April 30: Closure

This time
I will be satisfied even
with no ending lines,
no last conversations
in my mind. I know
I am difficult to love.

This time, I am ready
to leave without asking
for the world. I am ready
to walk out to sea and taste
the salty air the seagulls
fly in. I am ready to fly it.

I try to be softer, kinder,
less insistent. I forget how
to love, every day, like a
language that peels off
my tongue and hangs
in the ancient rooms.

I need no names
for the trees. No names
for the different kinds of
breeze. No names for the
oceans my body meets and
falls in love with, no names
for the love I own and disown.

It is only ever endings,
and not even
in a tragic way. It is only ever
sunbirds on a terrace building
a nest that cannot last. It is
only ever lamplight and ache.

Like A, I want the good work,
the hearty meal, the tired eyes.
I want the long journeys and
I want new learnings, sunsets
that taste of rose and gold,
intimacy that curls my toes
and hurts my lungs
in happy ways.

It is only ever endings;
I am satisfied with my lot.

April 29: weight

the unbearable weight
of still feeling these
things, of feeling the
pain of a stranger's
voice scorching
your skin, of
misspelling
important words
when you thought
you never would.

my bed is full
of pieces of my life
i thought i threw away,
hid in ashtrays or tossed
out the third-floor window.

they come back in the form
of small things that itch, scratch.

the words still make me tender,
still make me ache, still hold me
underwater and naked and slick.

my body is a warzone
from a country i never saw.
i try to hold this alien grief
slow, gentle, in my palms.

i hold all the weight of
sky and forgotten dreams
on my shoulders, in my
eyes and in the words.

April 28: Waiting

I miss the particular
texture of my longing
when waiting would
taste of hope.

Waiting tastes now
of old food, familiar
sheets, an old sky.

It is too early
for waking, for
metaphors, for
summer rain.

The way home is through
cities of smoke with nothing
to lose. The way home is
a highway that looks like
a slow death. The way home
feels nothing like a home,
never will. Yet I go.

These new textures
are sweet in new ways:
honey in the hollows
of my collarbones
when my neck isn't
knotted up with ache.

I expect nothing.
I go.

April 27: Loss

Somehow, I watched
myself let go of old grief
like a swollen rose.

It is torture
to tear these petals
off my skin, these
bruises like birthmarks,
these cities of loss.

My ancient cries
hide in corners
of the house, still.
Underneath cobwebs
and drawers of junk.

You can hear
all the names
I have hidden
under my skin.

Somehow, everything
passes over into river;
gurgle and movement,
fresh awakening, dawn.
All stagnation reworks
itself as a morning.

All tragedies
mask themselves as
life, call my soul
to the stage
so I can pray
for a miracle.

April 26: big feelings

endings
don't feel like loss anymore,
just like
beginnings
don't feel like love.

growing up is a lot of pain,
not a lot of learning. there's nothing
called learning. there's only making
the same mistakes over again until
you move on to newer pastures,
easier ways to break to heart
or lose a key in the grass.

all the big feelings
come out sometimes,
when i listen to music
in the bus, or watch
the shadows and light
dance like lovers.

the rest of the time
i have learnt (reached)
to live without big feelings:
no big sadnesses, no expansive
sunlit joys, no grief that calls
to the stars. it's alright, it is.

i hide my tongue
in a secret place,
and water my soul
like a tender thing.
better days arrive
like majestic birds.

April 25: Other Languages

Translation
feels a lot like love.

The same kind of tender compromise,
sense of urgency, hollow regret. The
feeling you don't own your mouth.

There are a hundred reasons
I will never feel whole; one
of them is that I am split
right through my voice
like an overripe fruit,
my syllables torn in two
like rotting flesh on seed.

With vowels that came
to me as easy as love,
I was pulled in
to a universe that sank
under my skin and named
my teeth its own. This language
owns my soul, owns the cities
in my belly, writes the laws that
govern the streets of my voice.

