How are you?

The sea kissed our feet and went back, like that shy girl from Farm, hiding behind her mom’s curtains, revealing herself part by part.
We had laughed hard that evening.

I nodded to the question, the usual one eye closed nod that you hated. I heard a sigh.
This place hasn’t changed a bit.

And you?

Remember that one time we raced down a hillock? I wish I
could go back to that day and ask myself how I could smile when everything was going downhill so fast. How could I be brave enough to battle the winds with open eyes and laugh at my bruised knees?

A single rogue wave climbed up our ankles
and knowing how waves lead on to waves, I held her hand and we took a few steps back.

She looked at me for the first time that evening. Why did you leave?

For a long moment the question hung in the salty sea breeze,
circling around us like a cat waiting to be fed. Eventually, it went away,
searching for its answer someplace else.

She put an arm around my shoulders.
I felt warm and tears came easy.
Let’s go home, baby.

Evening spilled onto my stale bedsheets. They reeked of ruined sleeps, a year's worth perhaps.
Sleep came in strange patterns,
unannounced to the wrong clocks and evasive to the beggars.
My clock said wake up,
sleep had decided she'd grab me and never let go,
like a lover I lost to a crowded fair, now tearing out from the crowd to wrap me up in embraces and kisses of a past that now lay only in dusty diaries.

The corner of my one closed eye caught red on the walls. My hairs stood up in unison, my mind went blank and my heart started pumping blood hard into my cheeks and ears.
Whew.
It's only paint, a few drops of red on a wall of fighting violets.
A painter's peril, maybe.
A shake of his hand, a tremble of his lips,
a gasp and a sudden chill through his spine.
He was as human as me, as tired as me. Perhaps he even slept on my bed and masturbated to the sunlight leaking.
Maybe he smiled, his crooked rotten teeth shining through his peril.

I had ditched my slippers,
Useless and heavy as they were,
Full of beach sand, dragging me behind.

Not that I hated my slippers,
I really liked them.
One of them once said 'FOR' and the other 'EVER',
Of which only the 'F' and 'ER' now remained.
(I told people it said FÜHRER.)

The sea promised it'd wash away the sand,
And I had fallen for the sea a long time ago, so trusting him was easy.

I left my slippers and started walking barefoot
With sunset in my eyes.
Then the waves stole them.

Devastated, I rushed,
The sea drawing its sands back urgently,
Its roaring waves slapping me,
Citing remainders,
And hindsights and insticts at me.
Not the slippers, I was praying to Poseidon.

I found them lying on the beach,
Squeaky clean.
I decided to walk barefoot, holding my forever in my hands.

I was born at the midnight
On a stormy twenty second of April.
But I couldn't see the storm,
Or my mom and dad, for that matter.
You see, I was born blind.

I lived a blind man's life for 40 years.
I ate a blind man's meal,
I watched a blind man's TV,
I read a blind man's newspaper every aftetnoon.
I litsened to a normal man's music, though.
Anyways, I got my eyes when I was 41.
The local drug store boy wound up dead in a police shootout, with both eyes intact.

At last, I could see things,
Real ones when awake,
Realistic ones when asleep.

After two weeks of my surgery, I gouged my eyes out.

The reaction to my confession was a singular one,
Odd, even.
For a moment, just a fleeting one,
The eyes grew,
Swallowing the mask,
Revealing a booming laugh,
Or a nervous giggle,
Holding back the curiousity of a kid.

But that moment passed.
It was replaced, as it always should be, by an appropriate one.

It was my birthday when I killed a man,
Shot him with a Kalashnikov as he was running away.
The commander congratulated me,
"Mard ban gaya tu ab", he said, patting my back,
I had become a man.
I felt so happy, so proud.
I was thirteen now and finally I could grow a beard.

In the dead of the night,
She'd sit on the railings of that bridge
And watch the citylights sleep
Inside the river.

It's so easy to push a man.
First, they'd stupidly go to the edge and just stand there,
Saying it felt great.
I've never stood on the edge, so I can't vouch for them.
Anyways, they'd stand there, oblivious to an impending doom,
How, I often wonder.
I mean, how do they trust
So easily?
Do they not know the ways of life?
I do not trust myself, let alone crazy looking
Strangers with scars on their face.
And even when I come close (too close, uncomfortably close) to them,
They'd look at me with somber eyes.
Even when I put my hand on their back,
Ready to plunge them into darkness,
They'd be look onwards with a smile, as if happy to embrace their fate.
I've never seen their faces when they fall down.
But, for my own sanity, I like to think they aren't smiling ones.

Bake your cake,
Look outside the window,
A sun is burning for you,
Impatiently hot,
"Ah, come on already. The cake!
I'm waiting, **** it!".

Look out of the other window,
That neighbour,
Her nostrils flared like a boar,
Mouth watering, eying your cake with her x-ray vision,
Like Superman .
Oh my, her ******* are *****,
Your cake has aroused her more than her husband, I think.

If you walk a few steps and look out of
The railings of your front gate,
The postman is standing with a letter for papa,
Arrested (probably handcuffed) by
The sweet smell of kaju and kismis in your cake,
The look in his eyes saying he wants to barge in,
Drop all his postmanship (his letters) and stuff
Himself with mouthfuls of your beautiful cake.

Go on now, bake your cake.
I'm waiting.
Heck, I even wrote a poem for it.

