It rained last night
Quietly….while I slept in your arms
Slowly whispering words in my head
This is real
You are real
This is what happy feels like
The sunlight was sheepish in the morning
Shining my million blushes on to us
You – exhaling like a resounding drum
On a victory march
I – looking at you like a creepy stalker
Not allowing myself to believe
Love is the only dream that doesn’t feel real
Even when you live it
Good days
The mirror tells me I’m beautiful today
I smile and stop and smile again
There are no words on my page
For peace and joy are so annoyingly free
They hate being stuck inside words
I search for synonyms and iambic meters
But this feeling
Of floating in silence
Of flying inside the confines of a room
Of smiling for no reason
Of dreams of pink balloons
Of dancing without a song
Doesn’t have enough words
Instead the clarity of it is like a veil
A filter for my unslept eyes
A yellow painted on canvas
Surrounded by blue Irises
The mirror tells me I’m beautiful today
I’m a fierce force of nature
A superhero saving my world
With grace softly perched on my breasts
And glory holstered on my hips
Today, the mirror says, I’m invincible
And today, I agree!
Bad days
The mirror is an abyss today
Inside it, my eyes aren’t my eyes
They’re hollow ghosts stuck in time
My body is a loaded garbage bag
Self loathing, Hate – reduced, reused, recycled.
I stand here naked but for my breath
Stale air engulfing my breasts with each exhale
Embalming me with funereal ease
Enraged fists break into my palms
Ears split with screams stuck inside my glass head
The dark room spreading its wings, I know.
I’m triggered today
A loaded gun inside a black mouth
A bomb waiting to blow
A woman on a ledge
A blind knife on a barbwired skin
A neck exposed – waiting to be eaten by a noose
The mirror is an abyss today
I can feel my breath turn to dust
I can hear the imaginary stones grinding my chest
The bed is a casket parked inside an open grave
Do all rooms in high rises feel this way?
Nearly dead humans subsisting in each square
Windows like tombstones that say
Insignificant and Unknown
(3rd Sep 1986 – Every fucking day)
Would I ever be my father’s daughter
An aged porcelain sans cracks
Pretty but fragile
Smart but pure
Happy but not cocky
Loved but never felt safe
Would he be proud
My words in his eyes
Or write it off as one of his many regrets
Etch selfish on my forehead
Everyday for the rest of my life
Scarlet letters on crisp brown parchment
My skin was a scratch card
He, the player – forever looked for obedience
It is the drum where sounded
Screams of bones unwilling to conform
“Don’t study too much, the men won’t want you”, he said
So I, as was my wont, tried desperately to unthink things.
I then unschooled each thought taught by mighty Venuses
Because he, a hero of my life since the age of three,
Would shed tears of pride one day
For his victory over my self worth
It wasn’t his first one
He has been winning this war
……For centuries now
This house is a cave
Where silence like a monster
Rests
It has been fed for years
Pieces of children’s skin on their father’s cane
Sent its way like lambs out for slaughter
This house is an asylum of nightmares
Shadows lurk in every doorway
Waiting for the darkest edge of the night
They wait for the mother to implode
And the patriarch to explode
Until they swallow both of them whole
This house was a mistake
A dream destined to self destruct
Dreamt by a hopeless heart
Put to test by toddler souls
Running scared from one dark room to the next
Till one day they elope leaving their scars and heartbreak behind
It has a caustic system
That burns down joy in an incinerator
Every year
The ashes choke the inhabitants
Until their breath becomes shallow air
And love for years has been hiding inside dusty bookshelves
It has rage for bricks
Cemented together with insults
That hold the walls together
Everyday the mother hits the walls softly
Hoping to let the anger course through her veins
At least it’d keep her alive
The father he stares at the unforgiving walls
Searching for absolution
Praying his sins are worthy of redemption
This house is her.
This house is him.
But the one thing this house is not and never was
Is a home.
Ever had a day when you wish you could blurt words into the diary
The way you used to as a little girl?
A day where you want those words carved into your arms
But your mind has hidden all sharp objects in the room?
I wish my mind were a loaded gun
With words on point enough to kill.
