The absence of poetry

The words I took refuge in are no longer in plenty,I made it to the college I dreamt of but it's been reduced to a facade for me,someone I was in love with picked another person and there remains even no shadow of small talk anymore.

It would suffice to say this year was one of experiences because that's what you get when you don't get what you thought you would.I watched the sun sink behind rooftops last evening,the second last time this year,it looked like it left watercolour shadows on the clouds,while it skidded its way to sleep.Blackbirds and crows flew homeward,encompassed by a sense of direction that guided them home at dusk,one I was envious of.I've almost forgotten how sunsets meant a sense of comfort to me.

I moved to another city,one full of strangers,one where I'm a stranger,myself and although people tell me roots can change,the sense of home can shift,I can only wonder if it will.

There is no poetic justice about growing older,only dramatic irony.There is no emptier feeling that not having the power of the very words that led you exactly where you wanted to be.What point or purpose does an achievement have if it takes away what you believed in.My friend says we could shout from rooftops,what we've learnt about ourselves.We could wear the realisation that we're too romantic for a nine to five working week like a badge of honour,but it wouldn't change a thing other than the fact that we're not soft enough to be moulded,not cut out to fit in and only we can try working our way around it.

Change is the abundance of verse,which does not mention ketchup,refer to books read and yet there is space for new friends to watch stars under a blanket on Friday nights with and ones who read out poetry on park benches,over cheap Chinese food.There is a body made up of the discovery that for every image we know,there is an alternative reality,there are people who will give you roses to press in between in pages of a journal,old friends who will make you forget all that seems uncertain,

I've lived most of this year rationed out in weeks and months,semesters and holidays,let downs and heartbreaks,Yet,I'm here to hope,to believe there's better.
I guess I've done a bit of growing up this year,the most evident life skill I've picked up is to shut people out (quite literally),hole myself in a closet of a room all weekend,cramped in with my apprehensions.All that once seemed pretty no longer does and I don't know how to feel about it but in the absence of poetry,I've been looking for an abundance of refrains.

Sitting here in the underbelly of a wave,for I have swallowed a sea of all that could have been,I'm here, hoping for a little more poetry.

Lessons learnt in room 27

 Twenty seven,an obscure number in an equally obscure space designated the purpose of higher education.

Sitting here,one can hear the mechanical swish of the flurry of everyday activity,the metro going by,the corridors emptied out of students who have now entered classrooms,being mopped spotless. Leaves of frangipani trees stand lacquered in sunshine,outside the little square windows,as I learn nothing textbooks can teach.
 I discovered that caffeine is much like popular culture,if you can't consume it excessively,it isn't culture at all(So is tea an equivalent,because it's a statement the intellectual use to perpetuate their own subculture,but will probably not admit to) and almost nothing comes in one colour.Not people,not culture,not life.It's never only black,white,roseate.I realised the futility of hoping for somebody who tells you you're a colour they haven't imagined yet,because then,you're probably not a colour they welcome on their palette any longer.
You cannot belong to someone or some place,cannot fit in,because you're a dream not meant for a coffin or a skeleton to be tucked into a coffer box in a cupboard.
You are the colour of the wind-all embracing in its invisibility.
You need not be a youtube phenomena or a firebrand feminist to feel entitled to just feel the way you do,you need no validation to be too independent in your childlike demeanour to mould your life around the idea of an institution,to be outlined neatly with a cookie-cutter like label of this or that,because you can choose to be this,that or neither.
You are the colour no one can contain in words,disappointing and hopeful,alike.You are the colour you paint yourself with choices,a transcendent feeling.
 

Rubella Red

Plopped alone on my single bed,I stare at the length of my arms covered by a generous scarlet sprinkling of measles,as if staring at them long enough would make them vanish.I squeeze my eyes shut and pray that they do,but it's not happening.Yet again,I realise the magnitude of how little a fuck,people,especially adults give about each other.I have no where to sleep for the night,and in an empty hostel room,it's just my despair,my rubella covered arms and the awareness of my adulthood sharing space and a comfortable silence between us.
I'm alone with my thoughts again and the sound of them haunts me like a late Sunday afternoon when everyone is asleep and the corridor reeks of quiet.I realise I have caved in to rejection,caved in to the belief that my writing is not good enough for the couple of college societies that I thought I could have been a part of,that as much as I dislike going home,it is  symbolic of a screwed up sense of comfort.I've stopped looking for a physical sense of home,altogether because no matter how wonderful the people,how positive the atmosphere..there is bound to be a deep seated emptiness that cannot be forgotten.Like a dark room with soft music,when it's raining incessantly outdoors-a feeling so immensely beautiful,it has a sense of tragedy looming about it.I've come to realise,college isn't half the dream it's promised to be and just like school,there will be lecturers who will produce a physical reaction of fear in most of the class with mere words.Life almost never turns out as planned,planning is futile,it just happens-for better or for worse.It's quite a struggle for me to just stop and try to participate,before it fleets away in the blink of an eyelid,leave alone trying to control anything.
Maybe my words and dreams are tainted in the very hue my arms are-rubella red,bold.Maybe they aren't for most people to understand and maybe,this is just a mere consolation I'm trying to get by each day on.It is good enough to make it with the lack of any encouragement,making a mark might be difficult for me,but I just might be a phoenix,reborn from ashes and I just might be Sisyphus,rolling a stone up a hill,that I know will come crashing down the slope,anyway.There is much grace in being either of them,I suppose.The most essential fact that keeps me afloat on rocky seas,however,is that I still write.I write for myself,I write when I'm rejected and feel inferior,I write when I discover I might be an average,first generation literature student,I write for my loneliness and I write for my joy.I write because I've survived and I try,each day to make a little more sense of my survival.I write for my childhood self and the broken home I grew up in,the stories that need to be told.Despite not having read cannons like my classmates have or being on editorial boards and having published lengths of my writing,I write.
Because that's the point,isn't it? Making the best of what you've got.Like Scout Finch understood of what Atticus said to her about the best kinda folks being ones who make the best of what they get.

