Display Picture

I compliment your display picture
and become a superficial spider
strung on the world wide web,
I don't tell you I want to trace you
in my words like I know your lacework,
like I know your baroque and grotesque,
I know the cipher to the divine in them,
I don't tell you I don't know you anymore,
The furrow beneath your lip hides lies,
I am not qualified to know them now,
I skirt your inside with patchwork smiles
and pretend that the gold was in your skin,
that my temples were made to your beauty
and all your divine was always in hiding.

Forgetting Nothingness

I tasted the joy between your fingers
until oriental philosophies made sense,
until the nothingness of a Monday evening
was the highlight of my week,
the longest page in my diary,
the most difficult memory I ever wore.
The funny thing about our breakup was
that I went into it with such confidence,
as if you had left instructions on how to forget you
on the same tissue-paper where you scribbled my name
against a monster that looked lovelier
with every note of laughter it stole from you.
I spent my nights becoming that monster,
pinching my "Hello"s and laughing louder
so that I looked a little less like the me you left,
a little less like the me you fell out of love with.
Apparently, there is a rule that says
you may only bleed out your darkness in ink
and that is not really a rule
but a lie poets tell themselves
so that their art is not emptiness made beauty,
You are not poetry, in form or spirit,
You are not melancholy, you never were,
You are the nothingness that makes Mondays last forever,
and I am not empty, I am too full of words,
too full of pretty lies I tell myself
because talking is better than the silence
that reminds me of oriental philosophies
and everything just is,
but I remember what nothingness feels like.

Foolish Geniuses

There is clarity in distance

That makes geniuses of lovers
Every priority snaps into focus:
Your hand must spend more time on her wrist,
The coffee was an excuse.
There are strangers to be offended
With the sheer force of your fingertips
On her lips,
They are strangers for a reason.
There are meetings you need to be late for
Dressed in her smoldering kisses
Bedraggled dreams and smoking kisses,
Hot, searing kisses that brand you
Leave you electrostatic.
There are conversations to start and finish after midnight,
Over kitchentop counters while baking cake
Your autobiographies being spent
Over chocolate-chip aromas.
The weekends will be roadtrips to hills
Where clouds do not spy on black skies
where grass swallows the two
until nebulae and stars are magic
you will drink second-hand from her eyes.
Everything needs to be second-hand.
Distance makes fools of lovers.

I Was A Dream

I held you in my arms because I was your dream,
your waking would be my unbecoming --
the weight of your knuckles tethered me,
my laughter was the hibiscus in your hair,
and I waited for you to tie me in knots beneath.
The winds threatened to pull me away
every time your fingers left mine,
Do you remember my eyes?
You saw the fear in them and called it love,
Did you know your softness kept me solid?
That I carried your jokes in a diary as if
forgetting your spirits would erase me,
I wonder if you could have carried peace
if you saw me fade inbetween the space
where sleep meets reality and unravels,
I am unravelled, untethered today,
people hear me croon to myself
and wonder if I dream of you.

Image Source: Spooning Couples in Love by Carolyn Weltman

Evening Skies

I look at you the way I look at evening skies,
Awestruck at the beauty that never wanes,
with a violent urge to hold everything still,
press thick paper against liquid purples --
the darkness comes too early every time,
and every time I stand out in the open,
until the night closes itself around me,
That is how I learnt vulnerability,
when I did not understand Time well enough
to wait for mornings and their soft reds.

Forgetting Our Anniversary

I try to forget the date but I know

you remember its rain just as coolly
as I do and your eyes are better
at lying than mine will ever be, better
at denying the hour I waited outside
the railway station facing our college gates
with the first rose I had ever purchased,
the easiest ten-rupee investment of my life,
and how you looked at me with guilt and
wicked amusement at making me squirm;
I would not let you hold this rose,
this rose was not yours just yet.

I remember the kilometer we walked
beneath your neighbourhood trees,
and although we spoke of everything
our eyes were filled with confessions
of love made the previous night
but our hands were not brave enough
to find each other's fingers yet.

I remember not wanting to look ahead
but into your eyes, eyes full of secrets
of life and poetry and easy promises,
O, those easy promises!
but I held my neck stiff so you couldn't see
my disbelief at calling you my own,
so you couldn't find the unworthiness
hidden in my nervous smiles;
I wanted to ask: "Are you sure about this?",
"Will you teach me to love you so that
I don't break you when I hold you too tight?",
"Can I teach our children how to measure
our planet with the shadow of a stick?
To ask questions that have no answers?",
but all I asked you that day was,
"So, what do you want to do next?"
and you found us the right kind of silence
around a park we loved to loiter about
and we spoke of everything, everything,
but all I remember is how beautiful you looked
when I forbade you to ever wear make-up,
and how you complained with a pout that
I was exaggerating your beauty, as if
the mirror of my soul was too much,
too soon, the mirror of my soul
is still too much for you, I know.

I remember you predicting rain and
how I half-worshipped you when the sky
surrendered its water and forced us
to run beneath the window-roof of
the old building next to our favourite café,
I remember broken stone against knuckles,
my faded jeans staining with brown
when I dropped on one knee and
tried to ignore the lump in my throat
as I asked you to be mine, formally,
the way they do it in movies I've never watched ,
and your body looked so small, so
precious as you stood overwhelmed,
even though there was no surprise,
both of us knew how the scene ended,
but the rose was now yours, I was yours,
and my fingers suddenly found courage
to find the spaces between yours.

I remember, I remember,  I remember.

Image Source: René Magritte