Final scene

I always thought our exit would be as graceful
as the first scene
you set the stage
on a day the sun was warm
and the rain wanted to batter us down
just a little bit
you exit on your own again
leaving me to my
own denouement.

By the sludge

The river is a sludge where we stand.
We lean against each other near its banks.
When no cars pass, you place your palm on the small of my back.
I lean in to draw your breath into mine.
The lights flash again and we quickly come apart.

The story of our lives.

Moved away

The house is finally quiet today, with much of the moving done. Dust is beginning to settle on things again.
I miss the quiet of the greens and the sound of the birds and the dogs in the garden. There is no garden here. Only a small patch of lawn, where Chorri pees, because she needs the green as an inspiration to answer nature's call.
I hear the sound of Ring Road buses here and it makes me feel like I've come so far away from home.

dogs

Every dog you leave behind,
is a heartbreak

your face

I feel as though your face is changing. i can't tell if it's the beard you're forgetting to trim or the anger in your eyes. But I feel like your face has started to change. Maybe I will soon be in your past.

break me down

what have i got to offer you

but this heart break?

faces

We are still doing it
-- staring at one another,
but wrangling now
instead of floating away into
nothingness
like we did the day we were
falling
          in love

I spot hints of grey
in your beard,
you ignore
the grey
in my pubic hair
--we're too old to pay attention
to small details now

we only remember
how we hurt
each other

The almost rains of New York

how strange to be sitting here in a room in Syracuse, staring at a twenty-storied building, as the clouds fleet over it, staring and bawling, because you have finally written

to say you can't stay

on a day of rain

We came home
on a day like this
when the sky was overcast
and heavy with tears

we came home
on a day
when the world was crumbling
because you and i could not gather
the fragments of each other

fumes

1.
all reason is lost

there is nothing

we are nothing

we are only fumes

burnt

of what was



2.
and as another day comes to a close,
i'm filled with you
like i am every minute of my life

"Die with me"

ellipsis

i wonder what you do with my absence.

i can never stand yours.

a house of my own

there has always been this deep need to draw houses
even when the intent is to draw trees

because for as long as i can remember
we haven't had a proper home
and i never had what Virginia Woolf calls,
a room of one's own

coffee for a broken-heart

this one from www.teamimhoff.com reminded me of a short story that has become mine:

i still make coffee for two...

reading 'sleep tight'

i suppose, in everyone's life, there is a time when you wake up with the thought of killing yourself.
you can never sleep at night because nights will magnify all your fears.
and by the morning, they become so stretched, the only fears you see is the one about not wanting to wake up to face another day.

hate song

am mad at you today.
am mad
because you do not see
what you are doing
mad
that you don't realize
this suffering you inflict on me
is yours too
mad
because
together
we made sense
until you decided to fling senses to nowhere
am so mad that you are doing this
when you know we have been
each others' torment
all these years

may you suffer
just like i suffer without you

lost lost

there was a time i came to these pages every day because some strange continent seemed to have swallowed you up.
i come here now because it is the only space where am still with you

Ghost

Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen

Haunt me




without

presence

we are torment...

together

or

a p a r t

the silences are always about you
so is chatter

you slip in and out of conversations
made with strangers,
you affix yourself
somewhere inside of me
-- the part of my body that doesn't really exist.

you become
the part of me
they call soul

torment,
i wish you suffering
just like the one i am to live with
because you are forever
only a memory

you and i

so, maybe
some lives are meant to be
a p a r t
andyetalwaystogether

i tremble

the night coils around me,
turning me into a hyperbole
of darkness
it spills
through the curtains
slashing shadows
across the room
lit in anticipation
of what may happen
when the fault lines
below
decide to do shift,
leaving the trees shivering
houses swaying
and hearts
forever wrecked

the night
rattles my soul
eroding me
and crushing me
under this unimaginable weight
of what will forever be broken
because you drifted away

stolen kisses?

what is there to give you?
  words again?
even as you held me close
i could only think
of how you smelled
like some wet things
i dreamed of
as a child
maybe things i touched
in a dream
i never wanted to let go of

i never want to let you go

so...

this has become my place to go to, again
like it was all those years
you were gone

now, maybe this is my place for good

in splinters

all the days you were in that other continent,
did you experience days
when time was filled with air
and the air filled your lungs
and you felt choked on it forever?

did you
dream
of a time when
maybe you and i would meet again

we would look into each others eyes
and you'd tell me everything is forgotten
and forgiven
because nothing else
but what reflects
in these eyes matter?

my days turn out like that now--
i dream of a time when this exile will be over
and then, maybe you will hold my hand again and say
we will always be like this

lull

how can this possibly be us?