Instead I scar myself
Branding my skin piece by piece
I tell them it was an accident
The doctor wonders aloud if I did it to myself
Or did someone hurt me
I tell her I need no one to love, to hold nor to burn
I don’t feel pain
I don’t allow for it
These walls are too thick
And pain just lashes on the outside uselessly
Instead I preserve my scars
Spread open my heart and let them breathe
While painkillers worm through my blood
Hospital ceilings make for good parchments
It must burn the doctor says
I tell her it hurts but not enough just yet
Perhaps there will come a day when the levees will break
And the pain will flow in these veins along with the killers she injected
Don’t get me wrong
This isn’t masochism nor some dark confession
This is me simply acknowledging the stormy seas in my mind
Listening to the thunder and the distant rumble and bracing
My demons are on my bed every night
Awaiting my implosion
Waiting for charred skin and wounded flesh like
Vultures waiting for death
But these walls hold strong every night
Held together by the same words
That in the morning rain like knives
On my parched skin
As the sun rises, there is this fleeting moment of quiet
Where the pain and the demons don’t exist
And my mouth morphs into a smile
And my scars? They aren’t scars anymore they are old friends
Part 1
The word monsoon comes from the Arabic word mawsim
When the Arab sailors would come looking for riches in our lands
The winds of the east would change directions holding them back
Forcing their ships to wait – pining for Ihla Da Boa Vida (the Island of Good Life)
The Dutch would do the same after four months around Africa
Chasing stolen maps, they’d reach these shores only to find “moesson”
The trade winds of the east making them wait
For these clouds to change their hues
The British would time their deaths to it
Claim no one survives two monsoons in this godforsaken island
Yet they stayed – for death in Bom Bahiya – the Good Bay
Meant they were war heroes – in their battle for a British India
***
Do you ever think about me – your poet?
Everytime you look at the monsoon slashing at your windows
Do you stare at puddles in potholes
Imagining a different reflection of me with each ripple
I’m a lot like this island, you know
I’m not a part of the whole
I show my love the same way
By longing for you oceans away
You’ve tried reclaiming me from under the sea of solitude
Many times at your own expense
Yet you fail to claim me
I am and will forever be submerged in my silence
So – you wait out my monsoons
And descend with your ships of thoughts
When the clouds in my mind have cleared
You bask in the glory of sunshine
While my thoughts like stones drown me in my procrastination
Your love is a silver lining
And my love – the cloud
While you sigh at the smile on my lips
I just want to rain my words on your joy parade
Part 2
The brave they landed
The Parsis, the Jews, the Iranis – the Runaways
The British they were just a rubber stamp
This was and is an island of rejects
I often wonder how does the city not burst into flames
When every one in it is a firecracker?
Instead its lights from the sky,
Quietly guide our souls home every night
***
I like this, city keep my flames inside
Quietly burning from the inside out
While you – are always on fire
Forever warming my cold feet
You celebrate my empty rooms
Win my silence like a trophy
And I keep my longing for you packed in boxes
We will love like this forever I suppose
This.
This.
This is what my silence looks like
A dark room full of unknown faces
All of your eyes on me
Waiting for words that just
Don’t
Come.
These are my hands
Trembling at the thought
Of wading past an ocean of thousands of you
At the end of this night
Swaying me with your tides
Invading my silence over and over again
This is also my space
Empty but for my breath
These walls are my friends
All the same colour
But each with a different heartbeat
Slowly teaching me…. How to be
The space holds in it years
Of avoiding strangers like you
It’s what our mothers used to say right?
But while I was busy warding off the evil
I’ve also kept a few new souls away
It’s a price I pay and I pay it in plenty
And from where I’m standing
Silence is a precious prize
You’ll call me the quiet one
Wonder why I look scared
When you call me beautiful
Sigh when I look away each time you try to smile at me
Wonder why I have nothing to say
When you say my words have changed your life
You’ll deem me just a mystery
Intertwined with your life for no reason
“She’s just shy”, others will say
And you will wonder why I am not that shy on this stage
You don’t see what I see
You don’t see my blank space
This is also my canvas
Where I paint stories
Through relentless strokes of my mind
Stories of unrequited love and outraged fists raised in hope
Stuffed in jars like fireflies lighting up my nights
Where my realities collide
Burning through my dark skies like fire
Until my words like stars turn into dust
You may call me the introvert
Claim I dwell in caves
While I spend my weekends in empty rooms
This mind tethering at the edge of my page
You may even give up and walk away
To never come back again
But this.
This.
This thing u call a blank space
And shrug off because it’s empty
This is my whole world, my masterpiece!
And you…..are just a background.
