April 30: Summer endings

Heat leaks through walls and wind

and spreads itself out in dusty rooms.

Summer is here, with its particular

joys and sorrows, days stretched 

elastic over wavering horizon as

scent of sun clings to everything

we know. All I have with me is

description;

does description presume emotion?

Recollection, revolution, regression,

salvation? 

The fingers of a poet

itch to write life into

passing days - words

are only a way to hold on, 

to remember in contortions

of language, keepsakes of 

this restless traveller 

known as time. 

My stories are blinded by sun

today, the brightness sits in every 

corner of me and leaves no space

to breathe; all I have is the promise

of night, of petrichor and moonlight,

of wind running through my hair and

claiming my wild heart as its own. 

There is no time yet

to consolidate

no time to breathe easy

and sink into water and soil

grow flowers or new leaves.

No time, no time, no yearning

days and quivering nights, just

the sighs of summer endings,

closures and conclusions.

I will gather ideas and words,

colours and scents, pack them

gently into empty boxes: I will

have memories to unravel over

days and weeks, new promises

to write into my fingers, new 

blossoms to wait for in faith.

These grounds are parched,

these cups are full: with time,

balance will restore my mind.

Monsoon will nourish my 

desert dreams, and time

will take wisely from

my overfull cups,

leaving space

for me to

grow.

April 29: O Stranger

Your name sounds strange
in the tentative caves of my mouth,

but it tastes of truth.

I folded my fear into a perfect
sphere, and tucked it in my pocket.
When I came to meet you,
I wore courage alone.

All night, moving in time
with the rhythms of your body,

I almost forgot the music.

O stranger,
your eyes shine in my darkened days.
I wanted nothing more: the smiles, the
words, the laughter and dance. I needed
the conversation, the reminders that life
is full of beautiful people and moments,
the gentle nudges to remove what fragments
of fear I still had wrapped around my waist.
The scent and murmur of your skin might
fade in my mind with time, the tremble of
desire and memory might leave no trace, but
I will keep your generous smile, your gentle
truths and your kindness, the exuberant joy
of your body as you dance. I will keep the
hope you gifted me graciously. I will keep
the courage I discovered in your company.

April 28: Solitary

in a room too big
walls too wide roof too high
i curl in one corner,
taking up no more space
than a blanket or a bag

music leaks from the speakers
spreads over the room like ink
finding its way under my shoes,
behind the bed, inside the closet
and in the murmur of my skin.

bittersweet memories and scent
of life passing by gently, roughly,
slowly and too fast all at once.

there are stories in my hands
that tremble like water
there are dreams i write into
awkward mistakes and tears

and we laced conversation into darkness
and dealt with the world from our safe haven
time moves just right but also too fast

mellifluous. pebble. harmony. tremble. hiraeth.
all the words remind me of your footsteps

April 27: Samsara, over lunch & dinner

Dinnertime today:
Darkness settles: the swarm
of mosquitos swells around
silhouettes, a bulbous moon
swimming in a cloud-faced
sky. Big smiles and flutters,
living large in a small life;
I float my expansive soul
like a kite in starless skies.
I will find joy and name it
mine.
I do it every day.

Lunchtime, though:
'Everybody you love
will die one day', we concluded
in philosophy class today. Heart
burning with unmentionable fears,
I walked, didn't even pretend like
it doesn't matter. It matters. It matters
that my civilization looks at the world
as sorrow, as damnation, as something
to be cast off. Samsara, the endless
cycles of life and death, of birth,
where life is only

suffering;

what nonsense!
Life is not suffering - life is
pastel shades and warm lighting,
dark forest secrets and midnight kisses,
life is mysterious cloud shapes, lost letters,
new lovers, lilting laughter, thunderous rain.
Life is the happiest thing we know. Of course
everybody I love will die, of course sorrow
is certain and joy is so delicate, fragile;
but that is not all. That is not all.

We grimly declared the
'surety of our sorrows' and
the 'precariousness of our
pleasures' and my heart
swelled in sadness.
You know what,
you're wrong - I have faith
in my life, and it will blossom
and bloom in colours you will
not imagine, it will transform
and tremble in moonlight and
every moment will be precious,
every moment, even the ones
where teardrops lace my face,
I will remember that it is
precious
precious
precious.

Give me a hundred lives.
I have a jarful of light and pocketfuls
of patience; I will survive, and I will
make music. I will write sorrow into beauty;
fragile, yes, but trembling in joy. Trembling.