Fountain Coke

Fine,silver hair like fluff on the crown of an old man's head,
a dusty notebook where he records mundane details because mnemonics have failed him
A couple of hours spent getting to know a fragment of ninety-three years of life.
The courage to finally utter a "hi" to a dreamy senior that makes me swoon,and that indelible feeling when her face melts into the softest,most genuine smile.
The soothing after effects of a glass of fountain coke sipped out of a long,yellow straw on a sunny day and all of these things remind me,it's getting better.

Homage to a new home

The swift mechanical swish of the metro running on a line right outside my window is warm yellow reassurance at night,like lights illuminating an empty corridor.A new city awaits to be explored,I have a whole new world to discover,every morning is the promise of adventure,every day a constantly changing challenge.
College,they say,is the most abstract experience there is..where each day might seem identical to the next,like a line of dominoes waiting to collapse into each other until you create something worthwhile with catharsis or have an absolute burnout,but each moment is like that intricacy of a painting,you didn't notice the first time you looked.Only when you look closer,carefully,your eyes fall on those little details that add the kind of meaning to the painting you never thought it could convey.
Be it a torrent of rain that sends you running back indoors,one afternoon,making you smile like a child with paper boats in a puddle or be it sitting on a stairway,sharing comfortable silences into the wee hours of morning,cuddling with the campus dog and taking naps in a hallway,your bag ,a makeshift pillow.Eating tang straight out of the packet and spending all your money on one too many bottles of beer and books,without realising it might mean being broke for the rest of the month and walking three kilometeres,trying to find your way back.Every little stroke of the brush has been put on canvas to add hue,colour,contrast or even just space,you might just take a little longer to realise why some strokes have been added.

In a month,I have come to realise how much the very foundations of my world can change,entirely.How the safe little snow globe I had crafted to be my universe,has frailer walls than I had ever imagined.The people I meet were certainly not the ones I thought I would,the tears I've cried under the covers,each morning for a home that I never thought I would miss so much,the bittersweet nostalgia for a city that adds so much to my identity than I ever realised,the songs I've been singing and the dancing I've been doing,all so new,yet so welcoming.Even the kites and birds,flying in a distance outside my window,the fronds of the palm moving gently with the breeze,seem strangely stunning and familiar.
The questions I've been asking myself,mostly rhetoric,but I'm beginning to realise,they don't all need answers,always.Some of them are better mysteries than hypotheses.
Somewhere along sitting next to a lotus pond,pondering and musing, while walking late night in soft drizzle,plopping myself into a circle of near strangers on a grassy slope,singing along to the chords of a guitar,I realise.I realise that there is little we can do about what we're fated to,how much ever we try,even if we romanticize monotony.
The grand scheme of things will spiral out and spiral in like these moments,these minute details on abstract painting of our lives.Seemingly designed for a purpose we don't quite understand,at first.It is indeed our attempt to try to add meaning that,to try taking control,to try directing the strokes on our paintings to make our masterpieces a little more personalised,our belief that we can exercise choice,free will is what counts.Although it might be just a mirage of what we want to call an odyssey of self-discovery,it just this belief that is the truest sense of freedom we'll have.Like sexuality,like love,like friendship,like wisdom and knowledge,themselves,freedom is fluid,although in earnest,it might never completely belong to us,alone.It is psychological and even if institutions like society seem to shackle it with norms,we try,despite knowing there is no escape.We try to build a niche where we don't want to race towards a finish line,to compete and make a mark,we just want to fall and falter,and discover and evolve.This very attempt at letting go and finding a place to be and walking without a destination,taking one day at a time,that liberates me.I'm learning to let my hair down,to let the breeze kiss it and walk barefoot,to feel the earth beneath my feet.These unknown streets and sky rise concrete structures of my dreams,and all the uncertainty of a new beginning,,the confusion and despair of figuring stuff out and those sublime interludes of mundane peace.A city,like I began,awaits to be discovered..perhaps,this constantly changing cosmopolitan is within me.


