edge

there is a certain hard look
                              that I wear on my face.

I wish I didn't.

there is a blade of truth
                               that hides under my tongue.

someday, I will get angrier
                                        at you
                                              than you will allow me to.

here, on the edge of things,
                                    it is slippery.
                                             the blade cracks like glass.
                                                      the sky shatters.

from the terrace

rainy evening I

you woke me up, and

we’re here now. I write poetry

in the damp insides of my mouth

and try not to break your

overfull heart.

the sky shudders and darkens. I hide

behind a bower in the mango tree, and smoke

a lonesome cigarette. the smoke is a silver thread

the wind pulls out of my mouth. like a secret poem.

listen, I still don’t know

whether I’m living okay. but I have words

like loose change in my pockets, and dreams

the size of cities. light slants onto my 

fingers and paints them gold.

my mother and I are listening

to the music you sent me. some of it

leaves me billowing, larger than the frame

of my little bones. a rag left in the wind

that expands to the size of a sea.

in the distance, I hear a train rumble.

the sky is quiet now, it has spent its fury.

everything is dewdrops and damp skin and light.

the lost birds start to call to me again. I tell them

to wait. to go on. to find me again.

on coming home

April 30: Closure

This time
I will be satisfied even
with no ending lines,
no last conversations
in my mind. I know
I am difficult to love.

This time, I am ready
to leave without asking
for the world. I am ready
to walk out to sea and taste
the salty air the seagulls
fly in. I am ready to fly it.

I try to be softer, kinder,
less insistent. I forget how
to love, every day, like a
language that peels off
my tongue and hangs
in the ancient rooms.

I need no names
for the trees. No names
for the different kinds of
breeze. No names for the
oceans my body meets and
falls in love with, no names
for the love I own and disown.

It is only ever endings,
and not even
in a tragic way. It is only ever
sunbirds on a terrace building
a nest that cannot last. It is
only ever lamplight and ache.

Like A, I want the good work,
the hearty meal, the tired eyes.
I want the long journeys and
I want new learnings, sunsets
that taste of rose and gold,
intimacy that curls my toes
and hurts my lungs
in happy ways.

It is only ever endings;
I am satisfied with my lot.

April 29: weight

the unbearable weight
of still feeling these
things, of feeling the
pain of a stranger's
voice scorching
your skin, of
misspelling
important words
when you thought
you never would.

my bed is full
of pieces of my life
i thought i threw away,
hid in ashtrays or tossed
out the third-floor window.

they come back in the form
of small things that itch, scratch.

the words still make me tender,
still make me ache, still hold me
underwater and naked and slick.

my body is a warzone
from a country i never saw.
i try to hold this alien grief
slow, gentle, in my palms.

i hold all the weight of
sky and forgotten dreams
on my shoulders, in my
eyes and in the words.

April 28: Waiting

I miss the particular
texture of my longing
when waiting would
taste of hope.

Waiting tastes now
of old food, familiar
sheets, an old sky.

It is too early
for waking, for
metaphors, for
summer rain.

The way home is through
cities of smoke with nothing
to lose. The way home is
a highway that looks like
a slow death. The way home
feels nothing like a home,
never will. Yet I go.

These new textures
are sweet in new ways:
honey in the hollows
of my collarbones
when my neck isn't
knotted up with ache.

I expect nothing.
I go.

April 27: Loss

Somehow, I watched
myself let go of old grief
like a swollen rose.

It is torture
to tear these petals
off my skin, these
bruises like birthmarks,
these cities of loss.

My ancient cries
hide in corners
of the house, still.
Underneath cobwebs
and drawers of junk.

You can hear
all the names
I have hidden
under my skin.

Somehow, everything
passes over into river;
gurgle and movement,
fresh awakening, dawn.
All stagnation reworks
itself as a morning.

All tragedies
mask themselves as
life, call my soul
to the stage
so I can pray
for a miracle.

April 26: big feelings

endings
don't feel like loss anymore,
just like
beginnings
don't feel like love.

growing up is a lot of pain,
not a lot of learning. there's nothing
called learning. there's only making
the same mistakes over again until
you move on to newer pastures,
easier ways to break to heart
or lose a key in the grass.

all the big feelings
come out sometimes,
when i listen to music
in the bus, or watch
the shadows and light
dance like lovers.

the rest of the time
i have learnt (reached)
to live without big feelings:
no big sadnesses, no expansive
sunlit joys, no grief that calls
to the stars. it's alright, it is.

i hide my tongue
in a secret place,
and water my soul
like a tender thing.
better days arrive
like majestic birds.

April 25: Other Languages

Translation
feels a lot like love.

The same kind of tender compromise,
sense of urgency, hollow regret. The
feeling you don't own your mouth.

There are a hundred reasons
I will never feel whole; one
of them is that I am split
right through my voice
like an overripe fruit,
my syllables torn in two
like rotting flesh on seed.

With vowels that came
to me as easy as love,
I was pulled in
to a universe that sank
under my skin and named
my teeth its own. This language
owns my soul, owns the cities
in my belly, writes the laws that
govern the streets of my voice.

I write only that poetry
which I can fit in the confines
of this language, in its particular
lilt, in the silences between
black alphabets that tell me
they don't belong in this
humid tragedy. I write
only those words which
this language lets me own.
I write a syntax of desire
and living, bruising and
falling, trying and loving.
I write only the words
I can call my own.
Even those words
sometimes slip through
my fingers and mock
my little brown voice.

Other languages hang around in
the air, a distant memory, a short
forgetting. Other languages are
hesitant on my tongue, in my mouth
that tastes of a ruined empire. I try
to tell them they can own me too,
hold me tender in the sounds of
their words and their weeping.
Other languages know parts
of me that I have hidden away,
buried under soil and tried to
forget. Other languages know
the blood that runs through
my voice, the archeology
of my expression, the way
I might never know.

I don't know whether they
are jealous, of this mistress
that scratches my voice
when I try to let it go.
I don't know whether
they want me, like I
think I want them.

Translation
feels like looking
at myself in the dark.
Like counting the colours
of my shadows. Like taking
the shortest way home in a
monsoon that smells of a
different life. Translation
feels like violation, feels
sacred, feels like drowning.

I unveil a secret
that knows my name.
I hang somewhere
between my voice
and my soul that
smells of centuries
in the sun, here,
here where you
see the roads and
towers now, here.
Here, where I lived
before I lived, where
the soil dreamed me
up like a secret, the
secret I unveil;

I secret I veil.