"In this world, it is very hard to escape happiness. That's how it is."
- Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People

April 26: Foolish Love Poem

The space between
your arm and mine
crackles,
and all I want to do
is run a single thumb
down the valleys of you:
jawline set like an unwavering
horizon, taut curve of neck facing
the stars, unyielding collarbones,
gentle rolling hills of shoulders,
and arms dusted mahogany.

When you speak,
the gravel of your words
settles on my skin, and clings.
My world wants to open up
and swallow you whole; you
just don't want to be a part
of my elaborate plan. O you
angry young man,

is this a love poem?
I hope not. I hope not.
I have come to believe
that I can write one only
at a time like this: lost,
unloved, unsure, foolish.

April 25: When you bathe

When you bathe,
remember
to wash it all off:
the hurt that gathers
under grimy fingernails,
the anger you folded
and tucked behind your ear,
the unsmiled smiles
hid beneath your fingers.

Let the water
burn your skin
raw, peel back
every lie you told
today, and every
sigh you didn't let
escape your mouth.

Don't be so gentle
with yourself. You
have survived worse.
Scrub every face
you put on
today. Every simile
you wrote and placed
into your hollows,
every word you used
to call yourself.

Remember
to tie the scent
of water
around your wrists,
and name it
home.

April 24: Sunset and Thoughts

Evening settles down
in the warm lawns and
corridors, darkness has
not invaded just yet;
bruises of light
still blossom
in the steadily purpling sky.

What if the only kind
of magic that exists
is what you choose
to imbue the world with?

I shudder, but smile,
making space for a sliver
of silver moon, placed gently
in the clear bowlful of sky;
watch remnants of golden sun
tremble into darkness.

April 23: Heroes

The thing with heroes
is that they're always
lying,
and seeing through the
screens is the worst part
of growing up. By far.

The thing with heroes
is that they only know
as much as you.
They're just as strong,
as brave, as kind, as
true. And when you
have bad days, they
can too. The thing
with heroes,
is that one always
expects too much,
hopes for magic
in the form of a
mother or a poet,
an elder brother,
a brilliant teacher.

Magic comes,
but it's everywhere,
and it's always fragile,
that's the thing. Magic
isn't something concrete
or solid - it's more firewater
or thundersmell, more like a
sliver of silver moon in a bowl
of sky. Don't you wish heaven
was a place in the map you could
plan to go? It isn't though, paradise
is as alive as you or I, but you can
never sit in paradise. You find it in
the middle of motion, in a moving
river, in a journey that whips back
your hair and stings your eyes. You
can't stop. You must keep moving.

There's no perfection
in a slice of time.

April 22: Circles, ad infinitum

Life as an endless
abandonment:
learning to love
only to lose,
settling down knee-deep
and then dusting yourself off;
learning and unlearning
like the endless motions
of the oceans - the tides
falling and breaking
falling and breaking.

Life as the infinite
regress:
moving in this
brightly lit circle,
round and round
a single-corridor maze,
the blossoming of flowers
leading only to their death.

Ideas that you hold
close your chest as if
they were precious - you can
only ever truly love knowledge

if you're willing to let
everything you learn

burn

again, and again. There will be no water
in this flickering flame. There will be no
sand. Only the anger that swells in you
like a flooding, only your eyes closed tight
that realize what it means to live in time.
Marking circles on the ground with your feet,
again, and again.

April 21: Tuesday Morning Blues

1:13 pm
(late morning or early afternoon?)
dusty sheets in disarray, beginnings
of sunshine lacing the room with light,
Radiohead and Nietzsche starting the day;

amidst the bloom of debris and disaster,
a pair of lonesome legs
locating memory and desire
in an unrelenting maze

1:21 pm
(quiet pangs of hunger)
prayer flags hanging still
in various colours of vanishing,
the tremble and burn of losing a city;

in the wreckage of fear and forgetting,
the bags under my eyes, heavy as light,
searching for the gentle ache of sleep
in this particular
pulsating
circular
dream

April 20: An Ode to Writing

Stringing together words

with thread of silk; there comes

a time when dreams stain reality

and the metaphors build cities

in your belly, unwilling to leave;

you, as a series of similes, as a

continent of darkness in oceans of

light, listening to deep underwater,
watching the shatterglass surface
as if from afar, the gentle bloom

of words rising like a trance
in music and memory;

embracing the depth and form of
water, you let yourself rejoice:
here, where light burns the murmur
of your skin, you declare yourself
a new-born god surrounded only by
the countries of void, the stories of
loss, the coastlines jagged by regret.

You need nothing else. You are
immense
in your kingdom of words.