 

Paraphernalia of the past

The welcome smell as soon as you walk past the air curtain of a department store you've been shopping from since you were four,

Orange tongues from orange ice lollies after school that painted your tongue in the colour of the happiness they could afford you,memories at the cost of five rupees saved up carefully.
The warmth of dosa melting in your mouth and other everyday phenomena
you almost cannot bid adieu to.
The streets where you never quite learnt how to ride a bicycle without training wheels,
and the shadows of the looming neem tree outside your bedroom window sighed goodnight
with the wind as you fell asleep,The monsoon clouds that stand testimony to all the years in school,spent watching out of the classroom,all those afternoons you longed to go home and read ,undisturbed, into the evening.Your friend's terrace where you watched a fraction of the city,countless times with dreamy eyes and that coziness is something you cannot replace.All those hours of sitting on the swing set,talking about everything under the sky.
You're not going to miss the place as much as what growing up meant in it,the good,the bad,the mediocrity of it all.You're going to miss it because you will desire the streets and the people and the simplicity for what they used to be,but they grew up,and so did you.

Take a break from being broken

 Dear future you,

You have been rejected and heartbroken before.I know disappointment feels like a new phenomenon each time you meet it,like a sucker punch in your stomach,it hits you hard,but you've been here before,and you'll come back again and let's just admit to ourselves-it sucks and there is no sugar coating,silver lining,sunshine behind the clouds kinda hope.All your past selves call bullshit on it,they have learnt well from experience.
Each time you fall,they say,you fall harder and you pick yourself up,stronger.Just like putting back together a heart that feels like it's sunken and disintegrated into a million little pieces,raining on you like incardinine confetti.Even when you carefully glue all of it back together,stronger,less vulnerable-there's no denying the fact that it's a little more broken than the last time,a little more hurt and empty.
You can learn to let go,forgive,move on,get past all expectation-whatever it is they advise you to do in due time..even fake it till you make it,but the darkness of the depression will seep back.Embrace it,cling,let it shatter you because if it doesn't now,it will just slowly consume you from the inside like a demon,hiding behind the veil of repressed emotion.
You can forget people,you can stop missing them,stop feeling the loss..but memories hide in strange places,like a child who has mastered hide and seek.They will come knock at the windows of your eyelids when you close your eyes in a state of semi sleep,and your thoughts all blur and drift into dreams that take over.They will jolt you awake before the cup of sweet tea you brewed your self can cure you of perpetual fatigue,they will tremble like your fingers do when they scroll down the contact list on your phone and long for a number you can't call back on.They will haunt you every time you experience something immensely beautiful,saddening or overwhelming,waves of wonder..a song,a word,a smile will bring the pain flooding back
because you are reminded again,there are of only so much use if you have nobody to share them with,to reveal the secret ways of the world you discover each day.
You are mess,you are not enough,and you are too much for yourself.Life is chaos and love hurts like a shard of something broken in your throat,a lump accompanied by glassy eyes,you're almost crying but you are incapable of tears.Guess what? You're actually laughing at yourself,this cruel joke.You no longer feel sorry for your predilection,self-pity has worn itself out.
You never win,you're used to dejection now.Picking yourself up is easier,you've learnt to be bigger than the things that break you and it absolutely sucks.But you never win the ways that seem noticeable,you never notice how you never give up on yourself.Every bleak Monday morning,you tell yourself to take care and you break the monotony of existing by accepting that people cannot be saved,only loved.Your whole life might be falling apart around you,but you've learnt to live without love,without expectation..you've learnt to get by on mere hope,finding metaphors of it the mundane.
And even if you lose all the time,you don't lose heart.You still follow your heart,even if it promises all the pain of the path ahead.You guard yourself better,but you also soften with it all.Like wrinkles and crows feet and grey hair,time softens you,slows you down-you might not be as light on your feet anymore,they're all cracked heels and bruises.You lose,but you still walk on,you don't need the shoes that you really thought you did-maybe they would have made you better,but you've learnt to make better of yourself.Your old feet are better,dirt kissed.
Most importantly,you let the cycle of bruising and healing just be,there's no way of stopping it.That's when you win,that's the only victory-the peace of setting yourself free.
You're winning at life,because you're doing the best with what you know and you'll never have to regret having worn your heart on your sleeve.You're winning because you had the courage to be honest and to put yourself out there,and to let yourself break.You're winning because you're trying to let your dreams win.
Let me remind you,you have been rejected and heartbroken before.I know disappointment feels like a new phenomenon each time you meet it,like a sucker punch in your stomach,it hits you hard,but you've been here before,and you'll come back again and let's just admit to ourselves-it sucks and there is no sugar coating,silver lining,sunshine behind the clouds kinda hope,but let's also admit to ourselves how far we've made it and how much farther we know we could go.We've learnt to be enough for ourselves and the realisation that even if there's another heartbreak,another winding road we take that might not lead us to a happier place,we've survived,made it,grown.That takes spirit and it is this realisation that uncertainty cannot bother you anymore that nurses your broken heart and keeps you going.It is this rejection and heartbreak that let both better and worse things come out of them and that's more that the mundane victory it seems to be.

Take care,
yours truly.

