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.)