flatten your tongue
slip it between your teeth

n.

your little lips
forming an elipsis

o.

put them together
and may you declare
a word you’d so carefully deny—
no.

you spell it out
on table tops
shout it
from the rooftops

and when cursed hands
seek to defile your shrine
may you exclaim
"i am mine"

there was no power

from my Mumbai hotel I
could see the stream of people
in the narrow street below

a cart carrying the dead listed
and nearly toppled over

the ox pulling it did not stop
dragging the askew carriage along

passersby steered clear of the primitive hearse
knowing it carried the curse, the fever felling the denizens
of this muggy megapolis

a plague harvesting souls
quicker than they could be burned

the Mithi was thick with their ashes,
diluted only by tears of the mourners
who harbored fears they would be next

I was there, a helpless healer;
a doctor turned detective, running
a race to find a cause, a miracle cure

all my potions impotent,
all my staring at slides a lesson
in limitations, ignorance--a discovery
of crawling creatures too miniscule
to be dissected, too beguiling to be
understood

my eyes were tired of looking
at the tiny death moguls and their victims
my ears weary of the entreaties for relief
from suffering

yet I stood and watched, one wagon
after another, carrying carrion for the pyres

I prayed the power would stay off,
for light would have shone on me:
a curious survivor, unworthy of whatever
grace kept me from the heaps of lifeless
limbs bound for the fires of the night

She drew mindlessly.

Her pen gliding across her page like a figure skating demonstration.

So smooth, and precise but most importantly, beautiful.

No one ever really understood what she drew, an erratic and wild display of imagination curvy, rigid and sharp.

Like her tongue.

She illustrated her mind for the world to see, she laid herself bare. I looked upon her wilderness and read it like poetry.

I wish I had the courage to open myself up the way she did. God, I fell in love with her poems.

Yet she hid her poetry among these pictures cryptic, where she turned her pages into metaphors.

She made mine look inferior.

So I fell in love with an artist.

But an artist who drew for another.

"I can see my door, my bed, my window, my chair, and my table.

"I can feel my spine against the wall, my feet against the floor, my jaw tightly shut, and my fingernails buried in my arms.

"I can hear the wind coming in from the open window, my heartbeat rapidly thumping, and that familiar voice in my head, shouting once again.

"I can smell the dampness of the ground outside as the breeze carries it to my room, and the sickly sweet odor from the soap used on my hands.

"I can ******* blood spilling from the bite in my lip; my last harsh reminder that
        I
        am      
        still
        alive.

Re-ject-ion
I can’t even type it whole
I’ve never said it out loud
I’ve whispered it
Like some people whisper the
word ***
But I’ll never be bold enough
to just say it
It’s the most heart wrenching
word ever created
It consumes my every thought
Yet I refuse to acknowledge it
exists
I prefer the words desired, accepted, loved.

I do not want this word Re-ject-ion