Beating the blues

        

You sat at the murky bottom of a well,
tried to climb out
but your feet failed you,
they did not know how to tread the slippery surface
of the walls,adorned by moss

A glimpse of the sky,tar black,
you watched from the inside,
but soon,you realised,it was actually blue,
that stained the sky with its indelible ink,
draped it in a nebulous gloom.

I tried to reach my arm out to you,
but the dark distance swallowed
my feeble attempt,bruised my skin
blue,a shade so pneumonic and unbeatable ,
couldn't pull you out.

Looking down into the pitch black
of the well,I can see no end,
but at least it is quiet and absolute,
the blue you try to show me,seems
so much colder,uncertain as a dream.

I'm afraid I might slip down too,
I try to reach you a rope this time,
it snags and tears,soon to shreds,
my rope is not enough to
hold you all the way up and out.

What is a hand or a rope
in a sea so lemniscate ,
blue as a painting trying to recreate
a stormy scene,a tsunami,
praying to go back to tranquil black.

Top of the class

An obscure number can never contain all the dreams that kept you awake all night,working.
Neither can it count all the tears cried in the battle to balance out an education,
nor portray the pain you felt curled up on the bathroom floor,telling yourself you'll survive tomorrow.
I read somewhere,today,that experience is what you get when you don't quite get what you want,
and maybe,just maybe,
the intricate grace of a dancer's hand gestures,creating imaginary flowers with her fingers
and how your grandmother no longer smells of the specific kind of tobacco she used to chew
and how her sleep-like silence is a sharp reminder of all the stories she no longer tells you,
the smell of your dog's paws that lingers long after they've left the room,
the surprise you're taken by when someone notices the shadow of a cheekbone under your tired,waiting face or how one of your ears is missing a earring,
and the painful relief of watching someone you love lie in a hospital bed,recovering,as you sigh away the night
The wonder that strikes when you see comatose patients or cases of emergency,breathing heavy,
wheeled away to their destiny,questioning finality.
The small act of kindness when you least expect it,sometimes just a smile or a "hi" in the school corridors,or when someone let you get away when you were one too many times late for assembly.
Just the very the bittersweet loss of what once was a possibility
The gratitude of just having survived so much..just maybe
a number can never give away all of that.
A number can never personify all the stories left to tell and people waiting to be met and growing up left to be grown into.
No,a number is not enough.You are.
You are symbolic of survival,these numbers are just infinitesimal fragments of a universe of infinite possibility-
yes,they might matter in the moment,maybe for a while longer.Yes,they reward the best with medals and news paper articles and admiration,
but topping in an exam has so little relation to keeping well in life,it is such an inaccurate reflection of  ability.
After all,brilliant is an adjective,not a number.
It took me a week or so of moping to get to this realisation,because after having done conventionally "well",it did not feel like enough,it did not feel satisfying,It was too empty,and too full,at the same time.I realised I've been wasting time waiting for an approval that is not and will never be mine,my whole life.Almost like an indoctrination of how academic validation makes me good enough.
And all it felt like in the end? A fucking joke.
That's what all these numbers we compete for and compare with,and measure by mean.
Almost nothing.

Hachile

Dear Hachi,

I come to give a spotted yellow mango and some hand picked wildflowers inside the small circle where the guava sapling was planted,on your grave.
It's your season again,my little man.Peak summertime when you spent entire afternoons devouring whole mangoes down to the seed,held carefully between your fore paws,you'd lick it clean.
The first time I think I tried to understand death,was at age three, I picked up a dead moth off the floor and asked my caretaker why it was lying on the floor,and not sitting on a window,why it wasn't escaping my palm like it should.She told me to throw it because it had died,somehow,I didn't have heart to do it.She insisted that it was old and dead,and I needed to let it go,but it did not make complete sense.I did not understand death,I was only fascinated by it.I don't think much has changed since then.I guess I understood that old age meant imminent death,and I noticed old age on our cook,Abbas bhaiyya,who would make us some of the best sweet,caramelised bread when we were little.I noticed the age in his crow's feet outlined by surma,that deepened as he smiled ,in his fine silver hair,age looked so gentle on him,it did not scare me.I wondered how such harmless looking signs could mean death,intriguing.It was not until I was 11 that I understood young people could die too,though,Until I had read the cancer stories out of chicken soup books,cover to cover and cried for hours.Until I had surfed all the childhood cancer survival pages,shocked by the homages that faded with time.And it was only at fifteen,that I realised losing someone,and losing someone young were both things that were possibly going to happen to be.But I still don't understand,nineteen now,I don't think I ever will.How a heartbeat stops forever in a blink of an eyelid.How it is even possible for you turn your back one minute,and lose something so easily before you can turn around and help.When someone you loved remains physically only in memories and photographs.How can someone stop existing,there is no getting over loss,no end to mourning.Those are lied perpetuated by those in denial,there is only making peace with what happened-and that is so fucking hard.

The first time I laid eyes on you,I almost mistook you to be a rabbit,and when I held you in my arms,you were a quiet,cottony ball.You were least interested even in licking me,unlike other puppies,and that's how I knew I'd be taking you home.We brought you home on Ashtami,the eighth day of the dusshera festival and although I've never been religious,the name Hachi,which is Japanese for the number eight,somehow seemed symbolic and a good fit.