Emerging from this tidal paradise
is madness, is impossible sanity.
Your heartbeat thunders the song
of the waves. The clocks float past,
impatient, leaving pulsating numbers
in their wake. Your shadow calls your
forgotten name. Searching in the dark
mysteries of your mirror, all you want
is wholesome countries of yourself, the
simple comfort of identity holding you
to your singular self. Your shadow calls
your forgotten name. Your shadow calls.

All you own
is fragments of faces,
the wreckage of memory and desire
hidden under the darkness of alphabets;

the words pile higher,
smelling of lies and water,
debris and disaster;

language blossoms in your eyelids

your fingers 

your curled toes

in your chest rising and falling

with the beat of music: hiraeth 

April 19: Song of Smoke

burning eyes and guilt

(even though everything is okay,

everything is okay tonight)

thankfully nobody can read

your fingers laced with smoke

today the sun was the lightest hue

a singular clear orb set against

a sky made only of clouds 

grey and smoke

everything is okay.

it isn't hopeless anymore.

fragments of a moving life

follow you like stains

sometimes when you hold

the cigarette between two

hesitant 

fingers, you forget that it's

you;

your eyes follow me in the dark

my days are sandcastles 

next to your seas.

April 18: It Matters

I know it's hard that
everything matters.
I know it burns you
that I nitpick, catch on to
'inconsequential' things that
you say. It burns when I bang
my fists on the table and tell you
it matters what you eat what you
drink what you smoke what you
wear, what you put on your face
what you put on your hair. It matters
what you write what you cite what you
choose not to fight. Goddamn it, it does.

It's hard for me too.
It's hard because none of us
will ever be able to make the
kind of difference we want,
never be able to truly find
the right blend of meaning
and reason, never be lauded
for all the things we secretly
want to be lauded for. It's hard,

because the world is the strangest
carnival I ever did see, by far the
most neurotic psychosocial fantasy,
the worst kind of nightmare that you
don't know how to flee. It matters,
despite comfort. It matters, despite
the fact that yolo. Because this world,
this beautiful magical fucking scary
world, it does not live one life.
This world lives a hundred stories
every second, a hundred heartbreaks
and a hundred secret tears of joy, this
world is larger than you will ever be,
and yet it's only, only as large as you
choose to let yourself see. Only as kind
as you will let yourself be. Only as wise.

April 17: Ode to Angie

"Dull Gret: We come to hell through a big mouth... I'd had enough, I was mad, I hate the bastards. I come out of my front door that morning and shout till my neighbors come out and I said, "Come on, we're going where the evil come from and pay the bastards out"... You just keep running and fighting, you didn't stop for nothing. Oh, we give them devils such a beating. " - Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

O Angie,

you big baby.
you sick child.
you image of
everything that went wrong here,
in this particular hell, this apartment,
this schizophrenic society where
ambition
forgets to be kind
and change forgets
what it needs
to change.
You are woman and
forgotten, woman and
fallen, woman and
fighter.

You scare me.
You are the big mouth of hell
and you are the devil's desire,
you scare me because you are
larger than life, and yet
so
small.

The spectres that haunt you
give me hope. You are the
big mouth of hell
through which the women
can walk through and fight,
finally too angry to stand
another night, you are the
devil's desire
that will carry us through
past tonight, do you know?
You are the world
in an angry child.
You have so much
to fight. Not just
the men and not
just the devils.
Women too,
mothers,
angels.
every
day.

Demand
more for
yourself.
Demand
more for
us all.

April 16: Loving, & how

I'm afraid

that too many people equate

growing up 

with forgetting 

how to love

innocently

shamelessly

bigly. Wisdom is not always

kindness, & well, intelligence

definitely not always wisdom.

I'm afraid

that I too am not able

to love like the ocean.

Not perfectly, contained

in all the right boxes, but

big. wide. liquidly. 

I want my loving to be

the colour of the sky, &

as shamelessly willing 

to cover the world. I can

forgive myself for not loving

the right people the right way

the right amount the right time:

but I will never forgive myself

for not loving strangers enough

not giving enough birthday cards

flowers poems hugs notes & smiles.

I'd hate to be afraid

because people around me are afraid.

I'd like to love fearlessly even if I am

loved fearfully. I'd like to love bigly,

always. innocently & shamelessly,

no matter how old or cynical I get.

