Soorajmukhi, flower of light,
Faithful beloved of the Sun

A fool and a poet, you live in his name
Wilting at night, you blossom by day

With the heart of a lion, you pray and you hope
You bask in his warmth, ignoring the smoke

Soorajmukhi, you are nobody's rose
Let the burning skylight stay unknown

Sunbird, what is your place in things?
I hear you well, but what is your plight?
Your thoughtless tunes leave me confused
I dream to live just as you do

the death of a loved one is a serious matter. this is my immediate thought when you are mentioned somewhere, sometime, somehow, in conversation. the death of a loved one, you would have said, is a serious matter.

you would have said, death is serious and grief is inevitable, but persist in finding the joy anyway; in defeating those dastardly tendrils of gloom that will threaten to pull you into the dark forever. outrun the shadows and find yourself always warm and well under the Sun’s guiding glow.

you would have said, let them judge your misery and misinterpret your intent: people will always be quick to call something wrong if they just don't understand it. You would tell me, always, not to care about the opinions of the masses anyway. 'So what?' You would say.

my phonetics professor said it too, one day, and I almost cried, the tears were rather stubborn in that moment, fighting my lashes for safe passage. To publicly showcase your grief, I think, is to do yourself more harm than good,

so bury you I will, within paragraphs like this, until, at the ordinance of the clock, I am to put away thoughts of death and sentiment, and instead, turn my face toward the Sun, to wash these blues in waves of gold, that I might find myself a part of life, and, that I might learn to love all things anew.

mama, i am waiting for the sun to fall out of this picture
i am waiting for your laughter's collapse
when you go, what happens to the dream?
the one in which you don't burn everything you touch,
the one in which i don't have to run from your love

when you go, take this dream
to lie with you forever
and i will watch as wildflowers grow around your stone
a garden born from you
of children who won't run,
one final, beautiful redemption

mama, i will meet you where the ground keeps us sweet
under the sun's golden glow, i swear i won't run from the heat
promise me a smile when it's time to take your leave
and i promise i will honour you in loving memory

hearts are pounding on my window
i sit in my skull, miserable smoke
there is no real thunder anymore
just my machinations, crippling the doors

i have choked on this poem too many times
i have loathed it each night since the sting of July
i am leaping through time to find someone to love
without stabbing my way through their skin to feel something

would you wait a few years for somebody so stuck?
would you sit with the shell of a girl you once loved?
i pay in patience for this world, a cost that always comes
i can't disinfect these splinters without smothering the Sun

a dull fog, a dark cloud, an omen that grows
the more that it swells, the less i seem to know
i miss my own love with an ache i can't date
i miss the story of the girl that i could have been

carve yourself a fresh wound
between your shoulder blades
this is how your blood transfers to me:
hot steel draining into these canals uninvited

fallen angel named a saint in his glory days
i carry the burden of the fire that you are
light in the sky my feet bleed to outrun
i suffer from the weight of my misjudgment

always the Sun: all-consuming, and unburnt
a self-fulfilling knife, and a pacemaker pulse
with you, religion ends and my faithlessness begins
infliction serves to aggravate this ruined innocence

your ruthlessness is heaven-sent and eating me alive
you are the cause of everything, are too the cause despite
i look to you in blame, but it circles back to me
that traitorous, inevitable, infinite shape

there is no space inside your heart that i could ever win
i miss the story of the saint that you could've been

this place is all bullets and plastic wrap
you are a space for which i am glad

you are a million moons changing,
beacon in the fog
staying light just the same,
holding on in the dark

your blanket with sleeves is a warmth that i seek
your comfort, like chocolate, is endlessly sweet

until the next song, until the next start
put me in your pockets, hold onto my heart

softer shades and falling leaves,
you are a reckoning that came out clean

i braid my hands together, veins coursing with rain
channeling a storm that never does make the journey

where i come from, a whisper could shake the sky
collapse the clouds and drag heaven from its pedestal

lightning to a tree, and the girl is just a trickle
when will you stop dripping blood on my hands?

