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?