Soft hush
a lilac hush,
spilling from heaven’s cufflinks.

Dust-throated wind,
draped in violet lace,
forgets how to whisper.

Once,
a petal kissed my wrist,
feather-light, sugar-spun.
(It melted before I could love it.)

Beneath the boughs
time folds like an origami swan.
A child presses footprints into fallen silk,
calls for lullabies.

Glittering
a secret only the butterflies know,
written in ultraviolet sighs.

Stay.
Stay.

But the season is shifting,
jacaranda knows no permanence.

A lilac hush
soft hush
dissolving into sky.

O wind, unseen courier,
vault of sorrow and song—
rise from the quieted earth,
where hunger braids itself into ribs,
where mothers cup empty hands
as if they could cradle the moon.

Rush through iron-clad cities,
where glass towers drink gold
while children sip the night for supper.
Drag the scent of burning forests
through chambers where power feasts—
let no throat swallow without the taste of ruin.

O wind, tear through borders,
where names are flayed from skin,
where home is a word lost in translation.
Sweep through courtrooms
where justice kneels to coin,
where verdicts fall like loaded dice,
where mercy is a language
long buried beneath the floorboards.

Howl through locked doors,
where love turns to bruises,
where silence weighs heavier than chains.
Rush the alleys, the streets, the rooftops,
where daughters walk with their eyes downcast,
where the night is a mouth
swallowing their names whole.

O wind, press your hands
against the windows of kings,
against suits spun from war-fed gold.
Let them hear the ghost-cries
of forests bled dry,
the bones buried beneath their neon arteries.

Whisper into the ears of emperors:
How many graves must the earth drink
before they call it enough?
How many oceans must rise
before we finally see
the wreckage in the mirror?

O wind, roar—
drown the speeches,
scatter the lies,
tear blindfolds from gilded eyes.
Make the world listen.
Make them remember.

Or let the silence bury them instead.

Soft-spined hush—
wildflowers unfasten,
unravel in amber hush.

Morning spills,
sapphire- limned, breath-held.

Fingertips trace time-etched veins;
branches sway, unbroken
a hymn of fracture,
a lattice of hush.

By the river,
silver-throated, dreaming forward,
a shimmer of lost echoes.
Even water aches for direction.

Sky bleeds gold through splintered boughs.
Light pools in murmurs,
anointing restless roots.

Becoming is a quiet rupture.

And here—
where petals ghost against skin,
where rivers hum secrets through silence,
I learn:

Love is neither river nor root.
It is the sun,
burning quiet within.

She exhaled—
and the world unraveled,
spores lifting like soft lanterns,
to a sky too wide to hold them.

Between her fingers,
a single stem, hollow-*****,
the ghost of something once golden,
its crown now a hush of white.

She watched—
how the wind took what it wanted,
how even silence knows how to scatter.

Somewhere, far beyond
a wish landed
and called itself a flower again.

Hushed in silver mist,
antlers cradle dying light
dawn bows at its feet.

Love is a tide,
soft, inevitable,
etching names into sand.

But understanding,
the moon’s hush pull.

To be held is one thing.
To be known—shadows cradled,
no flinch, no turning away.

That is love, not by default,
but by choice.

I weep as often as I laugh
not from sorrow, nor from joy,
but because the world hums,
and I refuse to be deaf to it.

Skated where lilies bent,
pavement murmured in argent hush,
wind unspooled within my ribs—
a hymn of flight, untethered, fierce,
spun in the silk of speed.

Wheels were never meant for girls—
that flight was fleeting, never owned.

They said—stride rewritten, dream revoked.
But air had named me, traced my pulse
in gold-lit veins of motion, feral-free.

Children watched—wide constellations,
irises pooled in astonishment,
mirroring something too bright to tether.
One step from a flag-bound fate,
from slicing dusk on weightless wheels.

Then—lockdown. World wrenched mid-spin,
skates unstrung, silence thick.
Wings collapsed to dust and dusk,
a promise left in winter’s throat.

Yet speed still lingers in my bones,
wind—ghost-thin, whispering back.
One step, and muscle will remember,
rhythm rekindle in marrow and motion.

I dream of dusk-warmed pavement,
of twilight spooling across my wrists,
of exile ending where flight begins—
of weightless light, of love, of grace.

One day, I’ll wake. I’ll step outside,
where echoes gather, where silence hums,
and whisper softly to the wind—
“Teach me how to wear my wings again.”

But dreams have gravity,
and promises are heavy things.

Still—one day, perhaps, I will.