i braid my hands together, veins coursing with rage
channeling a storm that never does make the journey

it's hard to tell your red from the honey of my skin
the blood on my hands starts to look like a friend

every day, you miss me
(i am) hiding by your side
revolving in your orbit
by destiny, by design

every day, coffee
your regular routine
you take it without sugar
you take it like disease

every day, fire
bloodshot eyes, peeling smile
no red-blue lights in windows
to reflect your quiet crimes

every day, i am still here
cruel world and coffee and burning alive
your name hurts this djinn-girl, wrong side of every line

every day, war
i try to write, but all i do is time
and every day is every day i've wasted
and every morning is another day to end
and every day, i plant these words
in my soul, in my wounds,
in your bone-chilling curse
you'll miss me when the angels haunt your grave

malice becomes sweet to taste
tucked under a tongue, behind pearly white gates

if you spent some time with me
your heart would grow too whole, too red

once a landscape drowned in sentiment
now you hide from change, fear violent rain

i've been cursed, losing sleep, far from land, sky and sea
and worms have been birthed inside all of my best dreams

i stir and i am haunted, hollow, eaten, starved, a half
each waking hour flashes by until the world turns dark

we join for a meal, and i'm counting teeth again
we join for a meal; you hide your hands away from me

you speak in song:
i am becoming yours, ever since we met

so tell me about it
what can i say to make you mine?
when you smile it makes me burn
i wonder if you noticed our hands are the same
i want to look at you until i have you memorised
warm and sweet and so piercing when you look at me
all the honey in the north can't compare to your eyes
brown skin like strong chai and this mountain under the sun

you're driving tonight on a road to the stars
and my heart is with you, sitting quiet in your car
this is not real

were your eyes on me when i made myself look away?
i've been all about you since the first day you chose to stay
am i just a sweet but strange child to you?
i have lost my mind

if this was real
i would drive with you forever
along the harshest mountain roads
between these trees watching over me
by all the ducks, cows, goats, moles and geese in the world
you would know we have the same hands
i bet you'd taste like smoke and mystery
i wonder if you have a girl at home
i know you'd love her like the love songs instruct
do you speak in song with everyone you love?
you are a fleeting 4 day dream i want to forget
you gave me an apricot and you made it taste sweet
i hope when i looked away you took the chance to look at me

so tell me, is this real?
i think i noticed you don't like to be too far from me
one time i was counting centimeters; we met at 15
i wonder if your mind has been close to mine all along

now you're on your way home
and i hope you're the boy in this poem

you are the girl in my songs, you'd tell me if we were alone
you'd tell me you liked hearing the poem baba read to you
we'd speak a common language
romance, music, and warm cups of tea
things only the two of us here seem to know
we'd talk about a future on a farm between two high places
what do you see when (i think) you look at me?
can you read my eyes for all the things i don't speak?
please tell me you've been wanting to be mine this whole time

if this is not real
i hope you have someone to tell you, you are the boy in the songs
you are the biggest sunflower in this yellow field
you are the coolest winds in the cold desert
you are a steady rock and i am water falling, falling again

you speak in song:
you are gone and i won't be hearing from you

but you don't speak a word to me

this is real

you look
and look
and look

please speak

these birds, do you love them?
they said this path leads to greatness
i am walking towards you with every step that we take
i want to run, but you lead the way

i decide on a metaphor, and this is real
if you are a stone, i am a river
i am, always am
so then you too must be

you analyse plums as you pick them
i memorise your sweet confusion
there is a story here that is yet to be writ
so tell me this is as real as it feels

swear by the fish, the tadpoles, and blue dragonflies
by the orchards, the flowers, and ancient brown eyes
swear by your history, your land, your glittering sand
by everything here that i see, that is real

you look
and look
and look

but you speak in song, and not a word to me

this home is not a pentagon.
split the wound in quarters,
four wheels, a driver, a crash
lingering bruise, nineteen year old ****
five miles of forest, incinerating
it's his fire, we're in pieces, we are orange confetti
beneath stone i bury words, like roots in the ground
and lately i've seen flowers in everyone's hands
hide the truth, share the shoes, split the wound:
blood clots keep us locked in like a noose
her heart is a house, and he's charring the rooms
so i'd rather no roses than have my hands stained
the sweet stench, a bleeding dead thing, suffocates
and there is a warmth in the soil where i lay
sweep the ashes, close the door, turn away
if trees are your candles, breathe in this decay
split the **** wound! This man is a cage.

every lie is a *****, rusting, digging into more of what lives in my chest. if you can imagine how a spider's walk sounds, then you'll hear my brown bones closing over this thing that is red. my body is a crowd of one, a room full of me: i stay caged between 4 walls, and it is lonely.

be still so the hounds don't bring you down, not so still that they win without a fight. be still, red thing, but not so still that you may never move again. the world has an appetite for your kind of soul: their mouths, yours too, will be used against you; they'll swallow your tongue and say it was their food.

confined to this live-wire city, you wonder if you chose to be unseen. you wonder when you stopped seeing, too, stopped being a girl with a mouth full of teeth and a red rose that bloomed when she would sing, dance, dream, a girl with less to care for and more to care about, a girl who knew a thing before she was told how she ought to know it.