Mrs. Dolores sat on the armchair in her balcony,
A cigarette burning in the ashtray,
A tattered Jane Austen on her lap,
Her pretty face made up,
Mascara smeared,
The bright red lipstick intact,
The same smug look,
With a tinge of sadness in her eyes.

Her beauty had faded away,
Not long after her innocence did,
But she loved herself for what she had done,
For whatever she had become.
And hated herself for killing what she could've been.

Mrs Dolores sat on the armchair in her balcony,
Blood dripping down her wrist,
The same proud look,
With a mist of betrayal in her eyes.

Every morning she goes
Into the woods, picking twigs for
Fire and small flowers for her tiara.

They still meet,
In stolen crevices of time;
Devoid of their glory,
He kisses her scars,
She caresses his burnt skin.

A small songbird sat hidden
Among the leaves, singing
Melodies to tired branches.

the tree swayed,
(in the wind
it swayed, who cared not
for a tree, not for a lonely leaf it carried,
or the dust
that swirled; awareness it only
had for a havoc) unaware.

The storm (that
did pass,
that never lived to regret)
knocked a tree down.

They see a man, wearing saffron,
Sitting alone in the varendah of a broken temple;
I, along with the temple, am a relic to them,
A past,
Significance faded to obscurity,
There to be looked and frowned upon.
They shun my beliefs and question my faith,
"Why do you believe?
How do you believe?"
They take my silence for cowardice,
My credence as foolish.
"I am a dandelion", I say, head high in pride,
"And He the wind that destroys my body,
Makes my soul infinite."
Their laughter demeans me.
Yet I stay strong,
Believe me, I do.

But sometimes,
On beautiful, lonely nights,
I just stare at the rock that you are,
And cry as faith eludes me.

Every morning he'd come and sit beside me,
A beautiful little thing,
Dancing and singing,
His small lips glued to a flute,
Lost,
As if in admiration of life itself.

Sometimes he'd talk to me
In a language I couldn't comprehend,
And I'd litsen -
I'd litsen to his eyes,
Trying to get a glimpse of the universe that lay beyond childish mischiefs,
Of a power too vast to be trapped within mother's ropes.

I watched him leave,
His grief shadowed by purpose,
A smile shrouding his conflicts.
Confusion, pain, longing,
He was prepared for love,
Attachment came without warning.
That evening, he sat beside me and cried.
Just like the child he was.

It was autumn when he left,
And the last of my leaf fell with him.

I woke up in the dark,
To the dismal grandeur of a castle,
Its walls defaced, scarred with beautiful engravings,
Of a past that refused to die.

There was a library,
Dusty shelves full of pages.
The rack of children's books stared,
Smiling from under a layer of dust,
An old diary with a button lock,
Holding secrets too trivial,
Poems too heartbreaking.

The large glass window in the hall looked out of a train,
Huge mountains and rivers reduced to fleeting memories,
Or faded polaroid pictures.
The sky, like a true friend,
Caught in the train's plight.

The waking up was a dream,
The castle, a head,
And I the sad traveller,
Confused in the present,
Smiling and broken in the past.

I was visiting her after seven years.
Seven years...
Has it really been that long?

I looked at her for five full minutes,
She looking back at me,
Neither of us saying anything.
"You look exactly the same", I said.
She really did.

I told her that our son had his thirteenth birthday last weekend,
And how he was now almost as tall as I was.
He might be a trouble for the ladies, I added.
She remined quiet.

I stood for a few moments longer, watching her.
Searching.
For what?

I bid her my goodbye,
A single tear drop betraying my somber smile.
I quickly brushed it away, lest she sees it.

Barring the grass,
She looks exactly the same,
I thought,
As I slowly walked away from the cemetery.

Every morning I wake up to you sleeping beside me.
Your small frame engulfed inside the huge blanket,
Your hair carelessly spread over the pillow,
A few strands covering a part of your face.
Your palm under your head, as if preserving it,
Protecting it from nightmares and helping it calm down to a peaceful sleep.
Every morning I wake up to you sleeping beside me.
So I take a moment
And stare at you.

Once upon a starry night
Two gay souls lay upon a roof,
Reflecting the universe in their eyes,
Bodies interlaced, as if their company was all that they had
And afraid it might slip away.

Not even two blocks away,
Yet another soul lay upon a roof,
Sipping her beer slowly,
Lingering in the small moments of peace,
Just lying down and staring,
Letting the world melt away.

And under the blanket of night another soul lay too,
Lying down on a mat in the sidewalk,
Happy that he survived another day
Proud for his freedom and happy for himself,
He stared into the stars as a tear betrayed him.

As I lay on my roof, gazing into the fathomless depths of the night,
I once more found myself marvelling at it -
At the power it yielded, at the spells it cast.

He threw me upwards, failed.
The third time he tried, he succeeded.
Or maybe I did.
I flew upwards, my small wings spread.
I soared high, the wind my aid, the world diminishing under me.
But elation ever betrayed me.
He smiled, I didn't.
My wings came numb, the wind all but gone -
My descent had started.
Self loathing, self pity.
It was all a cycle.

Then a brother cut me free.

Embraced by wind, restraints broken,
I smiled.
Didn't matter if nothingness consumed me.
I had lived my life in those small moments of freedom.

To the epoch of a spring that never arrived,
To all those eternities left unfathomed,
To the mystique patterns embossed in our lives,
To those whispered secrets floating around.
To a universe that escapes the confines of my sanity, my belief,
Oh dear, how my heart yearns!