I write only that poetry
which I can fit in the confines
of this language, in its particular
lilt, in the silences between
black alphabets that tell me
they don't belong in this
humid tragedy. I write
only those words which
this language lets me own.
I write a syntax of desire
and living, bruising and
falling, trying and loving.
I write only the words
I can call my own.
Even those words
sometimes slip through
my fingers and mock
my little brown voice.

Other languages hang around in
the air, a distant memory, a short
forgetting. Other languages are
hesitant on my tongue, in my mouth
that tastes of a ruined empire. I try
to tell them they can own me too,
hold me tender in the sounds of
their words and their weeping.
Other languages know parts
of me that I have hidden away,
buried under soil and tried to
forget. Other languages know
the blood that runs through
my voice, the archeology
of my expression, the way
I might never know.

I don't know whether they
are jealous, of this mistress
that scratches my voice
when I try to let it go.
I don't know whether
they want me, like I
think I want them.

Translation
feels like looking
at myself in the dark.
Like counting the colours
of my shadows. Like taking
the shortest way home in a
monsoon that smells of a
different life. Translation
feels like violation, feels
sacred, feels like drowning.

I unveil a secret
that knows my name.
I hang somewhere
between my voice
and my soul that
smells of centuries
in the sun, here,
here where you
see the roads and
towers now, here.
Here, where I lived
before I lived, where
the soil dreamed me
up like a secret, the
secret I unveil;

I secret I veil.

April 24: heart

i hide my thumb
in the hollow of my throat
and feel the gentle throbbing.
my heart is big enough to
hold a city, douse a fire.

life seems stranger these days,
entirely misunderstood, so wonderfully
incomprehensible. i do not ache to know
now, i do not weep water or dreams.

i blossom
gently
and forgive the world, get mad
at the things i must get mad about,
and smile all the way from ear to ear,
from dilli to the sea, just for the feat
of surviving these long and absurd days,
this lifetime, a carnival, a madhouse, fragile.

April 23: laughter and secrets

a rush of expectations
slides out the door
smells of rot and
a sky too large to bear.

in conversations with A,
i unveil corners of myself
i am proud to own.

my skin smells of laughter.
i have shed the taste of
whiskey and smoke.
some nights
are too long to call home.

these days
i laugh a lot:
everything is absurd,
this crazy carnival
gets crazier, and
the inside of my mind
is a fit place for a madwoman.
i laugh, snort, chuckle to myself.

i used to be full to brimming
with wonder at the world.
wonder is rarer now,
tastes like raw gold.

i can own this: these crazy nights,
the aching back, the fragmentation,
the forgettings and relearnings.
i can own this sky and my mistakes.

laughter is good, cleanses
my mind of clutter. sometimes
there is guilt -- the world is too serious
too painful too hollow too cruel to laugh at.
but most days i see the humour now. i see
the jokes so large they look like truth.
the holes in strangers eyes. the physics
behind magic, the cruel tricks, the madness.
i see i must survive all this, and more.

part of the secret is
creating as much silence
as voice. the empty spaces
are where the conversations live.
the hollows are where blossoms grow,
where words becomes cities and sing.

part of it is a happy forgetting, an acceptance
so large it looks like death, a joy so rich it tastes
of aged wine and ancient wisdom, like the trees.

April 22: reading poetry online

all of a sudden
the straight clean lines
and the corporate shine
of my little macbook
gets blurred:

the internet is a crazy
city, a gust of wind,
a hidden empire.
some days
i move out of
large streets and
seedy bylanes
and find little meadows,
corners and cafes and
afternoon light painted
rose. it is nothing like
finding a book in a
bookshop or on
the pavement:

but it is
something else,
the swelling in my
chest like i swallowed
the moon, the knowledge
of hundreds of poets
hiding behind this veil,
not eliot or wordsworth
or anything i can find in
a Crossword bookstore
in the mall, something
else, something other;

something happening
now, this minute, this
year, hundreds of women
unfolding their skin and
sculpting words that
taste of wine and
magic (there are
hardly ever men),
from all over the
world (they are
hardly ever white),

and the internet
becomes, for a while,
a table i can share with
these women, a street
that leads to a quiet
riverside, a blossoming;

a place where these voices
can echo and reach the stars,
tremble off mountains and
into my skin, a place where
these voices are strong and
alive and are heard, are heard,
are heard, can be heard, are not
hidden behind bestsellers or
classics, are not forgotten,
are not put behind, are heard,
are strong and alive and exist
in a street lit up with stars
and whispers, conversations
that sing of an awakening,
words that pave these
streets in my mind.