so what do i know? i sit in this car, i go up this road following signs that read 'home', watching traffic lights come and then go, greening it all the way to the highest hilltop. but mountains tower in the backdrop, the way down becomes an endless ***** and these burning lamps line the sides in warning, urging me to keep to the road.

there is wind in my hair, stars in the radio, and the man in the passenger seat is someone i won't know. he has brown eyes, warm skin, a Cheshire cat grin, and he is everything i hoped he would be, it's unreal. he's here in this scene, in the credits to a movie that plays on repeat, with me on this road to a home that never shows.

and everything bows to the clock anyway so i take charge of the man, the car and the stars, i take charge of the hounds and the spider in my mouth, i take charge of the heart and the bones and the dark, and i let the clock pull me out, out, out and into the arms of something new.

in fear, i am a crowded space
you fret over the ethics of it, and roast the turkey anyway
do you understand what i am trying to say?
i learnt how to swim, so i should be over this drowning

see, when things get all night-timed and dream-eyed
i know i can love and be loved
it radiates warmth, this old star blanket
like the feeling that comes with a hug

and this is the coldest month of the year, you know
some days i escape just to know there's a sun
an overbearing, godly thing on fire
so i'd rather risk my lungs, submerged

and the sun is so wrong i come back to it all:
the darkness, nerves, the dead bird
and the things i should know, that i don't

so when you say fire will keep me warm,
do you not see how that burns?

my friends
you are a garden of fantastic flora
at dawn you are peaceful in sleep
among cats and bicycle men
firmly rooted, you are roses
all elegant thorns and complex structure
and the earth from which you grow is all softness
the leaves you hold high rustle rich in laughter
this, i know

my friends
i am liquid land born from a storm
born from skies that dislike sleep
find me in the yawn of dawn
and when i am not the sun, i will water you

you say a thing, i say another:
now we are emotional

this room is not temperate;
the air is thick with ghost conversation

so we wait to feel better, we straighten our mouths
you burst wrap bubbles and i crush sour grapes

can your hands give me the love they still hold?
i am not the same each year, and you seem not to know

i ask if you can bring peace to my mind
instead, you command the waiter to smile

do you see? i am trying to break glass here

now you are taking your afternoon nap
and the thing in this room is wailing

i wait for you to wake,
but you sleep on blunted cutlery

it's that nobody likes talk of fixing the blinds,
so we adjust the curtains

now this room remembers less of light
and do you know we aren't breathing?

i have been given the signs
and they taste just like wine
in that i've never known what it's like
to follow through with anything good
like paradise in stitches and worn by a child
your mother asking for your care, your time
but you still choose to linger in a place
where the zoned-out stay for moments in a day
you choose to tear the flowers clean out of your ribcage
give them a bright dye, keep them on display
to regurgitate all over this cold hospital white

i have been given the signs
of a perfectly sweet life
and i am still scared of toothache

i am here as you will have me be
you that i love and you that i fear
this paper world, this heart that beats
is all you have chosen to give to me

there is a door i try not to open
i peek beneath it and see multichrome
it is not for me, i have been told
so i am neutral, so i stay muted

but i allow blue because i allow grief
horizons hide behind my gated teeth
a warm purple sky holds a burning red sun-
-these colours i hide, and i show to no-one

it is the door i try to ignore
a museum of thought i used to explore
a place that is many minutes from reach
a place that is a mausoleum of me

instead, i am a swallowed tongue
and people talking over tea
a painted smile, two tired eyes
a thing of archaeology

flakes of snow, faraway ocean
the coloured silence in a library
a glass before it hits the ground,
just hanging in the atmosphere

so i write with these words that you won't understand
and i wear this thick head that won't hold it's own weight
with this feather-like soul, i am barely seen whole
for i am here as you will have me be

this is real

you look
and look
and look

please speak

these birds, do you love them?
they said this path leads to greatness
i am walking towards you with every step that we take
i want to run, but you lead the way

i decide on a metaphor, and this is real
if you are a stone, i am a river
i am, always am
so then you too must be

you analyse plums as you pick them
i memorise your sweet confusion
there is a story here that is yet to be writ
so tell me this is as real as it feels

swear by the fish, the tadpoles, and blue dragonflies
by the orchards, the flowers, and ancient brown eyes
swear by your history, your land, your glittering sand
by everything here that i see, that is real

you look
and look
and look

but you speak in song, and not a word to me

i lived those years inside my head:
held together by bits of masking tape
so young, with the smallest slice of life
in love with oceans my childhood had never seen

it all comes back to those years i lived outside:
little heart beating fast for so many things
innocent, lonely, sinless, unholy
sad girl with nothing to hold but a heart on two sleeves

now my parents don't have luggage space for me

heavily, i exist; being is the burden i carry

the first time i spoke to God i said please, please, please
i want a horse, a pool, and to meet my friends in heaven
He said heaven is for the martyred, the right, and the young

the last time i spoke to God, i told Him i would improvise
i am tangled in a web of my own making, and i cannot cry
the sky is a lightweight blanket, and i do not sleep at night
i have tried to find ways to be bright like the Sun-

