I remember
knowing that I shouldn't be guilty, and having
to eat out my own heart, clenched tight as a fist.
I remember the smoke, the feeling of floating.
I've been searching for treasures in the dark, in the dust,
in the dirty delicate streets of decrepit Dilli. Pages flutter
in the wake of time, like unbound pieces of our skin
left loose in the whirlwinds - language lilts as the days pass,
holds on to my tongue fiercely as fear envelops my bones,
wounds little parts of my blooming as it holds on too tight,
too tight; the rest of me is still. I am afraid of teleology,
tautology, the long shadows of time. I burn with a fever,
trying to be kind to myself and yet create.
My hands ache at the moonlight tonight.
All the metaphors I had been saving up,
gathering in the folds of my skin, they
trembled and settled like dust on the ground:
Fear is a terrible and vast thing to run away from.
A body is easier. A body is a monolith, but not
an ocean. An ocean, but not the air you breathe
into clenched lungs. Fear can smell like water,
like air, like a throbbing at the back of your head,
like a roomful of nostalgia, like dying flowers.