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it was 4 in the morning when you found me. the city felt like a poem melting into the arms of her muse. you ask me, why do i refer poetry as a woman. and i  say how poetry is just another word for belongingness. for poems, like women, nurtures you lovingly till the day you just grow out of your home. the water flows down my shoulder as i hug my knees together watching you sit on my bathroom floor. running my fingers through my soaked spilt ends, i try to swallow this moment whole. the urge to call out your name, begging you to not walk out again overwhelms me. but as soon as i feel my throat vibrate, i look away. for poetry, like women, is just a shallow set of promise you make, till all i am left with is just faint echoes of your voice and the exit wounds you left behind.

#3 excerpts of a book I’ll never write

1. august sits by the windowpane. her tiny hands softly clasped around her ceramic mug. she watches september choke upon her sobs, but refuses to leave her seat. i ask her why and upon this, she rolls her sleeves up. bruises of both fresh and faded shades sits upon her skin. i look up at her and then see september sit up, just to waste scribble another verse for her lover. august sighs looking at me, “you never learn, dear. you just never do.”

– for you, even hurting feels like heaven.

2. how many apologies do my bones have to carry to my grave just to have another treasured heartbeat scribble my name upon his list of regrets. how many knots do i have to untie just to find myself lost in unwarned tides of faces and flashbacks. why do winter still linger at my doorstep everytime i manage to get you back; waiting (and wanting) to take you oceans away from me (again). do you find me pretty only when i let july burn melt in my mouth? if yes, do you promise to come back next summer?

– cries of a winter child.

3. october nurtures another heartbeat inside her womb, carving unwanted poetry upon my flesh; but i do not complain. for she was my mother. i hear my grandfather says that my sister should be named “hope” while i bite the ends of the thrown away chocolate wrapper. the crushed corner of the foil leaves a little cut at the corner of my lips. i sit there in the deafening silence as i feel the hint of blood on my tongue. “what is your name?” i remember my kindergarten teacher asking me. throwing the wrapper back to the bin, i watch the smile that sat on my mother’s face. she was hope. i was havoc.

– october’s first born.

4. her stories were the kind that time preserved in its hidden back alleys, which mankind forgot. aayat. her name felt like delicate blossoms. like the tufts of unsung verses from my journal, finally melting in the arms of their muse. she recites Ghalib under her breath and braids my hair as the moon keeps a close eye on us. i feel her fingertips run down my spine as she says whispers how worthless i am. seconds later, she’s picking up her clothes. i sit there helplessly and watch her leave. while walking out, she turns around and smiles at me; as if she could pinpoint the exact moment when my heart broke.

– if you are reading this, my verses still ache for you, aayat.

things that make me feel whole

the sound of my grandma’s laughter
laced with the warmth of the winter sun.
she braids my hair humming her lullaby
as I watch the burnt out ends of the incense stick fall
and the smell of sandalwood lingers around the room
while I silently wish,
“oh how I wish to hold on to every second of this moment,
to inject it in my veins
and relive it, over and over
again and again.”

the shy smile of that pretty lady with grey hair
who sits at one end of the park bench,
listening to old Frank recite his poems.
she blushes as old Frank smile to himself
making me realise,
“that love is maybe more than just
a four worded metaphor
only if I give it a chance,
one day.”

those innocent set of giggles that escape from little Jane’s lips
while she helps her father tend the garden.
wild lilies bloom alongside a host of hydrangeas
as her “withering” elder sister-
(who fears death a little less now)
wipes a teary eye.
for now she knows what to hold on to,
before time slips away.

Alongside a writer’s block

A string of words beneath my skin sting sometimes, aching to get through; looking for some dead metaphor to rescue them/

Sometimes my words get caught up in the middle of a sentence, they demand more space; phases trying their best to pierce through every heartbeat yet meeting their fate with nothingness/

I seek for warmth in empty spaces; building my home upon withering roses I follow my mundane routine with a hollow heart and a caught up mind. The words beg for an escape and I try to hush them; promising them a dreamlike reality, I keep them quiet. First I fail as a lover, then, as a writer/

Maybe one day your familiar silhouette will sit at the end of my bed,flipping through my journal and will ask why are they all about heartbreaks. And I would say my words are stubborn, weaving the lost with intimate fingers that seek for second chances, denying its destiny/

I would always blame my words rather than blaming you for the inked bruises; for mistakes without a heartbeat weigh less than mistakes with one.

