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.

almost april

a note: it is almost april. the winters get harder to bear every year, i get sadder in my bones and heavier in my heart and find it harder to breathe. but it will pass. it is passing. it is already almost april. spring is blooming in front of my eyes, sunlight is filtering through clouds and leaves and mango blossoms. it has been a hard few months but i have been taking pictures and writing poetry to remind myself that in the right light, everything is burnished with gold. for too many days i have felt that i have lost all reason and meaning and giddy joy, all the metaphors have slipped through my hands like water, and the sky is a void through which i could fall forever. i am getting better. spring is breaking through. tomorrow i will try again. perhaps i will rise with a smile on my face, and remind myself of the miracle of my body and the miracle of the ground. perhaps i will even hear birdsong. it is almost april, and National Poetry Writing Month is starting. wish me luck!

Something important

It is strange to return, dripping
with my new life, carrying whole cities in
the small of my back and the hollows of my mouth.

Everything here is as it always was. Everything seems to be
at an edge, about to blossom or drown or catch afternoon flame.
Nothing is the same. Nothing remains. What was once whole
is now a skyful of cracks, an ocean of fissure, a house named grief.
Memory stalks through these rooms. The silence smells of peace
and unease. This house has seen so many bubbling childhoods
and now this house has known the desperate stench of death.
It is a particular kind of joy to be home. Everything here is still
as it always was. This house is a timeless childhood. A loss.

Mornings here smell of tea. Afternoons are gold.
Evenings melt into night like warm honey spreading on skin.
The horizon is always close. The neighborhood is far away.
This terrace is our watchtower, our garden of solitude,
these names mark our tongues with familiar scents.
I have unlearnt this home too long ago. I have left.
Too many roads are calling my name. These rooms
have known my griefs and my apathies, my secret vices.
There is too much here that will never belong to me.
There is too much here that will always be mine.

Everything seems to be at the edge of something important.
I leave this house with ease. I enter it with ease. Someday
something will happen. Something will move. This ocean
will shatter into a million pieces of glass, and I will lose
something important: my name in the tender morning sun
of this house. My feet in the dust of these floors. My eyes.

7:30 am chiaroscuro

keepsakes from this afternoon

A Reclaiming

Like all colonisers, I am desperate
despite my power and obvious good will.

I wouldn't ask for too much; all I want
is a little control, some moderate demands fulfilled.
Do let me know. My army is tired. I can fight
if need be, but peaceful compromise and bargain
works just as well for me. Perhaps better.

To be honest, my army
is somewhere else. My army
is resting. Is asleep. Has forgotten.

But I have maps. I have plans. I have
the good old tried-and-tested friend and foe
called Fate on my side. This is a war
I will win, because I have no choice.

My mirror smirks at me, and I am forced
to smirk back. I do not feel like smirking.
I feel tired.

It is a simple operation. Requires no navy.
No toothbrush factories. No war photographers.

If I must be candid for the media, I will tell them
all I want is a rightful right. A returning. A recovery.
All I want, I will tell them with straight face, is to

reclaim my life. Name my cities my own.
Tell my various people to unite under me.
Organise filing cabinets, judicial offices.

I have been lost for so long. Somebody
dethroned me, but it was only me. I have been
wandering deserts, travelling like one who has
no home. Perhaps I have no home. This loss
smells like the sea, and leaves me breathless
and wanting.

A reclaiming would be heavenly. A reclaiming
would be wonderful. I could feel less like a stranger
in the cities of my hometown, the countries of my skin.

This is a war
I don't know how to fight.
This is a war
where fate has predicted every outcome.
To be honest, I was lying earlier. Like every
good coloniser. This is a war I might never win.
This is a war that will never begin. Perhaps this is
not even my war. Perhaps I should move to a quieter suburb.
Perhaps deserts are all that are left, and I can name my desire
Thirst, and be done with it. This is a war and a lifetime
where struggle is always too soon and too late, never any use.
Perhaps I wasn't lying all the way. This is not a war. This is a
reclaiming. I will never win. My desire will skim the horizon
and I will always be left behind. Just by a few steps. Just a few.
This is the kind of conflict that settles in hair and smells of smoke
and is always newly born. I could not lose this if I tried. I could not
lose. Could not erase the past. Could not recreate the past. Could not.
Could not. Could not. Could be good. Would be left, dry desert,
mirthless thirst, a fragment, a wildness, a lonely piece of driftwood.

everything numbs

to be honest
the fire in my fingertips is getting harder to find

and days go by without me remembering
that i am alive.
perhaps it's age and perhaps it isn't

either way,
it's all going numb.
i want to have the idealism i did at 18,
the self confidence, the joy too large
for me to contain. to be honest,
i want to feel the same kind of heartbreak
i did at 14. it blew me up, blossomed like
wild roses and firecrackers, left me weeping
and so alive. nothing feels that way
anymore. nothing hurts too much to bear;

except this itself, this numbness, this
sense of falling, this city of ruins
that was once gloriously my own.

perhaps it's age. perhaps time.
like metal rusts, perhaps i rust too.
everything numbs. nothing feels like
life. only like clockwork. the colours
dim, like in the movies, and stay there.

i will go on because that is the only way
and nobody asked me when they decided.
perhaps it's inevitable, that the tremble in my belly
would die down and leave only ashes, only damp pillows.
too many people have said too much and for the first time
i have nothing to say. nothing to hear. only a little ache

for birdsong, and the sound of wind rushing through trees,
and the sound of my heart billowing out into the sky and
calling out to airplanes, to broken hearts, to forgotten books.
i am an airplane. a broken heart
forgetting itself. a forgotten book.
nothing is calling out to me. i hide.
these words mean nothing. there is only

a slow squandering of time. only scrolling.
only smoking. only music that lets you forget.
only sad news. only more books. only a future
that asks you to care. only a roomful of people
who love you. only so many notebooks you filled
and forgot. only words. only void. only falling.

only ever sin

“the nature of desire is such”, said a well-meaning

philosophy professor, “that it is never ending”. 

i test the phrase on my eager tongue.

“the nature of desire”, i say. gently.

the earthy word settles like dust

on the sensual sound of ‘desire’. 

i lie back in my field of gold sunsets

and fashion rhetoric from my angst.

there is so much desire. so much need

to possess, so much wild yearning.

i languish in these fragments. i ache.

somewhere i told myself i could gather

the world in the palms of my hands

if only i could know it

; god knows i desire it. god knows,

if he knows anything at all.

knowledge, i said. if instinct doesn’t work.

eager, i bit into the apple. it was all illicit seed 
and white flesh ensconced in skin.

little did i know

it was only ever sin.

eventually, all the pathways

lead the same way. there is

despair. there are gold sunsets.

there is fleeting joy. an essential

misunderstanding.

it is all half lives.

it is all unknowable.

infinitely desirable.

infinitely unreachable. 

the world laughs at my pains

and tells me it's been waiting

in my palms all along. i try to smile

; my mouth is bloody with apple skins and ache.

all the tears that have filled me up to the brim

are hurting me. i cannot untie them from my eyes

because they are not mine. i will never own

the important things. i will never know

eventually there is a hopeless hope:

words that whisper to my spine and tremble

under my ribs and come to rest, nestled under 

my neck, like newborn moons meeting darkness

for the very first time.