will say. The ocean floors have to heave now and then, sending unforgiving waves crashing on to unsuspecting lives. Gravity, you would say, is the glue that joins parallel universes. And universes keep falling into each other all the time. Time is fluid. It is not a linear variable. Time is a different thing to a fruitfly and to a child on her winter holiday.

I have explored all your definitions. Not one defines closely, how it will be, when you are no longer with me.

Death and Rebirth

I have looked far into the winter mist. At the heart of its cold grey despair, I have found shimmering undercurrents of hope.

This winter derives it's darkness from my longing for you . With the first flush of my unbeing, you will be born again.

Allow me this death for I need you to be reborn.

Fading Away

How many memories can my mind retain?

I have seen clouds up close. They are really filled with nothing in them. Their undulating form of fluff is made of my memories of you. Their white comes from my happy thoughts of you. The greys are my desolation, the black, a drape of your absence, falling like velvet and drenching my soul.

Such magnificent shapes you make, scattered through my once clear blue sky.

The Music in my Life

Do not ask me why I miss you.  That answer would come to me, eventully. Some day sometime in the future I will find myself not thinking about you.  And in not thinking about you, I will end up thinking about you just like that.

All stories are my stories, but I am not my stories. I am yours. When we are older and our world is quieter than it is now; I will be in those intriguing tales that your heart spins to give you company.

Do not ask me why I miss you. That answer would come to me when it comes to me. Why hurry?

Moving On.

I open my door and almost see you sitting there, angry that you could not get the air-conditioning on. Is that small speck of red on my yellow tea cup a stain from your lipstick? I ride my car and I can see you sitting next to me, glaring at those jealous guys staring at you. There are six strands from your hair that I saved from the last time you were home. A green elastic band sits lonely in my bathroom shelf.

A bindi stares at me from my dressing room mirror.

So much of my memory is stained forever. I am no longer what I remember. All I remember is you.

Half of you

I am sitting at this airport somewhere and I see a girl who looks quite like you. Something that she did caught my attention. She was almost as tall, almost as fair and her hair, it was just as straight and shiny. The way she looked into her bag for the boarding pass, the way she held her head high and her gait graceful and stately, reminded me of you.

And then she looked at me, and the way she looked at me, I knew it could not be you. She did not look at me the way you look at me when you love me, nor when you hate me.

Only you can look at me, the way you look at me. 

Oceans' longing for the Sea

What if I did not have this phone? Would I have so longingly stared into my empty spaces just as well? There are times when the noise of your silences, deafen me with its roar. It's almost as if an Ocean has come visiting a sea. I am home, and my home is missing me. I write, but my words are not me. I try to force meanings into memories, but my memories, they deceive me.

How much of me over the years, have you taken away from me. And how I wish you would take away,  the little that remains as well.

This ocean so desperately longs for its sea.

On Your Side of the Shore

I call her once in a while, and make idle chatter until she brings up you. I don't want her to know, that I think about you. I think about you constantly; but she is important too.

And when she talks to me about you, I feel like you are standing on the other side of this endless shoreline, watching me watching you.

It's one more day of living without you.

Redemption

I look at her and she reminds me so much of you. I know that she is another, but I like her not because of herself, but because of you. She looks into my eyes and find me staring at her all the time. Sometimes she asks me, why do you stare at me all the time? I am right here next to you, but you look at me as if you are seeing me for the first time, all the time!

I look at her and I hear you asking me to stop staring at you. I look at her and hear you asking me to grow up.

For her to live, independent of you, I have to let go of a part of me that lives with you. And whenever I have tried doing that, I have discovered that in losing you, I lose most of myself too. And whenever I have tried doing that, I have found in me a stranger who goes by some other name. I cannot have another name, for I have not answered to any other name than the one by which you called me, the last time you called me.

Death may not bring a closure to that which this life could not sustain.

The Living Well

Don't draw from me,  without leaving behind a bit of you in me. I am not eternal. I would wither away, with each day of your neglect.

Lead Kindly Light

It is not darkness
But the absence of light
Not pain
But absence of pleasure.

There are days that are dreary
Days that are sad
And I find myself looking up at the sky
And begging for the Sun
To just fucking shine.

The heart that throbbed within me once
Like cannon balls thudding around
Now lies silent and forlorn, even,
As a battle rages deep within.

