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.

To Damien Rice

Your voice is like sandpaper
on my soul - I never pretend
to understand music, but my god,
you have to stop tearing me apart
like that, watching my secrets and
fears as if I were an open book - I'm not.

I never listen to you sing until the right moment arises.

Right now, last shadows of golden sun falling
against college lawns and library glass,
work piling up on my table and my soul
refusing to sit, only fly and flutter, hold on
so tight to the past and the future and the
trembling present - your voice is the last touch
I want to stir the storm in my mind, your voice
caresses the chaos in me and reminds me that
life is so beautiful and so fragile, a shard of glass
in an ocean, a single blooming bruise on a painting.

You have settled on my skin like dust,
and I have to scrape you off like peeling paint
when I take off the headphones, ease you out
of the recesses and ravines of my mind.
It's been years, and you're a guilty pleasure.

Do you live your life like art? Are you an
asshole in a relationship? - I'm sure you are.
Are you kind to strangers? Do you sing to
yourself on rainy mornings, strumming on
an old guitar, watching the sun fighting fog?

Your voice is like a mountain coloured dawn.
Like bitter alcohol in a coffee mug, like a dying
memory, like a frozen ocean making waves.
"I'm going to be dead soon", you said to the
interviewer, "And I want to kind of grow up
before I die." What nonsense, Damien, you're
always going to be old and young, wise and
unbelievably foolish, raw and burnt out, burning.

When you give the world a fragment of yourself,
you give the world a piece of time. You might change
and you might live a real life, walking to get coffee in
the morning and waiting for a phone call, forgetting your
towel out of the shower and falling asleep to the sound of
midnight - but you will never do these things in my life,
in my life you will live your life like art, intense and full
of passion, you will live your life like heartbreak, every word
you say will sound like smoke and wildflowers, every note
on your guitar will be an open door, a bone of truth.

Thank you for letting me have you
in the way that only I can have you.
Thank you for letting me listen.
Your music isn't your music after it plays
in my ears - your music forms shadowy
pieces of my fragmented life, angry at the
world and yet broken by its beauty.

Wildflower

Dingy rooms and beige window shades,
The ticking clock knocking against the silence.
Wrinkles carved on aged faces like ravines, riverbeds
emptied of the taut motion of hope and youth - whisky
in a glass you wouldn't touch, conversations in translation,
in transit. Fragments of lives offered to each other over
salted peanuts in shadowy bowls, and fried snacks -
the evening rises and falls on the shore of music,
voices piercing through darkness and time. I'm so far,

and a tumour blossoms in you like a wildflower.

Memories are suddenly bruises instead of roses,
Petals sticking to skin and bones in angry shades of red.
I'm afraid, and I don't know why. You were my understanding
of age, my hope and my dejection about time, my life wrapped
around a house and a family. You smell of home, of comfort
and cold cream, of perfume and carefully chosen nailpaint,
of the kitchen and the garden, of books and the upholstery
you got changed every month to match the furniture well.
I'm afraid,

because of you, because of me, because everything we knew
is tied in delicate threads to each other and to promises
that aren't as sacred as you believe them to be, and I swear,
the understanding leaves scars that shine like lightning
on rainy nights - do you know

because I know. I'm learning. I'm trying. I remember
the time I made you a card because I didn't know how else
to tell you I was angry, you had ruined a childish game and
I didn't know how to forgive you because I didn't understand.
I think it comes with time. I forgive you now.

I'm afraid of death. Forgive me. I'm afraid.

Sonnet to Aparna

You're a charm in every rusted memory box

in my cupboard, and you're an unapologetic ode

to the skies, purple as they were on our walks.

I think you and I should live our lives on the road -

we're far too large to fit into a singular space.

Your hair curls around every edge and cracked

corner of my dreams, and it never leaves a trace.

Your joy follows me into the fog like a hazy fact,

and I dread the day when it will drift away.

Are you and I strong enough to fight the world,

will we be able to stand still and not sway?

My hair flying straight in the wind, yours curled.

The cityscape is drenched, it looks raggedy new,

and I wonder if you know that I dream about you.

Fragments

Words upon words upon words upon

Rain. Soaking through trees and tar,
grimy cars and construction sites where
cement and sand swirl in an endless vortex,
the evening rises like smoke around my arms
and droplets the size of my fist thunder past traffic.

I taste you like a metaphor on my tongue,
Feel the dust of you on my skin.

The shadow of a city, the bruise of a life,
the thump-thumping of nostalgia against
closed doors and the carnival of memory.

In my hair, I wrapped my childhood. In my
arms, I wrapped you. In my trunks, I tucked
letters and rocks and tokens and broken nights,
catching snippets of song in butterfly nets and
hanging them over my bed. I watched your voice
as you slept. I watched myself sleep.

