Such beauty it emits
It's lover know no limits
Readily burns in its love
The moth hovers just above

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You are going to be a happy day, filled with joy and laughter of children running around asking for eidi. I shall be tasting your sweetness through the seviyan in sheerkhorma. You are going to smell like the aroma of saffron in the biryani. Dear Tuesday you shall sound like the clinking of the bangles and the jingling of the jhumkas. You will be neat and crisp like crease free kurtas of the men going for Eid prayer. I am looking forward to meet you soon after Ramzan.

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I transformed into a firefly
As my body lightens up on the places you touched
Illuminating the darkness of my life

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Tell me how should I express myself through poetry
Teach me the art of playing with words
Teach me to juggle my emotions with the words
Show me how you shuffle them together
And yet you weave with your pen
A beautiful web of poetry

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His scars were great storytellers.
They spoke to you unlike him.
All of them.

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The more I try to set myself free, the stronger the chains get, securing the lock of patriarchy

-

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The uneven strokes of my eyeliner
Resembled my uneven and chaotic soul
How I kneaded the Jowar flour into a dough
With my uneven hands
Like a child.
Grandmother and mind
Mocking at me
"22 and still uneven!"
I looked at mother
With uneven and shaky hope in my eyes
She smiled
Warmly and assuringly
That it's okay to be uneven and imperfect at 22
Or at 40
Or 50
Or 60
That it's okay
If my strokes are uneven
Nobody's perfect.
Her reassuring eyes
Firmed my shaky hope
Today, at 50
My jowar chappatis are round and puffy
But the strokes
Of my eyeliner are still uneven
Resembling my soul
Which is still uneven somewhere
But is no more chaotic.

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"A Nation's history has three stages: success; then as a consequence of success, arrogance and injustice; and then as a consequence of these, downfall."


~Herodotus

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Me

Cats my mom

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Me after reading out my poems to my family

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