It's strange,but I don't remember the last time I saw you,I don't remember the last few moments with you-unless the ones where I held your limp,lifeless paw,praying in vain and put my palm on your tiny heart,still,count.But you were already dead by then
I do remember the little things from your short and beautiful life,though.The way your eyes sparkled when you were excited,the plump,curled up tail which was a phenomenon in itself.The way you were always a shallow breather and had asthma attacks sometimes,and needed help finding your breath.The way you'd gallop over our legs,excited when we lay in bed-I swear I will never see another creature jump like that again.How you were not a light sleeper,but always woke up and followed our trails even in the middle of the night.Those multiple mornings when you would lick water off  of my ankles,wet from a shower as I hurried to get dressed for school.That one time you were so sick,and barely two months old,that you couldn't even walk-we googled solutions and decided to make your drink water and sugar and watching you get up on your feet after two entire days was when we stopped worrying too much.The way the small white portion on your head,stuck like snow white duck fluff,smelled like hung curd.The way you smelled like cake batter until you were half a year old.The manner in which you would squat on the floor,mid walk,back paws spread out-too tired from walking three steps.The time we took you to a dog carnival and you refused to walk and had to be carried around,even on stage.That one haircut you got after which you were a sudden burst of teenage energy.Your slow,but eventually,successful attempts at climbing up the stairs,first your front paws,then the back.The day you finally learnt to jump onto the bed,after we had long given up on the idea.Those nights at the dinner table,when you would get tired of maintaining your usual,gentle-manly and aloof distance and ask for offerings by scratching our laps and whining loud.All those early mornings when I drank my cup of milk and you ate your share of biscuits,carefully held between your forepaws on a doormat.That was a favourite habit of yours,wasn't it? When ever you were offered food,you would carry it off to a door mat and carefully eat in a safe distance away from the other dogs,guarding,protecting,slowly savouring.The sound of your paws on the floor,softly scratchy and your penchant for nurturing stuffed toys-carefully making them sit between your front paws.Your tendency to hide everyday objects in secret hideouts-under rugs,beds,book shelves,even under your bed.When something was amiss from the household,we knew you had claimed your possession on it-torch lights,plastic containers,dolls,chewy sticks and even eaten mango seeds.You were one possessive little fellow.The way your heart beat louder than television at full volume,during Diwali or every time someone burst crackers or when Misty scared you or the mosquito killing electric bat was in your sight.You'd hide under the old iron almirah,in the small gap under the bed,sticking out only your head or in the crook of my father's arm.
The gravel in your bark when you saw a stranger in the house,the peace on your face when you fell asleep in nooks and corners.Your tooth that never grew sharp,forever blunt and babied.The languid body language of your stubby feet and your furry face,almost a flower in full bloom.All these things you did and were,funny,adorable,pure,endearing,mischievous-were so phenomenal,we started to call them Hachile.
It's your season,my little man.The mangoes are back again,but you will never be.I leave them here for you,in hope that you might taste them,somewhere.I try to look for you in doorways and nooks of empty terrace,the stretch of lawn and all these little moments of the year you were alive,because maybe this was your happy place.
The look in your eyes before anybody got to say goodbye,wide open with surprise,sure did not look like the end of any suffering.Maybe your heart just stopped.
Misty missed you a lot,you know,she'd grown used to your company.She left us two weeks after you did.

We have two of your children now,and the most of you that I can keep alive is in their presence.They are not you,never will be but they are so much like you in the little things that it's almost as if you never entirely left.


Lots of love and mangoes,
yours truly.

Mulligatwany

That small gesture of dotage,where you let someone you love walk with their feet over yours,from one end of the room to the other?

The first time you learnt what a vein was it was a language teacher pointing at the green lines on your wrist and saying you call it "nas" in Hindi and all afternoon,sitting atop  the jungle gym in the play ground you traced lines back on forth along the length of your arm

The old creaky four poster bed,complete with a canopy of mosquito nets hanging like billowing veils,

in the village house where you played one summer,the only thing you carried home is the flavour of home in glass jars with pickled bamboo shoot,sun dried to last longer.

Maybe that's why your neighbours tried to grow chillies from the north east in the square of back garden they incorporated in their first floor apartment flat,plump,little fiery chillies you only had to grow to find in different places.

The itinerant peddler who sold moon biscuits door to door,vanished from the streets because everyone now wanted store bought cookies.To him,a customer was a mirage as his glass box full of biscuits he stayed up all night to bake make no sales,he is vanishing like all baby teeth when you turned around eight.You were not sure you wanted to let go of them,even if you didn't need them anymore.

The way your grandfather used to smile at you and say thank you,all he ever said to you..like you shared something special,between the two,probably not,but it felt like.He died the summer you turned three,and you don't remember the funeral or even news of the death,just a slow trickling down of the mention of his presence.Kind of like the time you had sand in your eyes,and blinded vision for a day and you never realised your father didn't come to the hospital because you couldn't see,but it felt great enough to be able to open your eyes and see form and shape and colour again.