-but i am tired of trying to be

the black hole i visit is a land of thoughtlessness
a cosmic ocean of feeling and sleep
you tell me what His poetry means
my heart interprets it in the ways it is made to believe:

the smallest slice of life is to know everything is nothing,
and once i eat these three hands, nothing is all i will be

if you do not love me, i do not exist

visit my meadow and only see a way to leave through it

feline, are you not curious?

blue roses grow here like nothing you know

if you do not want to know, i am not worth a single ****

shining for you, i am a million shards of scattered star

won't you come swim in these midnight waters?

for the glitter, for the gold

sweet wanderer, your words hold my soul

i am scared to be.
to love.
to lose.

i laugh and it is musical.
i laugh and it is hopeless.

i see a mountain and i see my house and they are two things that should be the same but one is a breathless life and the other a painless death.

one is fleeting,
the other a gaping minute on a clock that slowly ticks.

one is a boy with a heart,
the other a boy in the news.

one is a jeep that climbs the sky in a peaceful moment,
the other is our ambulance, raging along these city streets.

one is my mother:
she is the most beautiful person to exist.
the other is a creature's corpse wearing her skin.

there are fruits that prosper and fruits that rot:
fruits full of worms and fruits half-forgot.

there are strangely shaped ghars filled with things i've seen in dreams, inside caves i could never imagine to know.

there is this ghar made of carcass i have always known, that is so, so tired and should not exist.

so i am scared to be.
to live.
to lose.

i laugh and i am crying.

i see this ghar and i see my ghar and they are two things that should be the same but one is breathing, moving, and the other is a body that will be still forever, and i don't want to be here like this any more.

you speak in song:
i am becoming yours, ever since we met

so tell me about it
what can i say to make you mine?
when you smile it makes me burn
i wonder if you noticed our hands are the same
i want to look at you until i have you memorised
warm and sweet and so piercing when you look at me
all the honey in the north can't compare to your eyes
brown skin like strong chai and this mountain under the sun

you're driving tonight on a road to the stars
and my heart is with you, sitting quiet in your car
this is not real

were your eyes on me when i made myself look away?
i've been all about you since the first day you chose to stay
am i just a sweet but strange child to you?
i have lost my mind

if this was real
i would drive with you forever
along the harshest mountain roads
between these trees watching over me
by all the ducks, cows, goats, moles and geese in the world
you would know we have the same hands
i bet you'd taste like smoke and mystery
i wonder if you have a girl at home
i know you'd love her like the love songs instruct
do you speak in song with everyone you love?
you are a fleeting 4 day dream i want to forget
you gave me an apricot and you made it taste sweet
i hope when i looked away you took the chance to look at me

so tell me, is this real?
i think i noticed you don't like to be too far from me
one time i was counting centimeters; we met at 15
i wonder if your mind has been close to mine all along

now you're on your way home
and i hope you're the boy in this poem

you are the girl in my songs, you'd tell me if we were alone
you'd tell me you liked hearing the poem baba read to you
we'd speak a common language
romance, music, and warm cups of tea
things only the two of us here seem to know
we'd talk about a future on a farm between two high places
what do you see when (i think) you look at me?
can you read my eyes for all the things i don't speak?
please tell me you've been wanting to be mine this whole time

if this is not real
i hope you have someone to tell you, you are the boy in the songs
you are the biggest sunflower in this yellow field
you are the coolest winds in the cold desert
you are a steady rock and i am water falling, falling again

you speak in song:
you are gone and i won't be hearing from you

but you don't speak a word to me

here is the end of an era
a season of desperate drought
we carry these bags, the luggage we have
while in these frail cubes we are bound to stay sat

eating plastic for food, wearing pixels for eyes
the warmth that we know is of blazing pink skies
our present lives offer no living
the books i so love start to tear at the seams,

all reality becomes less sure than a dream
nothing is as it should seem to be
our clock has sped up as the men aim their guns
and the women are told to stay silent and sweet

losing ourselves, we consent to this mess
horizons of East burn to bleed and hold "peace",
dark roses of truth colour this cursed country
a lifetime of growth swears to halt at my feet