all of a sudden
i can take out
the stones from
my mouth

and fill it
with stars

April 21: Sunbirds

I am trying to tie all these
different strings together --
the sheepish smile that lights up
my sister's face; or a home that
does not smell like a stranger's
land this time; or the summer
light that falls in shafts on the
lizards that grow fatter and more
translucent; or the chirping of
sunbirds - incessantly, untiringly,
doggedly, relentlessly, fiercely
flying back to my balcony with
a single twig or thread or rag
in arched beak each time, to
build a little nest on a bent
branch on a crippled tree.

I don't know whether I
feel too much or too little
these days - things that would
have made me weep or clench
my fists or swell up in emotion
now leave me quiet, peaceful.
But other things, newer things
still leave me aching, covered
in a sadness less sad but still
tasting of fresh melancholy.

My grandfather sits in warm
lamplight, older than ever,
and trembles as he talks of
Meer's poems on Delhi, how
it decayed and frayed and
died a hundred deaths. I can
see the tears, hear the quaver
in his familiar voice. I watch
partly from afar, and partly
from his side. We both glance
at my grandmother's smiling
picture on the wall when we
can - it is still a gaping wound
in the skin of our lives. We
cannot heal. We ache fiercely.

I try not to cry, do not
understand how I have
let go of so much, realise
that I will someday let go
of this too. Like all else.

Meanwhile the sunbirds
carry on, purposeful and
quiet, single-minded in
their task. I see the little
nest, see it sway on the
branch, ragged and poor,
half-built, out of thatch
and string and pieces of
mid-day sun. I see how
fragile the little object
is, how easily it would
crack into dust, and I
try not to weep at us
all, fighting this long
and meaningless fight
as the day wears on.

The sunbirds chirp
and quiver blue and
black, hear nothing
of my sad discourse,
weave among vines
and garden plants like
dancers, disappear
in a second when
I come too close.

April 20: to A

if life was a little less hard
you and i would not be
continents apart.

we would wake at dawn
in a forest smelling of sun

our legs would always be
smeared with paint

the distance between our arms
would be where blossoms grow.

i have collected lovers like beads
for a necklace i would never wear;
but no shoulders weaved with muscle
could hold the weight of my sadness
like your oceanic curls of hair.

i say the word often, to many
different people, but i remember
what it means sometimes only after
a crackling phone call with you.
i can taste your particular silence.
hold onto your laugh for a lifetime.

here's a poem to add to our little pile,
another leaf of longing. we will row
a little rowboat across oceans that
have thawed, and we will wear
dried palash flowers in our hair.
we have two long journeys ahead,
we might meet only in our dreams.
i will celebrate that even as i weep.

April 19: desire

"desire is the kind of thing that
eats you
and
leaves you starving."
(nayyirah waheed)

and here i am.
i am writing
for myself
an alternate
syntax of desire.

i am learning
a story that needs
no end. a love
that knows its
own end. a life
that demands
less, gives more.

i am finding
hollows in my
skin, that have
lived here for
years. i am
watering the
voids. feeding
them sun. living
with a sense of
fragility and loss.
yet living.
yet living.

i am writing for myself
a new kind of living.
a less sad sadness.

i am weaving
a certain lightness
into my bones.

i am singing
the happiest song
of despair
that ever was wrote.

April 18: Delusions

More and more
I am thinking about
what it means to
a) Make art, and
b) Be with people.

More and more
I am coming to believe
that the two are more about
delusion than I thought.
More and more I am finding
parts of myself I did not know.