The teacher in the first grade,at the new school who had a scorpion tattooed on her forearm,her name sounded like what you would call a pet scorpion.She was a sweetheart,who never called you off for spelling hundred wrong.She wore orange sometimes,it was her favourite.The irony that sometimes there is more corporal punishment in a mainstream,corporate school than a convent won't hit you until years later.

The second grade teacher always matched her  bangles or shoes with her outfit,and sometimes even wore flowers in her hair,sometimes.The only adult you will ever know who incorporated so much glitter into their wardrobe,ever so elegantly.She often read out stories on Friday,she called them surprise gifts and they were.She never picked on someone for spelling and stuff like that,once you gifted her hand plucked flowers from the garden that coincidentally matched her outfit that morning.She couldn't tuck them into her bun and make them stay,so she put them in a glass of water on her table,that day was beautiful.

In the eighth grade,you could never draw the longitudinal section of the maize grain right,and after not being able to accommodate the embryo after several attempts,you remembered what a teacher the previous year had told you,about how she always drew mangoes instead of the human heart in biology class and the teacher hated her,but that's how she knew she would sell paintings someday.She was a good teacher,we were her canvas.

The first boy who ever called you a princess did not come with a bunch of roses,but a single dry rose pressed carefully in his journal.It was a really warm thing to do,almost like that time your cousin said "we both look like dolls,tonight".

All those flowery patterns you'd never learnt how to embroider because straight stitch made as much sense to you as summer snow,made you realise you never actually need a lot of things they tell you ,you do.

Aubergine sounds like an English Lady to you,Augustine Aubergine.Brunette,Clementine,mandarin,tangerine,Auburn..all sound as elegant as lady names,and beneath this sheath of elegance they have artichoke hearts,and asparagus hair beneath their bonnets.So what if your name wasn't as pretty,you could always make up people in your head who will die only with your death.

Remember how,as a little girl, you always wished your name was Rose and you sat on the staircase at night praying to stars to change it.Maybe you'd never be a rose but you are not necessarily born into something unless you settle for it.You might just be vegetative propagation of a stem,tampered to ensure growth,but still alive and more viable.

I guess you never were good at thank you speeches,but in all that you never said,there were promises,

and here,you've said it all in the sharpness of a single sentence interspersed with insouciant instances called moments,because they don't last very long.

Poetry on papernapkins

The dent of your dimple
is the size of my fingertip,
it fits perfectly snug
when I touch.
I lick whipped cream
off of my upper lip,
and I watch you watching me,
a smile,the edges of your mouth crease.
you smell like soap and aftershave
mixed with the aroma of coffee beans
I smell like dogs and old books,
mixed with the scent of somewhere you've been.
I read your body English,carefully,
there is nobody else I'd want to be next to.

Crystalline

It's strange what we miss out on because of the fear of missing out,
it's even stranger what we miss once it doesn't belong to us anymore.
You claim to hate home but there are pieces of it you carry everywhere,
the shade of blue the sky looked in the mornings,before sunrise,when you
looked out of the window with one eye open-serene as a gentle sea wave,
then slowly,golden,as the sunlight hit the roofs with a softness that seemed dream like.
the first sip of coffee that was made with mime like quiet in the middle of the night,witnessed by latticed shadows of garden trees,so good,you swear you could feel it gush into your veins.
The warmth of those extra few minutes of the morning spent cuddling under covers,
although you know it'll cost you time and make you late.The musty smell of your dog
that you breathed in each night,as he fell asleep beside your bed.Those stickers you stuck on your bed's headboard when you were ten.Withering flowers in an old glass bottle in a corner,a glimpse at which guarantees a smile.The familiarity of buttered
toast melting in your mouth,divine.The way a particular friend would roll her eyes in school,
all the homework scribbled carelessly into notebooks at top speed in the break before the
respective class,Wednesday morning free periods sprawled outside the library where it seemed as if time could possibly never end,that prayer song they sang in the assembly that you don't remember all the words to,the classmate who always knew the right moment to hold your hand and pull you out of class when there was chaos all around,the first sip of coca cola after a really shitty day.
The only sense of belonging you'll ever know is feeling these memories forever,living life in a time loop.

Crystalline

It's strange what we miss out on because of the fear of missing out,
it's even stranger what we miss once it doesn't belong to us anymore.
You claim to hate home but there are pieces of it you carry everywhere,
the shade of blue the sky looked in the mornings,before sunrise,when you
looked out of the window with one eye open-serene as a gentle sea wave,
then slowly,golden,as the sunlight hit the roofs with a softness that seemed dream like.
the first sip of coffee that was made with mime like quiet in the middle of the night,witnessed by latticed shadows of garden trees,so good,you swear you could feel it gush into your veins.
The warmth of those extra few minutes of the morning spent cuddling under covers,
although you know it'll cost you time and make you late.The musty smell of your dog
that you breathed in each night,as he fell asleep beside your bed.Those stickers you stuck on your bed's headboard when you were ten.Withering flowers in an old glass bottle in a corner,a glimpse at which guarantees a smile.The familiarity of buttered
toast melting in your mouth,divine.The way a particular friend would roll her eyes in school,
all the homework scribbled carelessly into notebooks at top speed in the break before the
respective class,Wednesday morning free periods sprawled outside the library where it seemed as if time could possibly never end,that prayer song they sang in the assembly that you don't remember all the words to,the classmate who always knew the right moment to hold your hand and pull you out of class when there was chaos all around,the first sip of coca cola after a really shitty day.
The only sense of belonging you'll ever know is feeling these memories forever,living life in a time loop.