2020: year of grief, no relief
this bleak closing scene promises to haunt me

i have seen you dancing with trees
warm and familiar, with an air that is sweet
in here, you appear, you dance into being
behind my closed eyes, you're watching me breathe

here i am autumn, stretching on beyond decree
opposite these falling leaves,
you are rosy cheeks and beaming teeth
but i insist, i am convinced:
autumn is a beautiful place to be

you are all that i seek,
all i would like to believe is real
so i try to remember if you ever liked me

but you are endlessly sunlit,
hued honey-gold, and evergreen
and this half-eyed fading lucidity,
is the only place we can hope to meet
so i insist, i am convinced:
autumn is my most beautiful dream

cold air is burning my face but the feeling is muffled, far away.
i look at you, stoic menace.
you are a block of ice and i am a flurry of snowflakes, raging, cold, soft.
you ask me what the heart speaks.
i do not know how to tell you what emotion is, just like i do not know how to explain to you what i am.

(things far too familiar are seldom easy to translate into a language someone might understand, a language that is not your own, a language you've forgotten the taste of)

mountains on my shoulders feel lighter than they should, and you take lightness to mean of less matter.
perhaps you think these mountains have a hollow center, are made of feathers.
you and i are two different forms of water.
i have known ice, and you have known snow, years before today.
i have known stagnance, you have known change, you took the word like an icicle to your chest, falling too far into your cave.
pull me out, you say, and i am frost lining your windowsill.
leave me be, you say, and you are a dull fog, whispering to glass.
through the glass, we interact.
you are trapped.

the cloud escapes me
when i am far, it floats further away
when i am close, it is lost forever
what we see, then, is it true?

i try to find you
but you are far, and further
now you are closer, disappearing
soon, you are gone; you were never here

18 crept in with the quiet illusion of comfort

in the flakes of snow outside Gloria Jean's

on a Sunday afternoon, sipping something

warm and letting the cold seep into my skin

only to burrow myself into a warm blanket

afterwards. 18, upon arrival, was gifted

with gorgeousness writ by a favorite friend.

However, 18 came quietly, the world

defining her before she could have spoken to

me herself. 18 began to hurt, trying to find

what she was born to be rather than what

she was being molded into. 18, like snow,

was fragile. 18 had been January, and

then just as fast, she is March. 18 is script-

writing with Mahnoor again, just like 15,

16, 17, familiarity. 18 is confusion and

panic, a growing sense of unease,

muffling a voice in my head trying its

hardest to be heard. Upon seeing April, 18

did not desire this trip anymore. But the

Spring brought whispers of vanilla and a boy

with the softest smile in a place of pain. 18

was running off to corners of life, trying to

escape the stench of dying that had taken to

following her around. 18 survived May, 18

survived June. 18 fell into July, a house

of gloom, and decided to settle in the

month, if only the month would settle for

18. The world was calling her, but she

would not be seen. 18 ran back to the long-

awaited cold, overcome with joy for the

numbered days, a birthday again, a

bittersweet break, an ache for escape.

But 18 walked away from July, and

found herself in August, quite by surprise.

And August, she realizes, can be

anything she likes.

through text, reflect,
this horror set,
was all inside my head

a million moons were changing,
they were spinning like a top

the sun a little scalding,
and the cats were getting lost

my summer suffered silence,
but my colder winds were soft

and i am breeding guilt
for the things this mind begot

these worms are only eating,
and the worms were made by God

my heart, with little beating,
barely breathing, blood would clot

a lack of light, adjusting eyes,
and laughter half forgot

'neath July skies, i realised,
in living, i was not

i want to write a poem about you,
but your smile has stolen the words i would use

the spring brought these flowers,
and now summer has bloomed

purgatory
is sick in sweetness,
a cannibal and a chewed up girl

there is no place for us except these stairs
you are a meadow and i am the sea;
purgatory
a hidden space, the outcast place

did i tell you that i love to go where they cannot find me?
did i tell you i have a habit of running, without my feet?
did i tell you about the holy events in my recurring dream?
that i am invisible, and you're looking at me?

a pirate of less wicked ways,
a sunrise on my darkest day
and if we should die, here we will lay
for with me, in purgatory
you might choose to stay

what a pity it is

there are no stars in our sky

but we're city kids, we're the big one eight

we make do with the faraway lights

secrecy, is it crime?
i keep mine, they stay untried
is it wrong, is it okay?
spun of spider silk, delicate

still, a whisper of what can be
but whispering is hard to hear
of worlds i stole, this honeycomb
is saccharine, forbidden fate
sweet like sugar on your tongue,
not molasses from a cane

dispel my drowning now