If all I have are fragments,
I won't be ashamed of them. I will find
stories to tie them up in, plot lines that
flutter and attempt to escape me.

Mountain stream

I can taste silver sand in my mouth,
feel the shiver numbness of icy water.
There is so much to say, heaps and heaps
of broken images against harsh sun, memory
of Eliot and cracked sky turning orange.

My hair smells like loneliness and smoke,
despite the gushing truth of water against feet.
What do I search for?

Ache

It's an existential ache more than an angst.

Not quite a crisis or a culmination,

more like a winter morning 

when you crane your head out the window,

watching drizzle turn to mist before it swallows

the sun whole - but the ticking clock 

still tells you

it's only the start.

If a day is a journey then

I need to find a better map -

I'm strolling in circles and getting lost,

hiding the world in the bags under my eyes.

If a day is a progression then

why are mine so circular, how can I ever

find meaning in this neurotic carnival where

I'm strapped to the chair of the ferris wheel and

morning always leads to night no matter where

I look; and nothing matters, that's the problem.

Nothing matters.

If no (wo)man is an island then

I need to stop burning bridges and boats -

perhaps I can't escape

anyway

and

my collarbones will smell of sun

and not smoke. Maybe wo(man) is

a desert of thirst. Maybe there are no oceans

here - only mirages and the occasional

oasis, desire mixing with memory

until you can almost hear the bluebird

but

my throat is still parched.

Spring hasn't reached where I am yet;

I'll be patient. Winter fog still settles

in my bones, and the countries of my body

give birth to no flowers, dance in the moonlight

with no thundering rainstorm. It's cold

and quiet. It's quiet. I could

sleep for months. I could sleep.

Damn this cement and concrete

Do you know what it's like

to be woken by birdsong and golden sun?

I miss walking down

paths of a forest I was deliriously

in love with. Mapping the soil under

my sandals and the sun on my hair,

tracing the veins of red leaves on my 

downy arms and telling myself 

this is how life ought to be lived.

I'm so far from my forest.

From my birdsong and shaded paths,

folk songs and moonlit night walks. 

I never want to forget

what true joy feels like.

As though all of life wants to rejoice,

all at once, in my belly. My smile goes

beyond me, and I can't hold it in any more.

The sun is setting against horizon of Gulmohurs

and orange petals are falling at my feet

and I just walked

to the mossy well and waved 

to the turtles,

and climbed a tree and sang to the sky,

wove a blanket of golden sun and slept on a roof;

I never want to forget the feeling of rock

under bare feet and rain against bare face,

the sound of wind thundering through trees

and tousling back hair, I never want to forget.

Damn this cement and concrete,

The artificial flower beds and manicured lawns.

Damn the glass windows and clean white walls.

Damn me if I ever get used to this life.

Exhale

Mist settles on the lamp-lit streets,
stretching across my arms like a moan.
The horizon trembles in an effort to stay whole.

Poetry writes itself on the cobblestones.
Open the blinds to the sun-clear day, wait
for dusk to streak the sky gold, then wait
for grey. Rain rings in my ears. Cold grief
and shiver. I forget,

and I scrape memory off my skin
like a frozen ocean. A fractured dream.

Inhale first. You know how.
And again.
Breathe out, slow as a movie, into the night
choked with fog. The smoke rises, curls around
my face until I can't recognize myself anymore.

The sound of exhale. The fear of forget. The life of a life.

All of me

If you ask me what I'm learning in college I just realized I can tell you in a single line:
to live with contradictions (both yours and mine).

I can sniff them out like a dog at an airport now -
in literature class when the dust starts to settle

just shake it up.
There's no black and white.
No right and wrong.
Every duality has a hundred hidden shades
behind the image of itself -

and I

I understand
I'll get an A in the damn essay
but my god

what if it all ends and the books are put back in the shelf
and I still don't know how to live my life
because I'm learning -

I'm learning damn well how to live with your contradictions,
I can forgive, I can see the hundred masks behind a single face,
and I tell myself I'll be okay, be okay,

but what if I can't forgive the contradictions in myself?
What if I know I shouldn't and yet I must
box everything in neat categories
and weep about what doesn't fit?

What if I don't understand why I don't fall in love -
or I do, a hundred times, hold it to my chest as if I'm drowning,
and then let it go - to the wind - like a hundred hidden birds -

as if I swallowed all the water and painted a face on the newborn sun
and everything is blossom and bud, freedom and forgetfulness,
there's no need for a lifeboat, there's no need for you

just me
all of me - but -

can you forgive me for that?
Can I?