To make art, I must believe
that it will change the world,
change somebody's life, that
somebody will read it or see it
and understand all the thorny
bushes and desertscapes I am
coming from, somebody will
rise out of their own sadness
like a flower blossoming, and
it will be significant. It will
touch another. It will unfold
the folds of a stranger's heart.

To be with people, I must believe
that it will fill up the empty spaces
within me, that everything will
hurt less, that the ability to love
will cleanse me of all other sin.

More and more,
I can see myself
in these various mirrors
made of glass, and I can see
that in a sense, I am alone
here, these days are long
and lonely, and nobody
will be wholesome and
a savior for my fragile
heart. It is only I. My art
will only ever belong to
me, will only ever fold
and unfold the creases
of my skin the way I
want it to. The empty
spaces will remain, will
be cruel sometimes, will
ache desperately sometimes,
but will remain. No friend
or lover or parent or stranger
can wrench my voids away
from my bones or soul.

To know this
is to be wise, perhaps
even independant. But
to know this, must also be
to be kind. I must not demand
a wholesome life from lovers
or strangers or readers. I must
give one to myself; yet be kind,
yet create, yet hope, yet learn
to live in this crazy world
with all the rest of them.

April 17: sometimes the sadness

sometimes the sadness
fits into teacups, isn't
loud or desperate or
aching, is just
slow

is just
a hurt in a throat;
or a realisation
that the nest the sunbirds are making
will inevitably break, will not last.

sometimes the sadness
is just about fragility.
is lilting music on a
cloudy morning.

is not desperate.
feels less loudly.

is the colour of
the ravines on
somebody's face.

sometimes the sadness
is a river, is not rain.

April 16: this poem

breathe in, and out:
this poem is a reflection
on my unsteady mind,
a conversation in my
heady head, a plea
to myself to breathe
and relax, search
for peace but also
relax, when I find it.

this poem is the hum
of air conditioning,
the shine on the glass
in this desolate grey
Haryana landscape.
it is the birdsong.
the grime. the dust.
the cigarette stubs
and withering greens.

this poem is my
quiet, the burn
at the back
of my throat.
it is the sad
smile of life
and a blue sky
all rolled into
one.

April 15: eating words

here I am, again,
in an empty-fan-whirring-room
in the silence of almost noon

tip-toeing around myself

feeling quiet. dazed. remembering
that there will be days which are not
horribly sad, or even terribly happy;
there will be days and nights and hours
when I just am, when I just lie
in bed and try not to let my aching toe
touch the wall, when I just want to sleep
but cannot, when I just want to feel, but
I will have to force myself to. so I don't.

here again, I am, it is nearly noon

I keep trying to feed my rumbling stomach
words, expecting it to acquiesce, stop sounding
like a thunderstorm brewing under my ribs.

here again, these late and silly realisations:
words are not food. words are not love.
words are not air, or memory-water.
words are  w o r d s .

I could romanticise anything.
thank goodness for my body
and its aches and mutterings
and its terrible concrete reality
that I cannot wish away.

I am in a daze. the sounds outside
come in tides and waves. the fan
continues with its insistent noise
of summer. P once asked me
why I talk about it so much;
perhaps my fan is noisier
than most. perhaps my mind
is not quiet enough. perhaps

I should eat and stop reading,
bathe and stop thinking,
let everything smell
of whiskey and charcoal-fixative,
slow and meaningless mornings.

my mind is in a landscape of
snow at every edge - but my body
is here, in this sweltering heat, these
long days, these moments that hang
in my throat and quiver expectantly.

my skin is aching and finds it
hard enough to cover my own
meager bones; here I am,
trying to wrap a whole world
in it, stitch the seams with words
and sun, hold in the light as if
I own it. I do not, I do not.

April 14: Celebration

It is one of those days
when the internet feels
like a miracle

instead of a disease.

