iggles

finally,
i've learnt to laugh

i break into
fits
of what must have been
the sound of your voice
on that nine year ago
afternoon

blank noise?

when the city is more quiet than it need be,
 you never know what the day has in store

scar

i am the lone gash you made
while punching holes
on your soul

i became a swollen blue
taut
against the rest of the skin

now,
i shrivel up
sinking within

I'm a whine

there's this song called 'shanti lukau kahan' which features all the stars on local tv. singers. some of them don't even look like they're singing a song about peace. they make it look like comedy.
but
i am in tears. everything makes me cry.
my kalu's dented head with a trickle of blood on it,
my khaire's kennel cough that never leaves it,
(i think he's going to die)
and the way everyone in this country is going crazy asserting their ethnicity.
what does it matter what colour or the shape of nose and cheekbones you are?
all this stupidity makes me cry.

rain

it fell in pitter-patter this morning
when the driver woke me up to say it was time to go

i'd only briefly fallen asleep
to seek the comfort of your touch

(p.s. i am such a dreamer)

meanings

the heart
is a sommersault
of moments
etched in words

i can't catch the rhythm  

death

i hide under a blanket now.

it's a habit i picked when i was five. it was that morning in bed, when ba and mamu sat on its edge, sipping tea and talking death. there was this khampa rebel who stabbed a man he called agula, to death, near the boudha stupa. then there was this old man who was cremated on the banks of samari river. the stones were still hot after they turned in his ashes into the river. his grandson stepped on them and it burnt his feet. he didn't know how to cry over the death of the old man who loved him the most in the world. but his feet burned.

it was such a slow morning. i was learning about death. people died. and you could never say what you wanted to once they died. (but it opened up a whole new possibility of saying to them anything and everything you couldn't while they lived.)

we die.

ba and mamu talked death that morning. my first encounter. i hid myself under the blanket (or was it a quilt?) and wept. death. i wanted that taken back.

i must have stayed in bed all day. for the cover is all i remember about that day.

maybe it was that morning i learnt to hide all my fears underneath the warmth of a cover i weave of myself.

what?

what kind of a need is this, where you only think of people because of your own needs and not theirs?
shouldn't it be the other way round?