There's gravity
That I can see
In here,
And yet I levitate
To a time
When three friends
Two ditsy girls
And one shy boy,
Sat atop metal bars
Discussing
Pokemons
And beyblades.

-

I am alive.
And,
I am willing to show you why.
I am regret.
I am power.
I am hope.
I am myself, in all the conjectures and bones.
And I am an endless expanse of I am's:
I am Countless and indecipherable,
Like the number line stretching from minus infinity to infinity.
And only fools think that
I am measurable.
I am the soul:
Eternal and absolute.

But for now,
I will tell you this
that,
I choose to be confined
by my mother's dal,
by my father's scolds,
by rare hugs.
I choose to be finite
in the fleeting moments
when someone spends them on me.
I choose to be bounded,
by love.

~RS

-

I am the colour brown,
and not the latte or the cocoa brown that is devoured by men,
I am the colour of earth,
I am silt, that brings life to reapers.
I am dust, that rises for droplets to coalesce around and fall as rain.
I am clay, that takes shape on a potter's wheel to tend to dearth,
I am sand, that adorns a soldier's forehead before entering a battlefield.
I am the Sita who never waited for Ram to come,
And yet,
I am also Sati, and parts of me have been burned for far too long,
Charred by the soot,
Mucked by the ash,
I am black now.

I am hurt.
I am scarred,
Still,
I survive.
Because I know
I am my pair of ghungroo, striking the hard floor at all the correct beats and
I am my feet that balances me perfectly on hundreds of one-foot turns.
I am my diary, dissolving in the numbness of my being and
embracing the ink flowing out of my pen.
I am my pain,
That eventually leaves.
I am my breathe
That stays.

-

I am

I am fresh dew drops over cold windshields on sullen wintry daybreaks
I am Sunday morning coffee served in bed with extra cream,
I am Midsummer Night's Dream, a couch and a blanket on wild stormy days
I am not a three-course meal in a fancy restaurant,But
I am homemade candlelight dinner at midnight after a long work day.
I am a month long poetic spell, with the right amount of emotion elixirs and word potions.

I am comfort. I am calm. I am cold. I am warmth.

I am the light that emerges from within your eyes when the bulbs go out,
I am the hue of petrichor rising from a parched earth,  
when monsoon lets down it's gaurd.
I am the sound of a flute when hard rock starts hurting your ears.
I am a muslin cloth against a coarsed skin
I am an ocean,
reflecting and refracting light,
translucent in the day and coloured at night,
perpetually moving
and yet, unmoved.

I am acceptance. I am glow. I am spirit. I am strength.

-

I wonder if the moon knew this all along,
That I was never loved the same amount.
Not even half,
I don't know if I can trust the moon,
Ever again.

I can feel magma coursing through my blood,
in a body of daunting hills and dainty valleys,
Ancient ruins are etched deep
on a soul charred by neoteric decieves​,
And yet,
The luminescence of the moon,
Still enlightens the temple of Cupid inside my body,
On some nights.
But I don't​ visit this temple anymore.
And even when I do,
I stand in the archway
to burn memories in front of his alter,
And when the black fumes from the flame go up
To touch the roof,
I wonder if Cupid was never an angel,
But a demon fallen on Earth.
After all,
Love is the most savage monster.
And if it is so,
Who is more evil-
Cupid or the moon?
Or worse,
The man I loved?

~RS

-

Love

My mother told me once,
That lovers see a different moon
than those who never loved.
It glows a little more for them,
and the moonlight caresses
the curves and crevices of their bodies
to take their image on a misty white film.
She said, the moon plays a photographer
For lovers, far away.

I stagger onto your silhouette
when I look at the moon tonight,
The lady of the night
blooms on a distant wall,
fragrance and serendipity linger in the air,
indistinguishable from the cologne
you used to have on your neck.
I close my eyes and dig deep into both,
As I used to do.
And yet, when I open them,
I know the moon and these flowers
are battered liars,
And you are no more mine to see
Or touch
Or feel,
But how can you not be mine to love?

-

I know i will forget you too soon, but for now,
i incessantly search for you in unknown faces, and even
if i give up looking for you one of these days, know that
i illustrated you with all my poetic ability here, although
i want you to know that you brought out my
inability too, when all my attempts seemed futile:
I have heard people say that words spoil moments and feelings sometimes,
I want them to know that feelings spoil words too, As,
i couldn't finish writing this poem while you were sitting
in front of me,
infact i still feel
it's incomplete, just like our story.

~RS

-

I snap myself out of the stare and you follow, yet
i am guilty of stealing glances through the journey that followed,
i guess you did too,
if only one had the guts to talk to the other, rather than
imagining scenarios that are
impossible now,
i swear i could have imagined us together too
introducing my favourite beverage to you on coffee dates,
intoxicated beyond repair by a singular touch,
indifferent to two earphones, a double pinner and one
ipod, playing the perfect song.
interesting, isn't it? How the mind manages to
imagine a person like it wants him to be,
in black and white, and yet there you were, not a monochromatic
insinuation, not a mirage, but a guy
indistinct from the crowd, found and then
in an action of getting up,
in a short walk,
in a ting of the opening door,
in a very short glance,
in an obsolete moment, lost again.

-

A brief metro romance

it's odd how romances are born each day
in unexpected places
in slightly unbelievable people
involuntarily and yet
in all the senses, so when
i look up from the desolate poem i was writing
in the metro that i took,
incidently, my stations turned out be the superset
in which your station and destination falls,
i notice you sitting there,
in front of the person to my right
in the perfect place for side glances to make sense
i notice you with your messy hair, brown shoes and all
immersed in a book that
i am trying too hard to guess. You are
intriguing to me, like a mystery
in a moment that needed my attention, a saga like
Illiad waiting to be summoned by my voice, like an
incantation of my last love, giving me a second chance,
i look at you for far too long before
i realise it, so just as
i am lowering my gaze , your
immensely dark eyes meet mine and
i don't blink for a long while, my eyes almost
immiscible in the liquid gaurding your eyes and
in that moment,
i wished, this train would reduce the norms of time to become an
invincible journey, where we were just passengers
iterating scenes and acts of this moment that we created.

-

I am layers
Of conchshell
Over conchshell
Over conchshell
With love songs
And
Your sweet raspy voice
Echoing inside me.
They ask me,
Who is the one
Described in all my poems,
I tell them,
That he's now
An unknown
Who refuses to look at my Poetry,
Even acknowledge it.
Who might as well be wrapped in a bubblewrap,
To protect what's inside.
So that I would have to pop a million bubbles,
Before I reach
His conchshells,
And my winged demons
Would whisper in the air inside them,
The love song
That we created when our breaths synced
And lips fumbled,
And finally,
I would ask him,
Softly, just like the sound of the sea,
If his shells
Ever echoed with one of my poems too.


~RS

-