He arrived ,
fire-tongued
wings lacquered in sunlight,
like a breath the garden forgot to exhale
green burning against green.

I was a child
with small hands that believed
giving was enough
to make something stay.

I fed him,
chilies plucked from the crooked vines
my father planted
bright little tongues,
burning red,
barely ripened,
all I had.

He bit me,
a clean puncture,
as if to say:

Love is no debt I owe you.

Blood welled up,
startling, hot,
the first truth nature ever gave me.

I stood there crying
while he finished the offering,
then flew away,
lighter.

What child understands hunger
until it pierces skin?

The next day,
I was waiting,
small hands trembling again,
opening as if the bite
had never happened.

I have taken the flowers.
Ripped them from the light,
peeled their bright faces back
like something skinned alive.

They did not scream.
They only folded—
like lungs emptied of air,
like mouths pried open
with nothing left to say.

O, love is a quiet violence.
A hand that plucks.
A hand that presses.
A weight that does not crush—
only keeps.

Here, a lilac curls,
like a severed breath.
Here, a daisy chokes on dust.
Here, a rose—veins milk-white,
mouth frozen in a paper-thin hush—
a relic of something that once burned.

And tell me, do they still remember?
The wind that kissed them last,
the trembling hands that held too tight,
or only the silence left behind?

I listen—
ear to time’s brittle ribs,
to the breath of pressed petals,
to the ruin love leaves in its wake.

And somewhere,
in the marrow of silence,
I swear I hear them—

whisper back.

Summer belonged to the mangoes first—
golden, sun-fat, splitting at the seams,
dripping down wrists, pooling in the hollows
of our hands— a crime scene of sweetness.

We ate without caution,
let the sugar gloss our lips,
let the gold run—drip, smear,
something like hunger, something like greed.

Your mother hated the mess.
Scrubbed your fingers raw,
tut-tutted about sticky floors,
the bad habits ripening in you.

But mine—mine only laughed,
pressed my palms between hers,
kissed the sugared wounds like an oath,
said, let some things be wild, love.

That summer, we outran the heat,
split the dusk with our honey-lunged laughter,
left fingerprints gilded in the sun.

And when I told my grandfather I liked mangoes,
he arrived the next morning with a whole harvest,
grinning like he had outwitted the season itself.

My mother still laughs,
but I scrub my hands clean now.

Some things stain.
Some things don’t.

Morning unfurls—
thin gold draped over the terrace rim,
the world still dream-fed, undecided.

She moves through it—
wild-crowned in bramble and gold,
a flower skewed in her hair—
stem fractured, wind-touched
but worn as if it could never be
anything less than perfect.

Something in her
the way her chin tilts to the sky,
the way sunlight spills across
the same high cheekbones,
the same quiet brow—
pulls at something nameless
beneath my ribs,
a longing too tender to name.

Her laughter
windstruck — a ripple in the skin of dawn,
spins loose, untethered,
a sound without edges,
without destination—
just the raw, impossible ache
of something alive
for no other reason
than because.

The air folds around her
soft, golden-bellied
as if the whole world
was holding its own
watching, waiting—
for a beauty
too wild to know itself.

I watch too,
not out of wonder,
but out of fear—
that something so fleeting
could slip through this hour
without ever being written down.

She will grow
the flower will fall,
the wind will learn her name,
and the sky will no longer
be enough to hold her.

But for now,
she blooms only for the sun,
for the hush,
for the wild, unmeasured ache
of simply being.

And I swear—
if I could stretch this hour
into forever,
I would—
just to watch her run
one breath longer.

Some joys bloom for nothing—
not for the gaze, not for the name—
but simply because the sun is warm,
simply because they can.

I did not smile at her.
I smiled at the hush—
the unbearable miracle
of something wild
that does not know
it is precious.

The hush lingers,
the morning folds—
soft gold cradling a face
that no longer lifts toward the sun.

The air no longer waits.
Only I do.

And beneath my fingertips,
the photo trembles—
thin, timeworn—
edges curled like petals,
as if the years have tried
to fold her back into a bloom.

now, in this hush,
I turn to her—
and I smile.

She was my mother.
She was a girl once,
unwritten.

And I—
I have spent my whole life
trying to read her.

Summer began soft—
honeymilk pooled through mango leaves,
pigeons feather-heavy on telephone wires—
the whole world gold—
still ripening—
like something that didn't know how to end.

I remember the river—
thin-*****, sun-fed—
wearing the sky like a borrowed veil—
bruised lavender by dusk,
silver-stitched by midnight.

