Outside the Vidhan Soudha, it is proudly proclaimed, "Government's work is God's Work."

If government's work is God's Work,
It makes sense the insurance companies don't pay up for Acts of God. I mean insurance is just you betting against yourself and losing every month. Until the day you win and aren't around to see what you have won.

As citizens, we are nothing but a burden we all have to carry. Of course some of us carry the weight of the world on our shoulders without ever getting a chance to live in that world. While the ones who live in it, do not know, how to live in it with or without us.

I can't believe, we have chosen Gods who still ask for Chanda and Hafta. How is my God so poor and rich at the same time?

-

The world did not deserve to hear my stories. My mother was right. She said, "They're spectators in a battle you fought and won everyday."

Now, I watch myself turn into one. A spectator. I do not deserve the faith, I claim to follow. I watch my ummah die in headlines, statistics, and reels. They are winning even in death because not one of them has renounced their spirit. I have surrendered to fear, I sit and reject truth out of my mind every morning. I do nothing, say nothing and change nothing. I lie, "This is how the world works."

The truth is, it was never about, "who deserves what," karma is a bedtime story, afterlife is an unfulfilled promise.
A child starving and a king ruling, both do not deserve their states. Nobody is worthy of anything.

We are all at the mercy of each other and we have never learnt how to be merciful, not in the way that truly matters. When we try to create it, we are forced to unlearn it to keep ourselves safe. Until we cannot recognize it, even if it looks like the reflection in the mirror.

-

Loving her was like loving a cloud
She changed her shape, form and colour as per her sky

But now, she is all grey
Raining on my pride parade
I wish my heart was big enough to let her in again
But it has been shrinking since she chose a man over her best friend

She gave birth to the best parts of herself and asked me to come visit
After that day, I didn't want to leave
I said, "I am sorry the people in your life don't love you as much as I did."
I wish to be there but she never listens to me
So, why should I listen to her and wait for her to break my heart again?

Why should I listen to a woman who has not found the courage to stand up to men?
Why should I show up for a woman who cannot show up for herself?

-

Love and I were born in the same year
He snores, his breath, the metronome to the words, I rap in my sleep. Love asks for forehead kisses before going to work. My kiss erases his frown.

Love asks before he touches me. Love can tell without being told when I do not want to be touched. Love says thank you Mariyam ji, Sorry Mariyam ji, Please Mariyam Ji. Love laughs when I am angry, because he knows, I'm more funny than angry, rubs my back as if I was a cat.
Love laughs at all my jokes. Love doesn't text, he calls.

Love listens to me talk for hours. Love says, go be an artist, I'll support you. Love comes home on time. We go out every night. Mom says, "Marry Love."
I say, "I don't need to involve God, family, social media or the government. We are selfish." Our love is ours. We don't want to share it.

-

Everything is allowed once. Is it not?
I should have locked you in the bathroom and called the cops. I should have screamed in your ears instead of letting my voice sit inside me,
asking for forgiveness from myself.

Maybe then I'd be happy serving a sentence instead of a poem I can't write. Because I am afraid it'll come true like the ones before.

-

You look like Godi media to me.

Spreading like fake news all over the place,
Finally, the two people you pretended to be can fit inside you.

I forgot about you.
But you have been so desperate to be seen by me, you have stretched yourself thin.

-

Politicians do not run my country
The Pacifists do

The butcher buys flowers for his wife
from a florist who is a strict vegetarian.
She is an old woman who asks him for leftovers she can feed her cats

The man who sells stationary and the man who sells milk, ask each other to watch the shop as they go to pray in the temple and the masjid.

When i ask them about the nuclear war, they say, "Death is pre written. We can't control it. But i am not interested in fighting. It is a waste of time. I want to build my business and take care of my family."

It 10pm
The congress office is closed.
The bjp office is closed.
The mandir is locked.
The masjid is locked.

The windows of houses around me open.
I peek in.
All of them, skipping through the war on every channel, looking for peace.
We are more similar than different.
We, live, with our eyes closed and hearts open.

-

I sit in my room and ask for relief from the time, i turned a mistake called "you" into a man worth trusting, just by standing next to him. How desperate were you to be seen with me in public? Steal my likeness because nothing you wrote could be as beautiful as my soul - that came like a second chance, a test, you failed in this life and will pay for in the next. I ask death for a sign and feathers fall at my feet.

I was born in the flood that never hit our shores before I came. Can you hear the lightning being struck in your hometown? Can you hear it now, in your chosen town? Are you drowning in the threats you made, apologies you should have written and the lies you spread?

Forgetting you was mercy. Now, I recall and teach the collective consciousness who you are and what you deserve as I allow my subsconsious to feature you in my nightmares again, only to watch you die each time you dared to touch me without my consent.

-

Imagine

(Poem in caption)

-

I want retribution

The women in my family have slaved enough
The queers in my family have been punished enough
The disabled in my family have been disabled enough

I tire of serving this great nation of patriarchy
Fighting a war that is not mine
I want absolute freedom
Absolute safety
Absolute rights
Not conditional to my relatibility to what qualifies as a good woman
But unconditional to my humxnity

-