First Times

The first time we held each other's hands,
I was counting infinity backwards,
making sure my brain doesn't explode,
Your hands were so much cooler than I expected,
but that's okay,
my hands must have been warm to you;

The first time I bought a rose for you,
I asked myself "Now what?"
as if the train ride between the florist and a bent-knee proposal
was too unromantic to exist,
I hoped I saved the rose
from being squished enough to say "I love you",
You didn't look like they do in movies,
I was disappointed,
You were just being yourself;

The first time I wasn't single on Valentine's,
I expected us to monopolise the day,
Apparently, it is the most suspicious day to leave home
and my parents still aren't sure about us,
I guess cartoons on Valentine's don't hurt either.

The first time we bought corner-seat tickets,
I realized that I am pretty good at being unabashed
I realized that courtesy comes easy when guilty,
I realized that corner seats are not good ergonomics,
but we did watch that movie twice
and I still don't know what it was about;

The first time you settled onto my lap,
you looked at me as if I had a degree in this,
I was surprised at how we pulled the stars into sparking,
I bit more than I could chew,
You looked like fruit-salad after,
custard and papaya,
You own a lot of scarves now;

The first time I wrote a poem for you,
I spent an hour trying to mix words into beakers,
distilling, filtering, titrating, refilling,
Your beauty was impossible to find,
but it kept laughing from behind non-smiles,
I revisited those evening walks like a homicide detective

and found nothing,
You were the one that got away.


Image Source: Tender Moments by Kim Roberti

Muse

It is August,
I was supposed to have forgotten you by now,
People tell me to leave you
like rice grains outside my threshold,
I tell them that you are my Muse now,
See, nobody questions an artist's sanity,
They are supposed to be bad for themselves,
When I trace your laughter on paper for the ninth time,
it is poetry, not an obsession,
My sleep-cycles resemble an owl on coffee
because the moon is my lampshade,
It is not my darkness looking for company,
It is not the chips of your bracelet on my ceiling
It is not the ridges of your neck under my sheets,
Poetry-writing is a montage of creative masterstrokes,
it is not slumping into pillows until I remember I need to breathe,
No, my metaphors were borrowed from the robins
that learnt Shakespeare over thatched roofs,
I did not brew these words between my teeth like a meth lab gone wrong,
I am definitely not addicted to you,
My smiles are poignant reminders of love,
they are not crumpled tissue-papers around my room,
It is all good art,
Thanks for staying, Muse,
I now know that art doesn't need to be pretty
to be beautiful.


Image Source: Kazuya Akimoto

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.

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.