Tomorrow will not be better

I'm trying so hard,

but I'm just a kid,
Thanks for listening,
when nobody else did.

Papa popped his pills,
it's always so easy for him,
It's hard to stay,to be me,
when the tears exhaust themselves.

I hear bird cries out side,
the bathroom floor is cool and firm,
I close my eyes,lie down,
a slow song to reaffirm.

I am a mistake,
a lie is my life on repeat,
same shit,different day,
I tell myself to wait.

Nowhere to run away,
and nobody to talk sense to,
no sleep in my eyes,
and no sunshine in the sky.

Reverse Reverence

The last day of school,
orange tinted tongues from ice lollies and conversations about all the lovers we never had,
that's how all my summers seemed to begin,uneventful,inconsequential,
but this time's a little unusual.
It involves getting stuck in rain clogged streets choking with traffics and noticing flowers in colours I had only dreamt of in grey streets,and the first green mangoes so inviting.Getting sucked into a spiral of the freshest pale pink and aquamarine leaves,almost missing out on a board exam,burning up the object of my pain,physically,a question paper set aflame.Watching my anguish rise in sparks,then flames,diminish,disappear.
 Hospital corridors painted in hues of lavender and yellow,
falling asleep on metal waiting chairs that are not old or uncomfortable,the austere glances of other people,the uncomfortable shared silence of  strangers in the  elevator that makes you want to have taken the stairs.floor 5:Nephrology and Urology,words that send an instant shudder down my spine,
pierce like needles under my skin,I can feel the the first taste of soy milk at the back of a throat,in a hospital waiting room,aged 7,putrid.

I set fire to my insides,and relish the acidity of it,
eat leftover angel hair noodles from last night,you cooked with such love,
as you lie in some strange hospital bed,in a peaceful trance,
Somewhere.
And I remember the times the beer was cold and the afternoon blazing,
and the food orgasmic inside my mouth.
and the nights when the rain poured soft,the bonfire  felt warm and fuzzy
and I never wanted to come back home.
Like a marshmallow,I wanted to let my interior walls soften and shine
but I refrained from happiness,returned home,
my existence is refrain,
like the lines of poetry on repeat.
Liberate me.

Fuck you,please.

She decorated her walls with stickers of birds,
and a string of lights,old photographs,post cards from New York.
She embellished her walls with all she could,because she was not allowed to paint them the colour of her choice when she had been 8.
She more than made up for it.

Decorated her walls inside a shoebox,a cage,
a construct that wasn't her own creation,
a cage where she was told who she was,
who she should want to be,the choices to make,
which dreams to dream,
Where she got told,her whole life.Got told
she had to study harder because she was a girl,speak softer,
give up on visible signs of angst,try harder.Where her value was
based solely on the length at which the hem lines of her clothes ended
and whether her hair was cut in a particularly modest fashion,
and the number of piercings on her ears.
Told she would never be good enough, just by virtue of being female.

Her walls never told her if she was good,
or good enough,They never told her good girls don't question and
good girls don't go on treks,and good girls don't stand up for themselves,raise their voice
against violence or dare to leave,walk away,walk out.
What they told her instead,was that good girls don't exist,
that the very phenomenon was as phony as the ideals
that a patriarchal society raises its boys to expect out of women with.
Only reminded her she shouldn't have to fight
for things she ought to have been born into.
 They never told her she couldn't dream in colours
other than pink.Never told her she couldn't be queen
or conquer the world.Never told her she couldn't
hand pick stars out of a galaxy and
weave them into a wreath to wear as a flower crown
in her hair, rule over the cosmos.Never told her she couldn't
grow a garden of daises instead of roses in her lungs,
choose to create the fragrance that her evenings breathed in.

Walls only reminded her she was bigger and better
than the rusted iron shackles of the cage,
and that she need not to have to be more to matter.
She did not need the validation to be her own person.

So,she decorated her walls with everything she was told
she couldn't be but wanted,and wished for.
To be free as a bird,and enlightened in this darkness
with no name and harbour dreams foreign to
those who expected their washed out ambitions to take
shape into her would-be aspirations.

The cage was meant to crush and quell her,a pure construct of obscure condition.
force her to curl back into the regressive position of
a murdered foetus and shrink into a thin
film like the body of a dead fish
 floating upside down in a tank,
with their weapon of retrogression.

But she built her walls so strong,
they began to crack through the ribs,
of the cage,like a massacre in cold blood.
The only thing they did not forbid her from was building walls,and she did.

That girl was me.