What the heart feels
A poet can string to words
Through slow mellow rhymes
Silent in longing and love.
But the Shakespearean silence of my soul
I can never pen,
Into words you will fully understand.
There is no method my love,
To my madness
My madness is you.
It is not darkness that surrounds me
It’s the absence of your light,

This life’s only true delight

Before I Knew You

Before I knew you, I did not know myself. Before I knew you, I thought I knew myself.

I did not know that a stray wind carrying in its fold a faint fragrance from yore, would make my heart miss a beat, stop time and freeze me in its eternal moment. I did not know that a laughter from a stranger would reverberate across an ocean of full of shackled memories, and huge tidal waves of your thoughts, could drown me into eternal grief. I did not know that I will catch myself so often, intensely staring at strangers in red, for red was your favourite colour.

Before I knew you, I thought I had conquered love and were immune to it.

Before I knew you, I was barely human.

Just Like When I Was A Kid

My mamma speaks of the time when I was a four year old. One day, I jumped on one side of an empty refrigerator stand, and the other side came and hit me on my face. The stand was made of iron and I hurt my eyebrow bad. I went about playing until the blood started clouding my vision and staining the floor. It was then that my aunt looked out of the window and screamed out of fear and surprise. It was her scream that scared me. I started crying as well, rubbing all that blood from my slit eyebrows all over my face.

It hurt bad. The doc gave me 6 stitches to get my brow back in shape. I still have them right there.

After the stitches, mamma says that I would play around all day and occasionally weep with the pain from the stitches. I will sing, laugh, run and fight, and then cry some as well. It was funny, watching me hop around with a huge bandage on one eye, it was also heart rending for her. I was all of four years old when that happened.

Mamma, nothing much has changed. The pain now, is not from the stitches anymore. They tell me that these wounds can't be stitched. I meet my days everyday with a  smile. I laugh, I play, I dance. And when I am reminded of her, I cry some too.

Two shades too blue

TWO SHADES TOO BLUE

I watch the empty window-side table closely. For this used to be your favourite place. Here you would sip your half cup tea and pout and look out of the window longingly. You will point to people going about their everyday lives,  and like a little princess, you will weave stories, and chuckle and laugh

Your presence had a way of making my little house
Feel full.
It was as if you filled my walls with shades
That made then come to life.
As if suddenly,
Being a dining table was an important achievement,
And that wall hanging
Would acquire a personality, and indulgently
Glare at me; as if this were its house, not mine.

I now look at the empty space besides my window.
Baby, it was your favourite spot.
And watching you
My favourite moment.

First published in Muse India, Jan-Feb 2017

The Heart Want What It Wants

I no longer live in your secret places.  I am aware that relationships change, perspectives change and so do people with it.
But the heart wants what it wants.

I look into your eyes and I don't see myself there anymore. You look at me and I know that you are not looking at me anymore.

But the heart wants what it wants.

Roller Coaster Ride

I have felt your heart fluttering as my fingers made weird random design on your palm. No, you don't have to tell me what I do to you.

It's just a small bit of all that you do to me as well.

The Dream Within A Dream

I had this dream. I had this dream that I was floating on a cloud and you were with me. From the mist of wayward dreams, I could feel your fragrance engulfing me. Each time I was confused and frightened and lonely and sad, I could see you pouting at me. The sun was but a glimmer and the birds were catching wind. The dew drops seem to have turned into a translucent liquid, and they were staring at me.

And when I opened my eyes. I could feel the softness of your lashes, as they lovingly brushed against mine.

That time in life

That time in life
When in the heat of smoldering summer
Wild blush of spring roses
Bloom on your dimple cheeks,
When dead daisies from last season
Flower fragrant in your breeze.

It is that time in life
When life  itself
Swings to fluttering rhythms
Of a beautiful butterfly wing.
When wild flowers burst forth
A parched desert dune
And hope that lay dormant
From long years of arid ennui
Springs and bursts forth
Shoots of living green.

Live on, I say
For these are not moments that you lose
To thoughts of yesterday
Or hopes of a tomorrow
That may never come.

I Do Not Love You

I do not love you
Like the way those teenagers do.
I love the fall of your velvet skirt
I love the waves
I love the crests
I love how you look at me
With that new burgundy gloss
Pouting
Waiting.

I cannot love you
Like teenagers do.

Fiery Fairy

I love your play. I love it when you stand close enough for me to breath in your Gucci. I love it when you lean on me, your hair falling on my shoulders and parts of you brushing against me. There are fires that burn without and the ones that burn within.

I love the way you control this combustion!