back home,
pigeons were always scared.
one step towards them,
and they would fly away,
to hide.

the only way
i could make them stay
was when i scattered
grains and water.

here, it’s different.
they walk more than fly,
and sometimes come too close,
close enough to scare me.

i stumble, stepping on shit,
burnt-out cigarette butts,
and leaves long dead,
dry, brittle underfoot.

it’s better to be scared as a bird.
if i could fly, the sky
wouldn’t treat me
the way this place does.

-

will you make your way out
of the bus stuffed with people
the driver kind enough to
hop everyone inside
nobody left behind

is this the reason why
my heart couldn’t stop you
because it was
suffocating

-

“yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai,
is dil ko bharam bhi hai, phir bhi kya hai”

-

while songs are sung about you
and books are written in your name,
dear love, you are everything
even your touch must feel like poetry,
and i live in a quiet world
that has never been literate enough.

-

my emotions try to exist
in some forms, in the real world,
to possess the things I see.

my room haunts me,
windows whisper,
and I feel a presence
when it’s about to rain.

i draw them into poems;
they wish for my soul.

i die for them,
they died for me.

-

i read as if it's the last page.
it aches because it ends,
because you wrote it.

how many times must i
scribble, tear-stained,
with missing flowers,
so it won’t feel like
the end?

-

neutrality is so popular
yet everything we choose
is somewhere in the gradient.

i cannot even tell
which one is blue when
everything screams
cobalt or sinks navy.

and when the grass is greener,
it’s not green anymore.

-

to the people who understand

in our trains, the first and the last station are always reasoning and acceptance. every stop in between, the doors open and close. people with heavy baggage, or just a book, board and leave in a rush, late to somewhere else.

we stay by the door, waiting. the journey isn’t theirs to finish, but ours.

the train grows crowded. voices rising, everyone trying to win their conversations before the next stop. and slowly, the crowd thins. fewer remain, fewer stay till the end.

and then, when the seats are empty and the train feels like it belongs to no one, i see it.
it is only us, and the one who understands, still standing, still waiting, until acceptance arrives.

-

i think.
i feel.
i write,
but only to the
edges of language.

-

i’ve never seen a shooting star.
who do i wish to,
to see the one
that grants the wish?

why must i close my eyes
to pray?
how do i place my hope
on what has already fallen?

-