Alone, with the whirring
of the fan and the slow ache
of my spine as it bends over
in this rust-coloured chair,
I wish desperately
that my tongue
could have
the magic
of
Nayyirah Waheed
Warsan Shire
Shinji Moon
Fatima Asghar
Yrsa Daley-Ward
Tishani Doshi

but my tongue
insistently refuses;

at least it lets me
taste the magic of
another's words,
of feeling like
I exist, after days
of hiding in, of
music that sounds
like a celebration,
of giggles under
my breath and joy
that grazes over
like a feather.

April 13: Owning the Poem

Perhaps I feel like
if I can save the poem
hide it somewhere
I will be able to
own it

it will be stamped
onto my soul

like the bruises
on my hips, or
the scratch on
S's knee.

If I can own it
perhaps
it will sing me
to sleep
when the darkness
isn't enough;

perhaps it will be
a blue-gold sky
for my sadness.

Perhaps it will drown me.
Perhaps it will show me
my own little face
in a hundred pennies
that I will end up
losing

only to find
something that smells
like cinnamon and rain
in the rush of wind.

April 12: In & Out of Time

Today began with
Lacan;
my head ached and
brimmed over with
yearning, I wanted
to know and yet
understand that I
could not know;

I grazed the receding edge
of my desire as it skimmed
the horizon; I blossomed
with a hundred realisations
and a hundred brand new
mistranslations;

I was glad,
all in a rush,
to be here, to be
learning these things

that left me at the edge of my seat
full to bursting with the world.

I felt like I feel after conversations
that shake me up, inside and out,
and warm me up like a sea in sun;
conversations with A or with P that
traverse the serrated teeth of my mind
and teach me more things than I can
tie down in language or in image;

I felt like I do after P
plays the surbahar for me
and my skin is at the edge
of an unfamiliar raga
aching and breathing
and feeling as though
I exist, but not here;

as if this time is irrelevant,
as if I could have these conversations
or listen to the tides of this music
at any point in human history,
and feel this same immense
sense of being
alive.

~

Today ended with
me collecting a jarful
of tears that I could not cry
because they were not mine:
listening to Himanshu ji talk
about the plight of the tribals
in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh;

I felt as though my body
were afloat; how could
any of these facts be
real, how could this
reality occupy the same
time and space as I do?

All of a sudden my throat
was aflame, my eyes in pain,
my heart too full with guilt
to feel any other thing.
How to balance these
various stories, these
joys and these realities,
these worlds that exist
at cross-edges and margins
and always push too hard
and feel too far;

how can I live this life
when too much of me
will always be made
of guilt and privilege
that I could not earn
if I tried?

My head aches and
brims over with
yearning. My
conversations
are fragmented
and fierce.

I am suddenly
deeply aware
of being here,
now, the flies
quivering on the
table and the sun
setting in a quiet
arc; my body, here
scripted in so many
lines that I can only
try to read; myself,
now, as real and
alive in this
very time;
as aware,
as fierce
as I can
be.

April 11: Windy Days

Trying to remind myself
I exist, even if no one
knows I'm here;
alone
in this bright yellow classroom
silver laptop poised as if there is
something important to say;
some essay or the other
to write
again.

Today in my therapist's office
the wind wailed against windows
and I thought about how pained
it sounded; and how fiercely
joyful it used to sound
when it thundered
through the
forest

(like me?).

This concrete and glass
is no good for my soul.

Trying to remind myself
of everything I veiled
in order to stay sane:
the long years
of childhood
spent in grey corridors
and grey tunics and grey
moments; before I found
my forest. Trying to
remind myself that
it's okay to forget
the things that ache.

Trying to remind myself, also,
that this wind is an ocean and my
body is a miracle that speaks to me
in the language of skin; every day
is long and arduous but if I wake
and don't feel like dying, it is
reason enough to celebrate.

Trying to breathe in
this summer air
and tie the wind
in a scarf around
my head, fluttering.

If nobody asks about my day,
did it really happen? And if
language is only ever public,
how does it make sense that
only conversations with me
leave me sane anymore,
not dripping

with longing
I can never
overcome?

Without conversations
or the illusion of love,
can I still graze the wind
with the yearning too big
for my fragile frame?