April 15: My Little Date

I might be blundering a little, falling
more than I thought I would. Perhaps
the darkness is throwing me off, pushing
me too hard for me to balance, hang on
to things quite right. Sometimes, I'm
afraid of silence. Of solitude. Last night,
I had a little date

with myself. Quiet, and yet so loud.
No white tablecloth, no roses or candles.
Only a wooden floor facing the bright
windows of the library, only a single
strip of sky and two stars, only a plate
of sandwiches and namkeen. Only a
phone resting on tired knees, playing
soulful strings to myself. Only the wind,
tousling back hair and the leaves of potted
plants in the vicinity, only the strange looks
of passing strangers. Only the smiles I could
give to myself. Only the smiles.

The music grew bigger and leaked out
of its bubble, until it filled the collegescape,
coloured everything a warmer hue, floating
into my badly-lit corner and rising, soaring
past petty worries and little aches, my bent
back and clenched limbs, the weight of the
world in the bags under my eyes - the music
painted everything lighter, named it all brighter,
called me moonshine and firewater, touched me
until I tingled, brown freckled skin over bones
and dreams, as tall as mountains and as deep as
the sea. The music grew so big I couldn't see it
anymore. The music was inside and outside, the
wind grew louder but more silent, and I flew.

The sandwich was divine. The corner was serendipity
in form. The moment, though trivial, was incomprehensibly
large; my little date with myself was a sonnet to solitude.
I had no white tablecloth, no fancy restaurant - I was dressed
baggy, unprepared, on the ground with throat to the stars.
It was all I needed, to tell myself
hey. I love you, man.
I don't need a white tablecloth or a black party dress,
the bright lights are enough, the dark sky more than plenty.
Life itself is all I want to aim for - life itself, my friend.

April 14: It's late.

The poetry called out to me all my life:
sometimes quiet and sometimes loud,
it nudged me as if from a river, water
rushing through my fingers as I tried
to escape - poetry called out to me, yes,
but it never asked me to stay so late,
never told me the clocks would fall
asleep before my eyelids drooped,
never told me that moss would grow
in my bones and I would have to let
it blossom, and hope for wildflowers.

I can say it, say it loud and say it
low, I can hold a hundred mirrors
up to myself and watch the reflection
of golden sun white out any image that
I should see - I can wear a hundred masks
and pretend each one of them is me. All
that you need to know is
I'm trying to
break even
with myself. Perhaps all I will achieve
will be hollow and paper mache. I might
lose the sound of my name. I am taller,
taller than the weeds in my backyard,
taller than the marks on my wall that
measured me once, taller than the lies
I never thought I would tell. The night
goes on, and doesn't end. It's late, and
my flesh is complaining, muscles and
bones aching with the ticking clock
and whirring fan. It's late, and yet I
must be awake. I need myself here,
wrapping the night time like a shroud.
Upon ache and sorrow and misplaced
wanderings.

April 13: Hope

The story of a single walk -

one of many, in the dusty, worn

streets of Dharamsala, amidst monks

and foreigners, trinket-shops and cafes,

constantly surrounded by misty rain and

mountains:

as if in a pop-up card or a picture, the deep

radiant shadow greens, the colour and bustle

of a tourist city, the particular midday smiles

of travellers in transit, resting tired bones here, on

this restless mountainside, searching for sunshine

and salvation on endless roads and reclamations.

Turning left before the monastery, three small figures

swaddled in bright woolens walked up an empty path.

 

The mist gathered before us, and we were okay

with getting lost. The great elsewhere murmured 

from the mountains, and cobbled streets and brick

walls led us to residential buildings, small gates and

open sky filled with smell of pines. A solitary rooftop

under construction - we paused; rubble, grey concrete

and iron rods marring our cityscape and rural views.

We turned our backs to the occasional passersby, and

we were silenced, pine trees and quiet buildings now

opened up the horizon, mountains filled the foreground 

and faded into shadows, the humming city was still, a

river flowed. The sky brimmed over, and a world

unravelled itself graciously

before our simple wanderings.

We were silenced.

Sharing conversations and a smoke, we watched

the world anew. Snowpeaks hid behind mist, and

smiled. Sunlight was gold and white, and darkness

of exhaled smoke rose up and vanished. We were

born again, resting on the horizon like three baby

sunsets. Intoxicated on mountain air and stillness,

we walked those winding roads, through cobbled

streets and alleyways, jutting pipes and steep steps,

climbing and jumping, shuffling and stumbling, I

held on to the parts of the city that offered itself to

us that afternoon, complex corners and wildflowers,

prayer flags emerging from every mountain peak

in that blessed little town. We found our way out

of our beautiful little maze, 

onto an empty, wide, cobbled street. To my mind,

the people smiled and were still, as if in a photograph.