– excerpts of a book I’ll probably never write

excerpts of a book I’ll never write

I was told that the universe feels human emotions and craft them with poetry, that needs to be seeked for.

The concept of soulmates embraced my senses when I was around seven. It was another cloudless summer afternoon. I sit beside my sick grandma’s bed and watch her eyes light up like two emeralds glistening with stardust as my grandpa plays his old harmonica; tunes misplaced yet both of them smile, for maybe love was all about celebrating the little things in life.

If gratefulness happened to have a face, it would definitely be my sister sobbing softly as she rocks her little rainbow baby in her arms.
Perhaps happiness is a young poet writing about sunflowers and hope instead of the boy who broke her heart in some café; for maybe miracles did came true, if only one decides to believe in them.

Stories of pretty skies with alternating colours, raindrops racing down the window pane,daisies, the sound of shared laughter, soft pillows, artworks and poems, fireflies, popsicles on a summer afternoon, vinyls, sunsets, faith – miracles smile beneath all these little things holding the idea of everything will be okay; for everything is going to be okay someday.

Calling myself a poet

I was on the edge of six when I wrote my first poem. It was nothing more than just a series of rhyming words scattered around the ends of some verses that hardly made any sense. But I proudly read it to my ailing grandfather, who smiles and says, “You are such a good poet,love”.
But I did not call myself I poet back then.


My ninth grade teacher asks, why do I write and read about Van Gogh’s paintings all the time. Upon which I say, how I find it so captivating that a living being, who never touched, sensed, felt or seen death can create such a masterpiece, all based on his power of imagination. How extraordinary life is, that artists die yet remain alive through their art; maybe for sometimes being alive is more than having a heartbeat.
But I did not call myself a poet back then.


Summer of 2010, I remember walking alongside the sea shore, hand in hand with my lover. At one point he looks at me and as the sunset floods my iris, he smiles saying how my eyes look like pools of honey; while I stood smiling back, wishing to say how his blue eyes holds all the secrets that the ocean seeks for and how they light up, as if the universe itself engraved them with the brightest mix of stardust.
But I did not call myself a poet back then.


On the edge of eighteen, the world of Plath’s poetry welcomed me. I realised that words could hold more than feelings and passion. They can walk on the road of regrets, yet sound like a love song that two happy silhouettes dance, on the moon’s good side.


I called myself a poet the day I started weaving my fears with threads of gold and silver, turning haunted houses into dreamlike wonderlands. For I was a poet painting constellations upon my worst nightmares.

For poetry was a lie that only a poet could tell.

Crossroads

He insists on walking back home after our evening classes and I always agree happily. We alternate between exchanging popsicle-kissed wholesome smiles and deep, unfiltered conversations by the riverside; and by the time we say our goodbyes by the corner of the old town library, I would have learned about a new constellation. We would spend most of our nights roaming around the empty streets of the old town, feet stomping against the cold rainwashed concrete as the summer winds whirl past our silhouettes. And the mornings that followed promised laughter upon every sappy poem we read sitting against the timbered walls of old bookshops, cheeky smiles when our favourite songs suddlenly play on the radio. If my summer with you came in colours,it would definitely be yellow; happy, bright and vibrant.
But bitter end to an almost “us” embraced us that night when
the wayfarer in him longed to be elsewhere and the silent lover in me let him go easily. Yellows begin to turn into shades of blue. Sunshine and smiles never got along. Poetries carried pain disguised as love.
Happiness always bloomed but fits of unspoken sadness grew stronger. Walking alongside the regret of letting him go and a hope to see him again, I have come a long way. Now every cloudless night, when the stars align and the moonbeam scatter across the old town, I gather all the bruised snippets of my unspoken beloved and finally start painting my life back to yellow.
For whenever we meet from now, know that I have never missed a day telling Orion and Lyria about you.