April 10: Why?

Because I wanted to see
if I had the guts to do it;
because it's more
comfortable
than I knew I could be
with myself.

Because the wind rushing
over my bald head feels
more like heaven
than anything society
can sanction for me;
and sometimes when
I wash my face, I forget
where my face ends and
where my head begins.
Who knew?

Also, who knew
how terrifying it would be
to walk the grimy streets of
Dilli, and know I am being
watched for my refusal to
behave, spelled out clear
in the summer grass on
my bold head? So, why?

Because I'm trying so hard
to shed everything
unnecessary.

Because it gives me less
to hide behind. Less to
worry about. Less to do.

Because I want to be
so much less afraid
of androgyny
and also
of having to look
at my own unadorned
face.

Because I refuse
markers of gender
on the ocean of my skin.
I am fluid. I smell like
water. I do not need to be
woman.

Because it forces me
to be the person
I want to be.

April 9: Summerfeelings

And all of a sudden
one windy afternoon

summer slips through the glass
and dances in the library

(the music is a hundred kinds
of happy, and bright, and loud)

and I'm hiding a hundred secrets
under my billowing skirt, and
watching S walking and the wind
rushing through her hair as if it
could blow her right off her
little feet;

again, that rush bubbling
in the centre of my chest:
the feeling that the world
is too large for me to touch
and too small for me to eat
and there is so much to do,
so many places to go, so
very many smiles to smile;

the moon is the smallest
sliver it could be in the sky
every evening, and the stars
are shining fiercely, like me.

The days are long and windy.
My skin is slowly translating
my feelings and looking less
like cardboard or fiberglass.
Slowly some days I look
in the mirror and see
what I feel:
a shining
like sun

April 8: Scent of a Mango

I watch the contours

of my mind, touch

the hollows of my

mouth while I wait.

Eventually, the words

blossom up in me like

bruises, swell my eager

tongue, and rush out

like a river. 

The metaphors

hang heavy

as if

off a mango tree.

I remember the sight

of morning light

as it danced through 

quivering leaves,

peeling the image

raw.

All day today

I carried around

a mango

as if it were

a secret.

Finally,

in the dark,

I took it out of

the white packet.

Let the silence

throb in my ears.

Held it in my

aching palms

as if it were precious.

Sliced off amber skin,

as the notes of a raga

danced to the sliver

of moon that hung in

the dark sky; delicate
as a feather, fine as a lie.

The knife cut sharply

into firm flesh, spilled

summer sun all over

my hands. Like blood,

or egg yolk, or the sea.

My mouth was the colour

of sun. My hands beaming

with light. Orange skin

lay limp on the wet plate.

Later, I realised the scent

had laced my hands like smoke.

I remembered light and shadow

on the mango tree at dawn.

I wondered if it smelt the same:

of mornings, of flesh, of summer, 

of childhood, loss and heady love.

April 7: Learning Love

"whether with a lover or none.

i reek of love.

i stink of love."

(nayyirah waheed)

I am learning

that to live without love

is the greatest sin.

It is harder to learn

that the intoxication

of another's neck, or

the comfort of arms,

or the shiver and smile,

the tremble and touch, 

the anticipation of love

is not 

love.

It is hard to learn

to be alone, to know

that my life is mine alone.

It is hard to forgo the easy

rush of learning another's lips

like a new language. Hard to

not travel into spaces of intimacy

far too soon, with too little caution.

I am learning to reclaim

my body for myself, learning

to live in this country of skin

and cage of bones, this map 

of longing and restlessness.

I am learning love

in the insistence of my eyes,

in the hollows of my mouth.

I am learning to fall in love

with the days of sun when 

there is meaning and joy

simply in watching the sun light up

the amber edges of a stranger's hair, 

or in the easy stillness of a fly 

resting on a table, or in catching

myself laughing

while walking alone

from some corridor to another.