The shops were bright and cozy, incense wafted through

the air and conversations were warmer. As we turned to

leave the little paradise we had discovered, I chanced upon

a sign on a fragmented little wall. Somebody had spray-painted

an arrow in the direction from which we had come - bold letters

in blue stood out against moss and rock. The sign said one word,

hope

April 12: Rituals

Evening on the football field
is purple and gold, clouds settling
around goalposts and hills, the orb
of sun resting precariously on horizon.
Me, in the business of finding joy,

standing amidst high socks and studs,
even grass and kicks, hair desperately
pulled back and held with bands and clips.
Oversized t-shirt and oversized shorts, oversized
heart and smile in minute body of skin and bones.
Me, in the business of desperately holding on to
joy instead of sorrow, finding meaningless rituals
to anchor myself against so I don't float away.
Breakfast every day, and class on time - 6 pm
on the field, convinced to run, clench teeth and
fists, hear heartbeat thudding in it's fragile cage.

Sometimes
I regret that I can hold on to meaning
only through these rituals. Perhaps I should
throw my computer, have conversations only
when they are truly meaningful, and eat when
I'm hungry, not when I'm supposed to. Rituals
are a desperation instead of a reclamation. I did
belong to effortless truth all my life - I'm not yet
used to working for joy. To discipline and dates.

Sometimes
the evening surprises me, and standing on a field
surrounded by skies of purple and gold, truth comes
effortlessly, in a continual gust of wind that pulls my
hair out of its tangle and my heart out of its cages, it
seems to be calling my name, a single vowel of longing
etched across the clouds - running and passing, I notice
myself smiling. The shadow of the wind tousles my hair
even when the gust is past. The shadow of a smile stays.
I will have dinner after a bath, and then I will work. I will
sleep before it's too late, and embrace the ferris wheel of
everlasting days.

April 11: Weekend Preludes

It began with a singular catastrophe -
a hilariously awkward coincidence, a
quietness that sat in my heart like a
melancholy familiarity, a silent loss.

Determined to make music
of my weekends, I resolutely
walked on, dust and crowds
gathering on my sorrow like
vultures - I called the sun my
friend and sweated with a smile.
If happiness wants to play catch,

I will run after it with
all I've got. I promised myself
this, I owe myself far too much.
Travelling alone in the streets of
Delhi - mysterious, narrow-eyed
and wide-laned, callous and kind,
pulsating, pulsating with life - I fly,
soar above my trembles and tears.

I plan with a vengeance, phone calls
and messages, a grid and a map in my
mind, until I am prepared. Looking out
various windows, wind tousling back
hair, I can see that I need this. I needed
the soft music and wine in coffee mugs,
the darkness of night sitting on me like
a shroud; I needed the silence.

Now, I need noise. The metro whizzes
past, and there's always someplace to be -
old friends and new, the crackle of beer cans
swaddled in a checked shirt, glugging down
in turns, between giggles and conversation.
The sun beats down on Connaught Place
despite curtain of clouds, and sets my skin
on fire. Laughing and walking, intoxication
and reclamation. A strange mix. The streets are
nearly empty, and so are the cans. Beer and sun
wrote hope on my arms, and winding walks down
darkened Delhi that night settled gentle joy like
dust in my hair. Street lights and April showers,
every word said in jest and yet, every word carrying
the weight of days of darkness and stagnation. Hope,
gathered in pools of lights on rainy flyovers, folded
into the warm blankets and hot showers of a home,
offered in fragmented smiling exchanges over tea.

I never knew I would find hope in dusty Delhi streets,
in weekend preludes lightly brushed with alcohol and
independence, in emptying my mind of the foliage
that grew there for days. Salvation comes sometimes
in cities - I smile, and I can make music again.

April 10: The Memory Pot

"Memory is not a keeping

but a forgiving, the thresh and burn

of what we cannot salvage" - Leah Silvieus 

Today, working and reworking

moments as if on a potters wheel -

changing my mind and putting both hands

forward, gently lifting this massive mound of clay,

the whirring wheel, the squelch of splatter

earthy on my arms, smelling like rain.

I cannot wash the remnants off,

they dry on my skin

and crack.

Perhaps this is memory -

everything I could not fashion

into a piece of art. Perhaps this is me,

how I hold memory, paint over peeling

clay, painful to the touch, and call it

beautiful;

perhaps the memory of tonight
can only ever be of remnants: your scent,
the tender smiles, the mahogany moon -
everything about your arms that I could not
salvage
while I was there, holding on too tight.
Perhaps I will save the scars as well as the
shadows of stars, pack them into brown letters,
and write left-over words in black pen.
"Once", I will write. "If only". 