We were half-salted, half-feral—
knees green-stained,
pockets lined with papaya seeds,
believing if we never named the days
they could never leave us.

Evenings folded in hibiscus hush
mothers calling from verandahs
their voices trailing jasmine heat
but we stayed
bloom-fed—
learning how silence could taste like belonging.

There was a boy
wild-haired, sugar-grinned
who carved his name into the gulmohar—
said it was the only way
to outlive summer.

I never carved mine.
I wanted to belong to something
without leaving a scar.

The river kept what we couldn't—
pocket marbles clouded with spit,
cicada shells,
prayers hushed into cupped palms—
half-wishing, half-forgetting.

When the rains came—
soft at first—
then harder—
we waded knee-deep through the swell,
our laughter thin as dragonfly wings—
something breaking beneath it.

But rivers don't keep secrets.
They carry them.

By August—
the gulmohar stood stripped—
his name unstitched—
washed down to sea.

By September—
the river forgot itself—
spitting up broken dolls,
rusted bicycle chains—
whole summers gutted in the mud.

By October—
we learned
the world is only ever borrowed.

I wonder if the boy remembers
if his name still flickers beneath the water
stitched somewhere too deep to touch.

I never carved mine—
but if you pressed your ear to the current
if you listened long enough—
I swear you'd still hear me,
a salt-thin breath
folded beneath the hush.

Every day at three—
the little prince arrives,
cawing his prophecy at the door,
voice worn with quiet hunger.

He calls me out—
out of silence,
out of whatever grief I’ve tucked away.

If I do not answer—
he circles,
cawing until I stand before him—
palms cracked open,
giving what I can to feed his hunger.

He knew the weight of my hands
before I did.

What arrogance—
to believe I am the keeper.

Perhaps it is him—
who feeds me—
the voice in the throat of the world,
reminding me—
even the unloved must answer when named.

The hour always comes.

Lilac hush
earth, half-waking,
baroque birdsong.

Moss curls ,
dew beads on nettle’s tongue
small, glassy prayers.

wind
silk-handed seamstress
stitches light into every leaf,
veiling the world
breath and bloom.

Bones of old trees cradle the sun’s milk,
wildflowers nestle in their ribs
what dies here, lives softer.

river, translucent and slow,
spills silver veins , the skin of the valley
a quiet pulse beneath the green.

Somewhere between sky and soil,
we become the silence
lungs folding into pollen-laden air,
fingertips brushing the hem of forever.

Nothing belongs.
Nothing is apart.

In the meantime,
the world remakes itself
petal by petal, wing by wing
and we, fragile passengers,
are simply learning how to listen.

Mornings licked amber,
wet, bright,
papaya pulp split in the grass,
rain still steaming off rooftops.

they came,
sway-backed, jewel-eyed,
weaving cobalt ribbons through the cricket fields,
feathers slick as oil spills.

I waited,
barefoot, rice pinched in small fingers,
not offering—inviting.

they took
beaks sharp,
eyes glinting like they carried whole summers behind them—
but they never left.

even when the rains came,
hard and urgent,
they stayed, hips swaying under silver sheets,
tails dragging through warm mud.

I thought they danced for me,
as if the whole monsoon belonged only to the girl watching,
silent, secret-spined,
hair curling at the nape,
too small to touch,
too quiet to call them by name,
but they saw me.

I know they did.

they crowned me in silence—
Princess of Puddles,
Keeper of Small Hungers.

somewhere between the serpent hunts,
the rain-slick pirouettes,
I learned how beauty moves,
how it takes without asking,
how it lives without needing to be seen.

they were never mine,
but I belonged to them,
to the fevered mornings,
to the blue-green shimmer folded beneath heavy air,
to the secret language only wild things speak

something wordless,
something that never leaves you.

Fingers—
laced in glow spill, dusk-slick.
tiny suns,
trembling—bodies of light,
trapped.

pulse-thrum,
hush-black air—
soft hymns flickering,
pleas pressed to glass,
breath-fogged, burning.

whispered tomorrow—
honey-thick, guilt-laden,
beauty begged to be held.

dawn—
bled dry.
cold palms, hollowed vessel,
absence like ruin.

I lied to the glass.
worse—
I stole their dying light.

& now—
I bear their afterglow
like a wound that refuses to dim.

Willow limbs susurrate in clandestine murmurs,
brushing the lake’s gouache-green reflections.
Beneath—jellyfish effloresce, spectral inhalations,
ghost-thin, unmoored, drifting toward oblivion.

