I'm the early winter morning wind
drifting around,
carrying the fragrance of marigolds

I am the crow living in my pine tree
I scatter with the pigeons homed on my terrace

My body hums like the low flying planes
that keep crossing the skies over my head

My fears enter my lungs:
the smoke of a sneaky cigarette

Love ebbs and flows
like clothes left out to dry overnight,

In the morning
they're cold and damp
lonely without any sunlight

-

Your absence opened up
this rupture in my existence,

I put my ear on your side of the bed
and listen to the shadows of your being,

I wish to have you and hold you,
and listen to your heart whisper my name,

This vast silence threatens to drown me
I cannot see you on the shore;

I swim in the ocean of your absence,
asking, hoping, foolishly wishing-

Do you think of me as often as I think of you?

-

I found an old dried rose
pressed between the pages of a journal I kept as a teen,
I couldn't, for the life of me, remember who gave me the rose-
only to remember from its dried fragrance
My mum grew it from a branch I once brought home.

—---x—--

Loneliness can be an overripe fruit
pecked apart by birds,
it can often be a dark void
consuming it all in its path,
But more than often
loneliness is brewing enough tea for two
and pouring only one.

—-x—-

-

Winter, I suppose, is the month for longing
for I wake up in bed cold one morning
without you,

You ask me that night how much I love you
But my words falter before they cover the thousands of miles between us

So you say, write me a love letter
or a poem about love

But I'm drowning in my longing for you
Lover in Berlin, my words are not buoyant
They do not float in this pool of missing

I asked you to take my love with you
But airlines charge extra for heavy baggages

So I take my love
and my longing
and the loneliness you have left me in
and I tie them in a knot deep in my stomach

And every time it rains this winter
I'll untie this knot,
one fold at a time
and look for words in the puddles outside

You ask if loving you is terrifying
I say, not loving you scares me more

So I plan to hold my love hostage
for you to set it free in Berlin.

-

When I was in Delhi for a week

I wanted to carry a notebook everywhere with me, in the hopes that the heat would inspire the poet in me,
But I sat at my cousin's desk working,
as the sunny days turned into rainy evenings
and the workers working in the adjacent flat left, one by one,
laughing at a joke I'm not privy to,
leaving me envious..of what I wonder?
Did I miss companionship? Or the thrill of sharing a secret with a friend?

I sat there at my cousin's desk near her new balcony, watching the horizon turn pink
And my desire of carrying a notebook out on the Delhi streets spilled onto my dreams here in Assam
And at 11 tonight, my brain conjured up images of the day I did go out onto the streets
And remained invisible to everybody.

-

Is it love,
if the images we share on WhatsApp
are of suitcases, boarding passes
clouds from your window seat,
cityscapes, indoor plants, and gifts we send

If our desires are limited to texts, emails and phone calls,
our longing exacerbated
by sweet voice notes
and mini updates from our days

Is it love, my lover in Berlin,
if I stare at you as you walk towards the airport gate
and not call out your name
because it is bad luck

Is it love when it rains here in autumn
and you watch falling leaves,
when we whisper sweet nothings over the phone,
over the time difference

Empty sides of our beds,
empty chairs at the breakfast tables
empty hands when we walk through the roads,
two pieces at two hemispheres

Is it love, my lover in Berlin,
if it is just waiting for you to come home?

-

My anxiety often gets the best of me
when I tear out my hair in clumps
or when I cannot stop shaking my legs,
Or when I walk around the house, restless, my heart matching a race car
When my insecurities crawl up my legs to my chest
and wraps itself around with double helix ropes

When it splatters across my life, ink blots on a crisp white shirt,
Or when it turns into an unexplained sorrow
devouring solitude, leaving chaos and regret in its wake

Old words from forgotten poems flood my head
I call out to them, a fleeting moment of accomplishment

My anxiety often gets the best of me
Always questioning, always doubting
A concrete paranoia
and double checking everything
And not double checking enough

Did I put too much salt?
Did I shut off the gas?
Did I edit that document right?
Did I do good work today?

The answers are there but my anxiety pipes up..
Yes
No
No
No....

You're not good enough.

God, why does my brain hate me?

My anxiety often gets the best of me
and brings out the worst in me.

-

Washing up on shore
when you have been lost in the sea for long
can be hard,
to feel soil between your fingers
when they have forever been wrinkled
can be disorienting,
to feel sand beneath your feet
when they have forever been weak
can be frightening,

The sea often calls back its lost travelers:
hold on tight to that sand and soil
and dig your feet in the ground-

Listen to the soil and the sand
and the grass and the tree whispering to you:

You are here
You are alive
You are breathing.

-

Noise makes for a great escape
from voices inside and out:
you can escape the dead and the living-
the leaking tap and creaking bed,
a long lost memory of a loved one, the ticking clock.

silence does eventually arrive
in her haunting beauty
accompanied by sounds you ignore otherwise,
and you are there, in the dark,
with a cigarette in hand, or your limp body in bed, covered in shadows and shapes,
twisting

Faces you had long forgotten now come to you crawling and
mock your attempt to shut everything out-

Voices you once loved and then hated now come to you,
you have nowhere to run to;

Soft murmurs fill up the dark.

-

an abysmal obsession caught me today
if I press the tip of my finger on my forehead
and press it hard enough
then this loneliness and pain will come out propelling and run off into the sunset
And I could note this down
and pass it down, an instruction for curing loneliness


How to get rid of something that follows you like a shadow?


*More in caption*

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