April 6: Tasting memory

(today's prompt is to write a
food poem)

Nothing calls
nostalgia
like scent and taste:

sometimes, walking
down library shelves,
I catch a whiff of
perfume
and am transported
to the neck and arms
of somebody long
almost-forgotten.

Sometimes something
tastes of boiled-fried
potatoes, the kind
that will only ever
remind me of two
long months in
South Africa,
aching for home
while learning
the world for
the first time.

Cold beer will always taste of
leisurely evenings at home.
Wine, of coffee mugs and
college room lit gently warm.

Tasting
never seems to remind me
of the torture years of early
youth, when food was just
an ugly necessity.
Instead, I remember
when I learnt to love it:
a gangly teenager in
mother's arms, eating
yellow dal and aloo beans
out of her soft and lovely hands.

And sometimes, a wandering fragrance, even
unfamiliar beer, or cheap wine; remembering
fresh tomato mozzarella salad in warm shade,
blueberries in paper cups, cocktails brimming,
gelatos carved like gloriously petalled roses;

the stray memory of salivating
at something new, whilst
a river tidily thundered past,
or a sea sat lazily in the sand;
the gleaming sunloved cafes
of new cities that we, greedy,
memorized and tried to call
our own;

so much takes me back to
backpack and exhilaration;
a summer with the mother
a few lifetimes long.

April 5: Quiet Poems

I cannot seem
to write
quick poems
anymore:

there is tenderness
under my skin, and
words I have been
gathering, yes, but

it is harder to find abundance
and easy grace, joy is more
of a struggle than it ever was;

although somehow
it is more precious
for it. Bitingly so.

There are quiet poems
in how I grieve

quiet rhythms
to my words
and dreams -

how I watch them
burn
my cold-skinned
grandmother, how
everything changed
and how hard it is
to forget

how learning a new script
is exhilarating, and also
how it is breaking my heart

to be so close
and so far
(from
myself)

how everything makes
less sense, but seems
to be falling into place
anyway.

My stories
have become
more crisp

I can taste
autumn leaves
scattered like gems
on a forest floor.

I am more silent now,
but every time I worry
I have nothing to say

my body proves me wrong.

I languish in blank white
and rewrite words for days
until I rush onto paper
like a river, like dawn.
Here is a
quick
poem.
Here is
quiet.

April 4: He Who Talks of Borges

He was right --
it does get better

then
h a r d
again,

but hard
in a different way

with me grown better,
more aware

(I am finding new spaces
of peace in my body, some kind
of kindness and quiet grace that
I am discovering; I have learnt
to listen, I can hear my own silence

and my weeping without tears,
the stories my spine is writing,
the shuddering of my tired teeth,
and the weary words of my bones).

He was right --
when joy returns
after this long grieving,
this dull dispossession,
this journey of loss --
when joy returns
it does become
rich
like aged wine

; a texture that I
would never
have known.

I must just
keep my head
above water.
Must be kind
to myself
despite these
tired limbs.

His Kafka and Kundera
and practical-ways-to-face
this sadness the size of a sun
slip under my skin
when I am not
paying attention.

He thinks he
has committed
Borges' sin;
so have I.
We have not been
Happy. These shadows
follow us through time.

He thinks Borges
was born with some
primordial wonder.

So was he. And me,
I hope I can rewrite
this grieving, this
intellect that mouths
words while my heart
withers in its cage --
I hope I can find some
primordial, cardinal
wonder of my own.

I know now I will not
be able to keep it safe
within the confines
of words - but I hope
I can find it
again and
again,

hope I can live it
so fully
it never
leaves.

In a way.

April 3: On Reading Fiction

Going back to reading
feels like submerging myself in the sea
after years of a desert life.

Every sense is on edge;
I had forgotten
I could feel so much at once
from the narrow confines of my skin.

Here is where I find myself:
awake in somebody else's story.
The countries of my body
in a hundred places at once.
The scents of streets I cannot name.
The sounds of cities I have not seen.

Fiction is the kind of truth
or the kind of contradiction
you can feel in your flesh
instead of in your mind;
or in your mind instead of
in somebody else's words.
Fiction owns none of the
disharmonies of theory.