Dandelions unravel, golden tendrils severed,
carried off in the lungwork of wind.
A musk rose lingers—feral, aching,
its scent curling like unshed weeping
beneath the hush of twilight’s jaw.

Chevy lilts down arteries
stitched in coral marrow,
leather still inked with your laughter,
your dark brown eyes—
blackwood, abyss, a gravity
I would fall into, fracture utterly..

Et pourtant, je t’attends, infiniment.

And in this risette of evening,
where sky spills into sea, salt-lipped, weeping,
I wait—
soft, surrendered, affetuoso,
a note held past silence, raw, humming.

Bare feet kissing marble’s chill,
fingertips tracing teak and dusk,
air thick as mulled velvet—
honeyed, heavy, slow.

She moves where silence frays,
light spills like sugared wine,
breath lingers like an unshed sigh—
never still, never caught.

Fluorescence hiccups across her skin,
pavement inhales her weight,
a flicker, a glitch, a sliver of absence—
half-held, half-gone.

She dances where gravity forgets,
shadows soften like overripe fruit,
laughter drips slow as melting wax—
feral, fleeting, free.

She is not waiting to be found—
she is, and that is enough.

Not the butterfly—
never the butterfly.

Only the delirium.
The fever of pursuit.
Wind-lashed laughter,
sun slitting gold across our skin,
hands slicing through hush,
through emerald ghosts.

Wings—silk, smoke,
breath—a ghost kiss,
vanishing.

We ran.
We ran.
Color hemorrhaged between our hands.
The sky swallowed it whole,
left nothing but,
the aftertaste of wanting.

Was it ever the capture?
Or the almost,
the ache of flight just out of reach—
like trying to pocket a mirage,
like teaching the wind to stay.

Years fold.
Silence swallows.
Love like wings,
dreams like dust,
fingers still cupped around air,
as if emptiness could be held.

We chase.
We lose.
We call it living.

Child,
who told you to carve shelter
into cracked bones,
to scatter your name
like fleeting petals in a storm,
to call what bites,
what burns—yours?

People—
illusions,
water slipping through the hands of time,
goldleaf peeling from statues,
mirages flickering out of reach.

But you—
obsidian,
forged in fire,
a constellation unraveling in defiance,
the ghost of something ancient,
unforgiving.

You are not held.
You are not lost.
You are the fire,
the tempest,
the truth that will not yield.

What lingers in you—
is eternity.

Wind-carved
spine twisted—feral, gnarled.
A body bent,
splintered—never severed.

Salt licked wounds raw. Brine sutured marrow.
Bark flayed to ribbons, limbs ink-blurred—
curling, unwritten. A thing undone, a thing refusing.

Roots plunged—teeth to brittle earth,
ribs against collapse.
Cliff crumbling, gravity unspooling—
but it held.

White-knuckled in ruin.
Fingers clawing the wind.
Wreckage. Crooked. Unnatural.

An old man exhaled— Survival isn’t always beautiful.

But what is beauty, if not this—
a body unmade, carved by violence,
and still, somehow, bloom?

Gold seeps like marrow,
stars bruise against the void.
"Light is starving," he mutters,
"even the sun feasts on its own fire."

Frost exhales—
a slow, deliberate frostbite.
"Light is a path,"he murmurs,
"but men mistake fire for direction—"
"they burn chasing it."

Emily lingers, a moth in lace,
wings dusted in ruin.
"And yet, all paths end the same—"
"a mouthful of quiet, a bed of hush."

Vincent laughs—ochre-stained teeth,
lips split with fevered art.
"Silence is blue," he whispers,
"a drowning, gasping blue—"
"the color of voices suffocated in paint."

Ruskin presses a palm to the glass,
watching years soften like ink in water.
"No, silence is the color of old hills—"
"of books breathing dust in rooms left untouched."

Emily smirks.
"Ah, but death is an artist too—"
"it sketches men into whispers, steals them like dust in light."

Vincent exhales, trembling.
"Then let it take me in color."
"Let me vanish in thick strokes—"
"golden, breathless, eternal."

Frost watches shadows stretch long.
"Some men vanish in quieter ways—"
"no fire, no frenzy—just the hush of winter."

Ruskin traces ivy creeping over forgotten doors.
"Some men vanish like abandoned houses—"
"sinking soft into time’s arms."

Emily tilts her head, voice a half-buried secret.
"Perhaps eternity is not silence—"
"but the echo of a name no one dares to speak."