April 9: As You Will

"I wish you were as I would have you be" - Shakespeare

O Will, old man, don't we all?
I know your will is mighty strong
but do you really always know
what you want?

'You are what you eat'
and I contend,
you are what you read,
what you watch,
as well as what you pretend.

Every morning, wearing
mask upon shattered mask,
layers of shadows and light
upon flesh and sinew until
all that remains inside is
remnants;

hollows through which
wind whistles through
and whispers echo loud.
My name is not my name.

April 8: Poem of Sadness

The whirring fan, the listless legs,

the exhaustion that creeps up on you

like a shadow. One never expects to

have to constantly fight, be ready for

battle, fists clenched and jaw tightened;

but that's where you are - every time

you pause, take a breath too deep, a silence

too long, the sadness comes swiftly, diving

in arcs around you, rising up your arms just

like smoke - and all you want to do is leave

and there's nowhere to go.

Time moves in leaps and crawls, fragmented,

and you lose all sense of it before long. Work

piles up and slips off the table, conversations

grow trivial and you start to forget what you're

supposed to do with your hands when you stand.

Fiddle, twitch, bite your finger, twiddle thumbs,

adjust the side of your glasses or wipe your phone.

There's no reason - no reason - and that's what 

really gets you at the end of the day. It's a war

you're fighting, alone in your head, an endless

ocean you're swimming through and each breath

you takes robs your lungs of something important -

and you're getting nowhere, nowhere. People scare

you. They scare me too. Buildings look bigger, the

sky caves in. It's a constant struggle to smile wider

do better work harder run faster read more cry less.

Maybe this is what being an adult is like. I thought

the sadness lasts less when you're older, and along with

knowledge and wisdom and vocabulary, you gain strength.

All I'm gaining is perspective, and that doesn't help, really.

Sadness is fine in small doses - like medicine - as long as

the rest of the time you feel new, like a baby leaf, and know

to watch sunsets and make good choices, as long as five nights

a week you can go to bed with a smile on your face, and as long

as hope outweighs outlasts outlives outshines outscreams despair.

But don't worry just yet.

Don't worry yet. Hope is here, 

just quieter, slower, older and wiser,

less ambitious than despair, less insidious.

When it comes, it'll come with all the force of

a thunderstorm, a falling ocean, a vowel of longing

written into the taut skin of the sky. Keep faith, my friend.

April 7: Magic

I'm searching for MAGIC:
hiding and smiling, moving and grieving
the songs and the sea - I'm walking, learning,
falling and crawling, marking out stars on the
blackboard of sky until I touch them all - touch
them all, their fiery eyes and flaming tails, distant
conversations and categorizations, I need you to know:

Magic comes easier when you're a child -
if you want it, it wants you right back, embraces your
footsteps and your shadows, nudges your elbows when
you tremble, and lights up your windows with shafts of
sunlight and love. Books were my magic - I read hundreds,
and filled the shelves of my mind with the kind of hope
that's hard to find as you grow older and

books grow sadder.

I'm searching for magic - people wish they could go back
to being children, but really, I'm okay - I'm searching for magic
and bloody hell, I'm going to find it, I've learnt a hundred new words
and a hundred ways of thinking, I'm taller and stronger and less afraid
of strangers, my eyes look less silly behind this pair of glasses, and
I'm sure I can do it, I'm sure I can. Isn't this what we work towards,
a goal and an aim, ambition and creation, most of all reason?
When I say MAGIC I want no sparks, I want no dragons and
no wands - all I need is reasons, unbelievably starry nights and
heart wrenching poems, winding conversations that tell me,
HEY
life, life really is, really is
worth living. This moment
really is, really is precious.

I always thought
this kind of magic
would be easier to
find as I
grew
up.

SO WHAT IF IT ISN'T
the struggle is real but so is the flaming,
fierce, ferocious fire that rages in my belly.
I will fight the ravines that will one day
stretch my skin, I will hold a hundred happy
moments in my calloused hands, and when
age hits me like a tornado, I will hug it.
I will have lived well enough.

April 6: Countries of the Body

"There's a place that poets seek
as real and fearsome as the body."
- Tishani Doshi

Tishani - may I call you that? - I need you to know,
I'm in constant conversation with your words, how
you delicately string them together with silk, hang
them to dry under red sunsets and mist of memory.
How your words wrench me from myself, future and past,
here and now, space and time. How your words transcend.
Your every line captivates me, but nothing so much
as when you called the first collection of poetry,
Countries of the Body - oh, how to explain to you
the shivers in the various continents, the swaying forests,
the revolutions, the silhouettes of truth, the trembling restlessness
that arose in the cities of my belly - how could you
coin a phrase so beautiful, and then put it out in the world
so it would reach me, wrench out my regret and lay it
to dry under the stars, touch me in places I didn't even know
existed - how could you?