Here is where I find myself:
remembering a child who touched books
with the hands of a lover, kept words in a little mouth
like prayers, and held onto stories until they became
whispers, or dreams, or forgotten histories.

Here is where I find myself:
realizing that nothing really changes
even when nothing is the same.
Realizing my joy or my sorrow
or my skin stretched tight across
this cage of bleached bones
is not my own.
Only borrowed.

April 2: Faiz sahab

Faiz sahab,

How do I not grieve?

It was my intention to learn the secrets of your verses,

but I forgive you. I found only

darkness and a muddy sky. I forgive you.

The colour of your words is my inheritance.

This tongue is as sweet as it is strange to me.

However separated I might feel from the metaphors,

I feel as attached, united with, the tone of this language.

If Urdu is my beloved, it is also my rival.

I feel now a rift, a chasm with english too. 

Faiz sahab,

You are forgiven for it all.

Your poems perhaps found me the shore

of a new language in every vein of mine.

Found me a new face;

also made a stranger out of a neighbour, a shadow-sharer.

Faiz sahab,

my one hope is that this
may be a harmless miracle.

(Faiz sahab,

Gham kaise na karun?

Israr-e-ashar jaan ne ka tavqat tha

lekin maaf kiya. Mili sirf

tadiqi aur gida falak. Maaf kiya.

Aapke alfaazon ka ranjh meri virasat hai.

Zubaan jitni ajeeb hai, utni hi pyaari.

Muradi se jitna firaq hai, lahze se utna vasal.

Urdu mashuq hai toh raqib bhi.

Ab toh angrezi se bhi darar si lagti hai.

Faiz sahab,

aapko sab maaf kiya.

Aapki nazmon ne shayad har rag mai

nayi zubaan ka saahil dhoonda hai.

Naya chehra dhoonda hai.

Hamsaya ko paraya bhi banaya hai.

Faiz sahab,

aarzuu toh yahi hai
ki bezarar karamat ho.)

April 1: Moonstone

All day today
I have been blinking back tears.
Finally I stitched them all together
and hid them in the back of my throat.
I'd like to think of it as a precious gem
tucked away in this hollow - a moonstone
that burns when I swallow. A clouded,
burnished thing that glints blue in the light
of my voice. Something that could shatter:

into a rainfall of glass shards, a cloudburst of tears.
Something that could cut right through flesh and fear.

I'd like to think that the world is edged all in gold and gleaming gemstone
if only one looks in the right light/ I'd like to think of my insistent sorrow
as beautiful, something shining a hundred shades of blue under white light.

Cobalt:
the colour of the sky when I can't bear to be alive.
The simple absurdity of sorrow. How feeling
crashes through structures of language
and reason like a wild animal
through forest and field.

Teal:
the feeling of helplessness, and how it drips
down your spine and through your skin
like something dangerous.

Sapphire:
the sound of my grandmother's voice cracking.
The secrets she never unravelled. The way our house
still smells of grief. Her blooming pride, her easy
gratitude. Her toenails painted
like gemstones.

Indigo:
the deep purples of everything I have ever lost.
The weight of a long and happy life on my mind.
To have to tell my parents
I failed at joy.

Ultramarine:
how the ocean asks for more than its fair share
of light. Like me. How it glimmers unabashedly.
How it refuses to settle for anything less than a
miracle. How it loves the shore
in fragments; tides and waves.

Turquoise:
the stains of darkness
I never admitted I owned.



All this, and
Azure:
the insistence that life goes on, no matter what.
The hope that clings to my skirts and dusts my feet gold.
Azure: too many colours and conversations to condense.
The taste of blooming heartache that always becomes a shade
of sky. The memory of a blossoming in my grandmother's throat
that eventually turned solid and crystal, a moonstone
that she could never swallow. A tumour, insistent, and
a story that could only end one way. Like all of them.
Azure: the raw reality of death. How it means
everything; and nothing at all. How life is
the hardest thing in the world; and also
the easiest.