this quiet.

we can only be the storm

never the calm after

you didn't

it is hard to believe
you were just steps away

we stayed
where we were

and then
i just walked away,

half hoping
you would come after me.

verbiage

you and i
always
only words

first
those of love and longing

then
those of estrangement

then again
those of love and longing
and the battle to survive

and now
of ashes
spat on each other
of what we resurrected and curcified
again and again

you and i are just words
it is how you will always remain with me

teach me how to wait...

for better days...writes K. and it is what i have been asking for everyday, of myself. to teach myself to wait for better days.
because even in this despair, there is something like hope. too often, i have hoped this is a long nightmare and i'll wake up to find that everything in the world around me is alright. that people never died in this country, houses never collapsed, never fell on unsuspecting lives, that landslides never swept away people sleeping in their huts, animals tied to sheds. it's a desperate thing, this hope.
 and as i type these words, i find myself hoping there will be small tremors and not massive ones that kill people more than just physically. because since April 25th, i feel as though i have become a heap of crushed people. and all of these people are me. a crushed daughter, a crushed friend, sister, a crushed co-worker, lover-- whoever i might have been.
but i have also learned this about myself. i'm crushed the most, by love. because there can be love that changes your personality, your faith in things and everything you believed in, just because it filled you with hurt.
but even in love, the wise ones say one has to be patient.
life, teach me how to wait for better days, just as K

Tremors

Since the earthquake, you are so unreal.
The only things real are the piles of bricks and bodies.
The smell of people crammed together, smelling like fear.
The shuddering of windows as planes fly overhead.
The dust from abandoned mats.
The eyes of hungry dogs.
The cries of people in pain.
The need right here in the house--
water, oil, money, everything.
Everything is so real these days.
Only you,
You are what never was.

journal entry

So, we all got together and went up on stage, delivering fierce words about how our vaginas feel. And at the end of it, I think we all felt good. Like an orgasm, long held back had just been released.
I guess our vaginas have been shy, sad, angry, heart-broken, and even wrecked completely in some ways. But I'd like to think that they also have the strength to still breathe, just the way people move on with their every days even after massive heartbreaks leave permanent cracks in them.
I have really seen the worst of so many things in my life last few months-- from health to personal affairs and the loss of people who stood like stars on the horizon.
But I have also gained a lot.
I've learnt that there is beauty in little things in life:
1. Right now, the relief in the gash left behind by a bad tooth that threatened to burst through your head.
2. The feeling of hollow you get when you wake up to a lonely house in the afternoon.
3. The warmth of a puppy next to you, when you wake up to a nightmare.
4. The reassurance of a cup of tea when you have a bad headache.
5. The joy in changing nappies of a newborn.
6. Just watching a newborn.
7. And I guess, just knowing life goes on, even when your heart is broken.

My vagina

I wonder how it would be to talk to my vagina.

I feel like it is the most ignored part of my body-- most ignored, brutalized, and now embattled.

I feel like my vagina is the most special part of me-- no one has to see it, or ask questions about its shape or the spread. I don't need to buy a correct cup size for it. I don't need to hear my friends comment on how nice or fat or sagged it looks. It's the most intimate part of me.
And always, when I feel an emotion strongly, I have felt it connect to my vagina. Not just sexual stuff. Emotions like anger, fear. It's like an intuition.
There's a certain man, for instance, whose presence always churned storms in my navel in a nice way. And the winds tavelled everywhere below the navel in so much warmth whenever he was around. And it was with this man I experienced an orgasm for the first time in my life. So, the intuitive part of me is my vagina, I like to think. Because when someone touches me the wrong way, it has always been my vagina that felt repelled, even before my head or the heart did.

let me build you a home

I'm dreaming of a home. Two and a half rooms for our books and our pillows and our cups and flower pots.
I'm dreaming of a home. With tiles as white as a time without history.
I'm dreaming of a home, which will be yours and mine. To stay. To stay.

Tea time

When it rains relentlessly, you want to stay tucked under warm things and dream. And read. And drink a warm cup of tea. Tea. I never thought about how tea is sort of been the transition, in my life. Most mornings, I wake up to my parents' fights over tea. The sugar is not right some mornings, sometimes it's the milk and sometimes, it's just not strong enough.

"I like my tea strong," I told a friend over chat today. She said she likes hers strong, too. A little bit of sugar and some milk.
"I drink tea three times a day," says she. And i say, same same.
Often, the only thing that can salvage me from my near-paralyzed stupor in bed every morning, is a cup of tea. Baa puts no sugar in my morning tea. Only milk and tea leaves. Tea is my incentive to abandon the dreams and hallucinations I have conjured up in bed.

