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.