The age that has gone —
I remember: one night I was a madman for you,
my tongue a bell of fever
ringing your name into the dark.
All night I burned in my own body,
and at dawn, still trembling, I asked the world —
Are you safe?
Perhaps I could have made you understand.
But understanding is a shallow thing.
You would never have drowned
where I drowned every day.
You were busy — maybe with another voice,
another hour that wore a softer light.
In the gallery of your life,
I was the painting turned toward the wall.
You never wondered what I looked like.
You never saw that I was still breathing.
And now… the age has gone.
What I wanted — only once —
was for you to stop your leaving
long enough to see me.
Not as a shadow.
But as the room that held you
when the world went cold.
Look —
my eyes are still a night-watch over
every fever you never caught,
every prayer you never heard.
Inside my ribs, a small lamp burns —
your name, still lit, still waiting
for a guest who never arrives.
If you looked, you would see
an empty chair worn smooth by waiting,
a door I forgot how to close,
and a man who still practices
your name in the dark.
But you never looked.
You were walking toward other dawns,
other hands that asked for less.
And I became a habit of your absence —
not a wound, but something worse:
a soft forgetting.
So I stood there.
Door open. Air free.
The path you never took
became my only home.
Now the age has gone.
Yet sometimes, without warning,
a fever returns —
not of the body, but of the memory
of a body that once burned for you.
And I find myself,
as if no time has passed,
whispering into the silence —
Are you safe?
No answer comes.
Not from cruelty.
Because the question itself
has become a prayer
with no one left to listen.
Only a rain without sound
falls against my window —
each drop a small, cold truth:
You are already gone.
But before you vanish completely,
turn once.
Not for hope — hope is dust.
Turn to honour the weight
of someone who once stayed awake
through an entire fever,
through an entire life,
just to know:
Were you ever, even for a moment,
held by a love that asked for nothing
except to know you were safe?
May 2
May 2, 2026 at 12:30 AM UTC
If half the sleepless love I spend
on watching where your shadow bends —
if half the hours I wait for you
were given to a prayer, quiet and true —
If half the tears I've cried your name
could fall like rain on sacred flame,
if half this madness, half this ache
knelt silently for mercy's sake —
Then maybe the heavens would break apart,
maybe silence would find a heart,
maybe this longing, so human and deep,
would finally learn what holy means.
But I keep lighting hopes for you
at a gate that stays cold through and through —
I chase a god who wears your face,
and beg for a little of your grace.
So no, I won't find Him tonight —
not with this fever, this hunger for light.
I chose a love I can't hold right,
and made a religion of your goodbye.
May 1
May 1, 2026 at 8:31 PM UTC
I will wait—
not for your footsteps on my stair,
not for your hand turning my door again.
Your coming and going
is not my account to keep.
I will wait for that one morning
when you wake mid‑sentence,
coffee cold on your table,
and something stops inside you—
a gear you forgot ever existed.
You will say to no one,
or to the wall,
or to the ghost of my name:
No one ever loved me like that.
No one stayed quiet like that.
No one took all my leaving
and still left the door unlatched.
Then you will remember—
there was someone
whose name you know
but whose depth you never knew.
Someone who swallowed a thousand slights,
a thousand nights of being unseen,
and still would not unclench their fingers
from yours.
Not because they couldn't let go,
but because they feared
you would never know
what it means to be held
without condition.
That day you will search for me
in old messages, in the shape of a chair,
in the way rain sounds on a tin roof.
And you will ask the empty room:
Why didn't you come back?
Why didn't you call out just once?
Perhaps then I will not answer.
Because my waiting was never for your return—
it was for your understanding.
And between understanding and returning,
all the love in this world lies
waiting
silently.
Apr 23
Apr 23, 2026 at 4:10 AM UTC
I was looking for a friend—
who stays awake inside my sleep,
who falls asleep inside my waking hours,
and then the letters dripping from their dreams
would tattoo themselves onto my chest.
They would come and take from my pocket
all the dead letters I've hoarded,
burn them into ash,
blow that ash into my windpipe and say—
"Now call yourself fire, call yourself rain,
call yourself anything you want,
I'll do the exact opposite,
because friendship means the right to go against you."
When we walk on the pavement at 3 a.m.,
stepping on broken bottles, blood spilling out,
they would take off their shoes and give them to me,
then walk barefoot and say—
"Blood is just a red road,
I can walk that road
to reach you."
They would store every sound of my cough
in separate little packets,
and one day when I'm no longer here,
they would sell them in the market—
"These sounds are precious, they were made by
a human being's lungs,
someone who never wanted to be understood,
only wanted to be heard."
One day they would take me to the hospital rooftop,
open every oxygen cylinder stored there and say—
"Why does breathing hurt so much?
Look, mixed in this air are so many people's last breaths,
let us also mix into it — that's what friendship is."
The last time I looked at them,
they would peel off the leather mask from their own face
and show me —
beneath this face, my own face was hiding all along,
I had gone out searching for a friend
and found myself every time,
but I couldn't recognize me
because my eyes still wore someone else's glasses.
They would say — "Do you understand now?
I never shared your grief over your father,
I was that grief myself.
I never took the polluted air from your lungs,
I was that air."
And then I would understand —
a friend is not someone else,
a friend is that person inside yourself
whom it took so many years to recognize,
and once recognized, I would erase
all advertisements, all searching,
because now I know —
I was never alone,
I was just blind.