Ides Of Youth

The song on the car radio sounds like freedom,and growing up is as abstractly bittersweet as nostalgia.Sitting in the backseat of the car,for once,I feel like I fit in like a piece in a puzzle.
It's not a march that we can co -ordinate,it's a whirlwind asking to be lost in.
And some of us have had to grow up before we knew how,and no matter how many and how much people tell you that it makes you better at ''coping with stuff"',it still sucks.So we carry that old-ish air about us like dead weights on our shoulders and pretend that we don't feel the pressure of it weighing down upon us.
It's only some moments that we own.Those that can't be taken away from us,when our youth can't be robbed of us despite having to act old.Can't be ruined because they are so completely ours.For a day,we get to be giddy and act all silly and be the youngest and silliest and wildest we can get.These are the moments that might make a montage in the final ensemble of flashbacks before death,if that really happens.Not just because they make you feel the most alive you can but also because they can transport you to a place noone and nothing can alter and you don't need a physical reality of .Some of us wander without being lost,finding a home in everything despite having no need to and some just forever longing for a home they won't find but feel the need for.If you identify with the longing kind,maybe,just maybe,home rests in these moments.

Just for one day

"It's funny how time can make a place shrink,make the strangeness of it all seem ordinary"

Half a butterfly wing buried in gravel,
An empty bag pack and the last lunch box ever.
The last one minute of silence spent  staring at OMG carved out on the wooden desk top.
The day feels infinitesimal and infinite at the same time,which is kind of symbolic of how school feels on the whole,maybe.
The waking up- and -sulking about it being Monday morning,always running a second too late for assembly,scribbling a few sentences at least of last night's home work,dancing at the end of last period on Friday,loving the contents of your neighbour's lunchbox more than yours,struggling not to giggle in the assembly line,making up intellectual quotes for the thought for the day,Bullshit-ing through the tests and bunking in the hide out.Oh,and special mention to all the lost stationery that strangely disappeared each day.It all seems so stretched out it becomes normal.In the end,it always seems so surreal and the finality never hits you on time.
And all the hurried scribbling on t-shrts and notebooks on how much you'll miss your class mates can never come close to describing that feeling of knowing there is a definite end,and awaiting it but not quite a anticipating the swiftness at which it seems to have arrived.You'll never wake up groggy at 7 am running for the same kind of normal anymore and you'll probably not see a lot of the same people again or have the chance to know them better and that's overwhelmingly bitttersweet.

Roller coaster

We held hands and ran through the crowd,
and that's the happiest blur I remember feeling.
The ground never felt lighter beneath our feet,
as we ran towards nothing,away from nobody.

There are no pictures of us,sitting by the bedside,
only stories we keep telling ourselves,
pieces of the past,for,memories,songs,and words
cannot be preserved in a couple of frozen frames.

Remember when it was dark,and we whispered,
under the covers,and fingers  against faces,
delicate as the tips of a paintbrush,caressed,
the next morning smelled of the salt in our tears.

And then,

you left me,like a stale,late Sunday morning,
The heavy sigh smelling of alcohol,
the emptiness,that of a house where nothing
was ever good enough,nothing ever would be.

We were always a time bomb,waiting to explode,
it was only a matter of moments,seemed like centuries.
who were we kidding,we were born volatile,
and losing a part of yourself is never easy.

Days then dissolved into a void in time,
I counted each of them like a domino falling,
floated like a feather on an autumn afternoon,
Because I knew I would never find myself again,

Never find you.

Hair line fractures

       Broken bones reveal themselves in x-rays and we just let them be,heal with hours and days
But why can't people and places just be,too?Why are we not immune to change yet?
Maybe the fault's in us,we live off the cheap consolation that  it'll all come to a stand still in the end,
that today matters just as much as yesterday.
Somebody said to me recently,what's the point of living in the past?Well,what's the point of this pointless plot?It all flies away the same.

But we care anyway.
And you can never change the things that change you,you can only live with them.
You can never change how looking into someobody's eyes for the last time feels like,
or the first time someone made you feel special with a couple of words,
How it felt to be small and helpless in a world spiralling out of control
and how sometimes,broken hearts only heal only into empty cavities,bearing bullet holes holes inside your chest,
Stitches on old wounds always stay for keep,faint reminders of pain that teems.

Lemon Drops

A black bird on a bare branch,bleak sky
half finished bottle of beer and a tall tumbler
of lemon ice tea is all that's left for me

Waking up to a world world without you,
feels like swallowing the smell
of liquid bleach,drowning in it.

There's no better way to describe this
and it really sucks to keep tugging at
 your presence only left in dreams.

One dimensional thoughts and origami hours,
Shadows of when you used to call for me
with soft taffeta sounds,scratching the door

I always liked abandoned houses,and empty tables,
away from crowds,old and forgotten,
and clear orange sunsets,it's all I find solace in.

The pink sun leaves me too,
a eulogy of country music for him-
our silence sits like poetry between old journal pages.

A dry flower lies pressed in a paper napkin
on my lap,a gift from a stranger,
but my lips can longer find thanks or prayers.

A black bird on a bare branch,bleak sky,
Half finished bottle of beer and a tall tumbler
of lemon ice,and a dry flower,I have plenty.