I've been wondering for years now - what is art? - and
I understand that it must transcend representation alone.
And yet, with a pen in my hand, all I want to translate from
the shadowy world of images is the body - the poetry of it,
the misty mystery of it, the shadow smoke and concrete curves
of it. How the universe could really exist in a single mind, and
how a mind exists in this separate, almost self-sustaining universe
of a body - how it escapes definition, preservation, categorization.

I want to paint a hundred bodies, have people hold still
while I let my lines caress their corporeality, their mortality.
Flesh, muscle, bone and sinew - the creation of metaphors
began in the body, the realization of metaphors too.
What is as beautiful as skin, skin, stretched tight over
a form you perfected of yourself in so many years,
your errors and misjudgements, your petty joys,
your stories and your rainy days, your memory -
wrapped up so tight, tucked up inside, giftwrapped
with golden-brown, slightly freckled, even toned.
How gorgeous are curves - not only breasts and hips,
but the curves of sensuous arms as they rest against
a wall, catching a single shaft of sunlight against
shadow complexion. Calves and ankles, muscled
with strength and resolve, stray hairs lit up in noon
sunlight, shadow and light entwining until this thing
of beauty is formed in my eyes - who can say all bodies
are not beautiful - close your eyes for a moment and
when you open them, notice only fragments:

the strand of dark hair pushed aside with long fingers,
motionless mouth with contours and crevices, full lips
open against sky. fluttering lids of star-speckled eyes.
undulating plains of thighs. ashy mountains of knees.
twitching ankles. wrinkled hands. mysterious ears.
All bodies are beautiful. All bodies are singular worlds.

One day I want to fall in love with somebody
and name every country of their body. I want to
soak afternoon sun in the ocean and dissolve my
unyielding flesh to the seas. I want to outlive my
corporeal frame. I want to live only as long as it
lasts.

April 5: Things Distance Lets Me Say

I'm afraid when you go, you take my poetry with you.

I find it so hard to write love poetry - I find it so hard 

to love - but it's easier now, when the distance makes 

the shadows clear and your absence lights up the lights

that I wondered about so deeply on starless nights.

I'm not telling you I love you. I'm telling you I miss you,

and you and I both need to see that those are two different things.

I'm sorry 

for taking you along with me 

on this voyage of promises and starry shores

(when I myself could never be sure, can never be sure).

But now, at least, let me write lines I was afraid even to feel:

when distance makes my heart pump louder, thud harder,

let me tell you that your face is lit up in the dark for me -

that your laugh has slipped deep somewhere under my skin

and your smiles caress the sores on my overworked mind.

You and I will always be too practical, too afraid, too cautious

to throw away our anchors and put up fragile sails, to truly hope

that such a thing as love exists and your hands really do belong

in the crevices between my fingers, your flyaway hair against mine.

For me, it's the easiest thing to run. Run and then regret, run from 

the regret. And what if right now running is the wrong thing to do,

another incident I will laugh about while my life grieves in the silent sea?

I'm afraid because I'm still not sure. Half of me wants to run, this time

back into your arms like old bookshelves worn-in blankets scent of comfort,

and half of me will keep running even if I reach where I wanted. Don't

come back. Please come back. These are things distance lets me say,

things I know you don't want to, don't deserve to hear, and yet

I throw them behind you in the ocean you waded into. I'm sorry.

April 4: Home

"These young girls do not know it, and I cannot tell them, but I have discovered that past and present blur together, become one and the same, so that time means very little at the end." - Kim Edwards

When I reach home,

the afternoon turns the colour of gold.

Memory lights up the smiles and soothes

the bruises on the walls, the cracks in your voice,

the hollow spaces and the restlessness.

I search for comfort wherever I go

but poetic justice declares that I will find it here:

in the bed I slept in when I was eight, the room

I ran away from, in the city I hated like a disease.

Comfort where once there was unease and movement

settling into my bones like an unseen tremor.

Alone in that bed, scent of the past wrapping around me

like mist or music, listening to father and sister watching

sitcoms in the next room - every sound magnified,

the whirring of the fan and crinkling pages of books

resting against bare thighs and brown arms.

Walls covered with crayon drawings, shelves filled

to bursting with odds and ends, ragged toys and leftover

board games with missing parts - where I lost little bits

of myself as a child, under the bed, behind cupboards,

tucked into childhood books like bookmarks -

I don't need to search there, just sit.
Let myself breathe in the music of this moment.