Apr 18
Apr 18, 2026 at 12:31 PM UTC
I was looking for a friend—
who would erase every false date from my memories
and write me a new birthday,
who would look at the world through the cracks of my broken glasses
and say, "Why is it so beautiful?"
They would come at night, silent as a cat's paws,
take out all the old grief stored inside my cupboard,
fold it carelessly,
and in its place leave a packet of biscuits
and a half-finished cup of tea.
When the window glass shatters from my cough,
they would take a piece of that glass and cut their own palm,
then draw blue alpana on my forehead—
"Don't be afraid, blood is just the name of a color."
They would take me into the crowd of a protest march,
where police tears and tear gas dance together,
and standing there, they would teach me—
how to soak a handkerchief in my own tears,
how to fly that handkerchief like a bird that never learned to fly.
One day, the two of us would build a nest at the wrong address,
and inside we'd place a long-back terrorist, a kilo of false dreams,
and half a liter of a song about getting a lover back.
When they would say, "Now let's run,"
I would understand— running away doesn't mean letting go,
running away means making a road to go somewhere else.
They would write on the last page of my diary—
"I have stolen all the sins of this person,
now they are just a child,
with only a handful of sunlight and two bird wings."
And then I, standing not in a church but in a tea stall,
would shout—
this is my friend,
who broke me again and again yet built me so well
that no difference between broken and built
remains anymore.
Apr 18
Apr 18, 2026 at 12:27 PM UTC
I was looking for a friend—
someone who could hear the fever inside my head,
who would place invisible bandages
on the joints of my broken knees, one by one.
Every morning, they would mix a spoonful of honey into my phlegm,
so I could forget—
my lungs are no longer livable,
just a nest of lice.
When the beggar child at the traffic light shatters glass on my window,
they would steal the last coin from my pocket
and tear their own pants to make a kite for that child.
They would take me to the museum, sit me beside a mummy, and say—
Look, this mummy was once someone's friend too,
now all that's left are bones and a faded towel.
One day, the two of us would steal an ambulance together,
wander through every haunted crossing of the city,
and in the headlight's glow, we would see—
our shadows have long been dead,
yet still holding hands.
When they fall asleep,
I count their breaths like rosary beads,
knowing—one extra breath and they will die,
one less, and I will.
So friendship means—
a small rope tied between two lungs,
so if one falls, the other pulls them up,
and then together they turn that rope into a guillotine
and cut away, all at once,
every false separation in this world.
Apr 18
Apr 18, 2026 at 12:24 PM UTC
I was looking for a friend—
someone who would mend the broken glasses of my loneliness,
who would take every memory rising in my cough
and wash it in their own tears before giving it back.
When the city's drains swell with sadness,
they would walk beside me, silent as dead fish,
and from every syllable of my breath
gather the flowers of tuberculosis as they fall.
They would come at night, quiet as a thief,
steal all the false loves buried in my chest,
and leave in their place a small piece of sunlight—
so I could believe that even in police custody,
roses still bloom.
They would take me again and again to the wrong stations,
push me onto the wrong trains every time,
yet each time we arrived, I would find—
they had kept every lost path of mine safe in their pocket.
And when they walk into the church,
hanging my sins on the cross like old clothes,
I would shout—not the priest, but me—
This is my friend, my impossible scoundrel,
who carries all my grief on their own shoulders
and turns me into a bird, flying me away
to a place where no disarmament conference
will ever be needed again.
Apr 17
Apr 17, 2026 at 1:34 PM UTC
Once, we were like two open windows
facing each other, where the wind never stopped;
then suddenly one afternoon I saw you glance
toward me — yet it felt like nothing was there.
I thought tomorrow everything would be fine
rain would come and wash away all stains, all wrong turns;
tomorrow passed, and so did so many springs, so many autumns
only your pain slowly merged into the lines of my hand.
Now when the phone rings, I feel afraid — afraid that
on the other side there will be only the sound of breathing, then silence;
I want to tell you, how many moons have floated away
in the salt water of my eyes — and you don't know.
This is how we scatter like stars
two thousand light-years apart — yet under the same sky;
between us only this deep silence, this not-understanding
this swinging between being and almost not being.
Apr 13
Apr 13, 2026 at 11:44 PM UTC
Was there ever anyone like you anywhere?
A light that burned both fierce and rare,
A voice that calmed the stormy air—
Or did you only live once, here?
Why did you leave before the rest,
Before the final beat confessed
How much we needed you, how blessed
Was every moment you possessed?
The morning feels a different gray,
The laughter doesn't stay the way
It stayed when you had more to say—
Now silence has too much to weigh.
I search the crowds, I search the stars,
I ask the moon, the passing cars:
Did anyone like you leave scars
Of beauty from such early scars?
And no one answers. But I know—
Some rivers only once can flow.
Some flowers bloom, then have to go.
But why so soon? Why not more slow?
Was there ever anyone like you?
The answer breaks my heart in two.
There never was. And now, grief’s true—
There never will be. Only you.
Apr 3
Apr 3, 2026 at 11:57 PM UTC
I love you—
Though my love leaves no fingerprints,
No letters, no declarations, no grand gestures.
And you—
You search for proof of its opposite,
And find it,
Every single day.
Mar 21
Mar 21, 2026 at 6:26 AM UTC