Then it's tea time at two, just before I leave for work. It's been a ritual. While Ajee was alive, I made tea for her and Baajya. Tea and biscuits or cookies. They still feel like a treat, just before work, although I no longer have a cup for Ajee. Afternoon teas come filled with memories of Ajee's humming and Bajyaa's demand for a sweetner. What is tea if it isn't sweet? he still says.

Every evening at 6 pm, I break for tea. I have done that for last 12 years or longer. This one comes with office gossip. But over the years, my companions have changed. Some saw me through whatever was haunting me at different times. There were colleagues, who wanted a one-on-one across the table-- a longing to be elsewhere, they made up for by gulping down several glasses of tea served in glasses rinsed in a hurry. Some tea sessions occurred with girl friends, whose sole priority in life was to open their hearts up to some loving.

Some teas, have been quiet teas, as I drank alone and just tried to get over the day.
Tea. Tea. Tea.

I think I'll call myself Tea. Because I read today that there's no heartbreak a good cup of tea cannot cure. Just drink tea and stay calm :)

Dear Germie,

I'm sitting here in bed, thinking of you. My little girl lies across the bed at my feet, growling at someone in her sleep.
I injured myself when I fell in the bathroom. It sounds kind of silly and was sort of fun when it happened. I hopped, slipped and went flat on my back. That's how it began. And now am nursing a painful body and thinking of a time in the past, when something similar had happened and i had sat in bed in a neck-brace for months, writing a novel i never completed.
it's rainy again and am lonely again.
the man who had popped into my room, just to kiss my mouth, despite my neck-brace, is someone else's now.
the man has become a memory. like we've become a memory to you and to me.
what is there to salvage of it all, is the loving we find every time we trip and land on our backs. there's a kind of high in the tripping. i guess, that's why i don't mind the fall so much.

a bit of the city -- by Tiku Gauchan

A river runs through this city The river crawls along, hidden away from most people. No one, it seems, wants to admit its presence. The river’s sewage-infused water stinks. It smells of rotting animal carcasses that bob on its currents. It smells of harsh metallic chemicals from industrial runoffs. Its bends, which trap objects, smell of sour fermenting trash.
All along this forgotten river live the forgotten people. They live in cramped hives of mud huts with rusting corrugated roofs. They breathe the dust from the road that runs alongside the river.  On this road, I often see children chasing old bicycle rims. They roll the hoop along, shepherding it with a small stick. Beside one of the river’s many bends, some kids play cricket. Instead of wickets, they use bricks. Instead of a bat, they use a small plywood plank. Their fathers watch them from the doorsteps, chain-smoking. Their mothers barely look up from the job at hand. I mostly see them wringing piles of laundry. Sometimes I see them queuing at the community water taps. Plastic jars astride their hip, waiting their turn, they make small talk.
I take this pockmarked, uneven road to work to beat the traffic. After heavy rains, its surface softens to sludge. In the summer, the tyre marks turn into narrow crisscrossing ravines. But no one thinks to move the rocks that remain. They jut out at unexpected places, looming like miniature hills. They just lie there, unaccounted for by the road department.
The road department focuses on the bigger, vehicle-clogged blacktopped roads. The motorists too don’t prefer this bumpy riverside road. Thus it barely sees traffic.  The river cuts like a long gash through this city. And yet the river remains invisible to most people. Perhaps this city wants to forget the river. Perhaps the city wants to forget the people living alongside it too.

i conjure you...

all my life, i was looking for love
and i tripped on you,
who wouldn't even offer me a poem

You are my Pandora's box

Pandora's Box by Manelle Oliphant

you

so much hurt,
so much anger,
so much hatred

digging this one up

after all these years of fading in and out,
you are still mine
after all these years,
we are still only a possibility

estrangement

you were barely a metre away and yet, no voice, no face turned in my direction

we are deadlocked, too

you, with your inability to deal with our past
me, with my failure to move on

because there's no other way

funny how i miss you
even when you're omnipresent
in your absence

of our suffering,
coming back to the same point over and over again

apocalypse

from where we stand, there's only destruction.
we peel each other down
layer by layer
baring the hurts
we have smeared each other's chest with

This is my new year

What are we, but longings?
You there, on the other side of the year
and me here in a new one,
trying to find my way
through the fracking in my heart
as you wrestled with yourself.

I wake up
dreaming
with my eyes open,
of a possible morning
when my lips are pressed against your eyes.
I imagine you shut them
and press closer,
put your arms around me,
like you never will let go.

But, you're not a part of the year
we just stepped into,
with our phones turned off to suggest each other out.

Goodbye, Puppy