Poetry and Prose

FIRST PUBLICATION

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black and white picture of a south asian woman trapped within a room space .jpg

When I tell my mother I miss home, she knows.

I belong to the kind of people who hold onto everything.

Every receipt, note, photograph, and card.

carefully packed up and hidden away

grief, grudges, smiles

there is nothing sweet about boxing up.

one day you’re twenty in your room and in the next moment, fifteen years have passed by

You’re no longer confined to the four walls of a singular space; you’re trapped within sixteen walls of an expanded realm.

the surface has grown, but remembrance is the leash that ties you down to the ledge of your childhood bed.

You never learned how to bite.

No sweetness lingers in the cardboard coffins where I tuck away joy and judgement alike.

I tell my mother I don’t miss home; she knows.

You get a strange feeling when you think of the past, you’ll never be that way again.

How do you stop pretending this life you live now isn’t yours?

I can’t let go of all that I have built in the negative spaces that lay between what was and what is.

should I hold on to these remains?

this is all I have left of us

the only story of who we were and what we valued

are you where you wanted to be?

eulogies of a broken heart

it's been a while since we last spoke,

The world got a lot faster when you left.

and I’ve stopped trying to keep up

It is July and I am tired of being brave,

tired of being a person

not just the person i was.

but any person at all

i watch people but i don’t want to be them

i avoid my gaze in the mirror

I have no interest in learning what it is like to meet my eyes

or to know how it is to be me

i think knew who i was this morning,

but I’ve changed a few times since then.

I still don’t have answers.

whose act am I watching?

how many people am I

who am I?

what is this space between myself and myself

I sip on the same watered-down coffee,

i lose my mind a little

i gulp down leftover remains

i stare at the chipping wall

and some days i don’t exist.

my bed becomes a casket.

so i dream of slow and confusing things at night

you know how it is.

you float in my mind

as something undefined

something strictly fluid and unperceivable;

more like a paradoxically, esoteric being.

rather than an actual person

there are words

scratched onto the walls of my throat

you haven’t heard them,

no one has

but they are there

it seems

i’m always writing you letters

i cannot send.

all time ever does is pass

and all I ever do is remember.

I have nothing more to offer anybody.

so I’ll die, for you

the kind of death that

doesn’t end in a funeral

a death you can't smell

can't taste

that is my last act of passion.

and you?

what would you do for love?

a white porcelain broken heart with eulogies written on it and held by a pair of old withe

black and white image of two pinky fingers held together by a fraying red string .jpg

As long as there is love, there will be grief

Grief lives inside me.

she’s built a quaint little cottage in the alley right next to anger, they’re both neighbours with pain.

In a world of the temporary, she’s managed to build a permanent residence inside everyone.

But then again, I’m not special am I? never thought I was. We don’t talk much; I don’t think we’re friends, but I don’t wish to make an enemy of her either.

Love comes and goes, he’s more of a fleeting passerby.

Grief does not fancy his presence.

He dismantles the tapestry of sentiments she so carefully creates.

And brings with him a wind of chaos that forces me to neglect her.

She does not appreciate abandonment.

Still, love arrives unperturbed despite grief, pain and anger.

I love love. I love him despite, and I love him because.

Love never thinks of grief,

I don’t remember her for months.

but grief never lets me forget love,

I yearn for years.

Where does grief end and love begin?

indian origin woman in a sheer white saree with flowers in her hair seen through the windo

Synonyms For Sacred

When it comes to the body,

everything has a price.

I was only fooling myself to think

I hadn’t been paying mine.

Just because I opened the door,

Just because I passed through it with my eyes wide open,

doesn’t stop me from

having blinded myself to your caution

in my own exhilaration.

So now, here I sit,

a conversation,

long stuck in my throat,

never to escape past my lips.

(I would remain forever with my back against the wall,

if it meant it was you keeping me pinned against it.)

Perhaps I’m flying too close to the sun

(the sharp air that hits my thigh,

just moments before your t-),

I never meant to,

I only wanted to feel fully,

the difference between prayer and mercy.

It must have made me masochistic,

for I’ve been doing all I can to draw you nearer,

though I am fully aware of how much lonelier I feel

(“straighten your skirt,

we’re not alone”)

for simply having met you.

(Still, I am reminded,

loneliness is time

spent with you.)

You swear that it will be fine,

and I nod and let you believe it,

but how could that be possible,

when you are walking away

with what once was mine.

I would never have taken it from you.

Maybe I never could have.

Because the truth is,

I was always just a placeholder,

a synonym for sacred,

until you found the real thing.

Little Things

my boy is so often broken by the names of flowers,

so softly they fall from his lips,

so easily their petals crumble under his hold.

his heart is small,

it doesn’t often make space for others,

but it has carved out a place for this.

he tells me it’s the little things that take up the most space.

i guess that must make me a much larger figure in his mind.

i guess that must make me someone who looms over his heart,

i must mean more to him than he thinks.

i hope so…

my boy is gentle,

his touch is soft and sweet.

he cries easy,

and he hurts hard.

he speaks quietly,

but his words take up the room.

he often takes up every space

he inhabits.

yes,

now that i think about it,

i’ve never felt

like anything was bigger than him.

broken toys (multiple and different types)_ on a floor (black and white image) .jpg

the mind in the shape of a house black and white image (very realistic and gritty) .jpg

If the mind is a house

if the mind is a house,

then mine has fallen apart at the seams.

its framework stands ruinous,

cocaine skinny and frail.

but it remains tall, boasting its body,

lording over the put-together little

white picket-fences that surround it.

for although its bricks are missing

and it lacks a front door,

the moonlight shines through it,

and that is enough for now.