Hope will find its way home,
it's lived here for too long.

April 3: Angry/ Guilty

"There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear...
I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex
and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations."
(from Who Said It Was Simple, by Audre Lorde)

The language I write in will never be my own,
my accent either an apology or a betrayal, my choices
doused with flammable history, fragile at the end of a match.
My skin will always carry with it the memory of oppression.
My sex will be a signpost, a barrier, a letter of inferiority.

I'm angry at the weight I have to carry.

I'm angry at history, at sorrow, at the tears of blood,
at misrepresentation and no representation, at the lies
of law, the blind faith, the scars, the servile compliance,
the leftovers, the ladders of grief, the child-sized coffins,
the loss of identity, the tall tales, the powerlessness, the sin.
I'm angry at the inevitability of this narrative.

Learning to negotiate the chasms between theory and reality,
I tiptoe the blurring lines of forgetting and recollecting.
Trace out a situation, hold it up to the light, watch the
shadowy dance of political economy and heart-thumping humanity.
Most of all, I'm guilty that I'm not affected enough, guilty for
my education my privilege my facade of white and superior.
I'm guilty for the American sitcoms the denim shorts
the stuttering Hindi the hazy memory of mythology.
Guilty for the jokes I laugh at: sexist racist thoughtless.
Guilty for this intellectual academic knowledge of the stories
I carry inside of me and around me, the liberation handed out
to me freely, as much as I could ask for: guilty for knowing only from afar,
being able to forget at will.

April 2: Stars on fire

Do we believe the stars are on fire
and the vein on your forehead might pop,
do we believe that it's not all okay, that the insides
of your mind are a hell right now, that your hands shake
even when you laugh and even when your gaze is so
steady; how do we believe it

if the streetlights still look like fireworks to you,
if the horizon lit by sun means the universe to your
petty gaze, if you can possess beauty with a click and
if all you really need is the warm touch of comfort,
a body against yours and a blanket for warm nights -

I'm afraid I'm afraid I'm afraid

because my fears are multifaceted and so complex,
my anger at the world is a hundred different hues of
gender colonialism social construction and
I talk to Camus in my sleep and my boulder
gets too heavy some days, the existential ache of
trivial conversations hangs in my mouth like a lie,
and my problems are pathetic, intellectual emotional bullshit,
if it's pseudo I'm sorry but it really does hurt, in a hundred
different ways on a hundred different days, and I'm afraid
of not making a difference I'm afraid of ambition I'm afraid

most of all, I'm afraid that talking doesn't help anymore,
I'm afraid that the answers aren't where I thought they would be.
I'm reading all the books and underlining big words, I promise,
but the questions keep getting bigger and I try to remember Rilke
telling me to love them, the questions themselves, as if they were
locked rooms or books written in a foreign tongue, and it helps:

but only because of the particular feel in my chest when the words
come together, the memory of joy in a classroom, of discovering
beauty for myself that I could keep. The answers the answers the answers
are taking too long, are taking too much out of fragile me, the answers
might never come and the questions keep piling and comfort doesn't always
arrive;

but when it does it's never in the form of an argument, logically arranged
or typed out double spaced font size 12 Times New Roman no
the comfort comes in the form of

golden sun streaming through windows at 5pm, lighting up corners
of my room and my heart, it comes in the form of a doodle in my notes,
rotring pen lines as thin as an eyelash, or watching the birds fly in a flurry
away from approaching footsteps, comfort comes in the form of memory,
in the form of desire, raw and earthy. Comfort comes in the shade of home,
in the scent of rain, in the sound of conversations dipping and rising from
the ashes of ideals I fashioned and polished once, then shattered and
burnt

still shining like stars on fire but I'm afraid
I'll forget someday to look down for comfort, to
recognize simplicity, to lie down in grass and breathe
to myself. And if I forget, I swear, the insides of my mind
will be a hell, my hands will shake
and I will forget to laugh.

April 1: Beginnings

Beginnings
are different now.
are different every time,
bruised by months and weeks,
the hues and scents slightly changed,
the weight of memory against twisted back
shaping the winding pathways and conversations,
the sunsets. the phone calls. the stargazing loneliness.
the secret tears that hang from the bed like icicles. the mosquitos.
the smiles I smile to the moon every summer, the quiet
disbelief at joy, the corners of my mouth lifting at
silly interludes, April darkness and memory
of white fog enveloping the long night.
singing songs of leaving home.
then songs of returning.
the things that
change.

And then the things that don't. The things that write themselves into
your skin, and always feel new, like discovering secrets in the sky.