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.

The waves hit harder,
the closer you get—
I learned the sea doesn’t care about your longing;
it will take without warning,
pulling you under,
because you thought you could stay dry
and you may drown,
or you may rise,
but either way,
you’ll never return the same.

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.

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?

I make them smile,
not for ease,
nor for the brief bloom of laughter—
but because the world is a weight,
and lightness must be carved
by hands willing to bear the chisel.

I have seen sorrow move like a tide,
dragging its wreckage ashore,
leaving eyes hollow, shoulders bent,
hearts shaped like doors
that open to emptiness.

I have watched the weary—
not dying, but unlit,
not grieving, but undone—
souls curled inward like autumn leaves
that never learned the grace of falling.

So I place joy like a candle
in the cavern of the ribcage,
let it flicker against damp walls of doubt,
let it whisper—however briefly—
that there is still warmth, still wonder,
still a reason to lift the chin
toward the sky and call it home.

A smile is not salvation,
but it is rebellion—
against the hush of despair,
against time’s indifference,
against the notion
that we are meant to suffer in silence.

Let them call me foolish—
say laughter is fleeting,
that joy is a trick of the light.
I will still shape it, scatter it,
send it forth like a dandelion seed
that does not care
where the wind takes it—
only that it was given,
only that it was free.

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.

The canvas stares back at me,
Blank, unforgiving—
A mirror of my mind,
Its emptiness a cruel reminder.
I pick up the brush with trembling hands,
But every stroke feels like betrayal,
Each color too loud, too bright,
Spilling out in chaotic bursts,
Nothing like the picture in my head.

I paint, I paint,
But nothing comes close.
The reds are too red,
The blues too cold.
Each line, each curve,
A mistake I can't undo.
And still, I push forward,
Hoping for something that feels right—
But nothing feels right.

The shadows of doubt creep in,
Dark, relentless—
They mock every attempt I make,
Every flick of the brush a ghost
That haunts the edge of the canvas.
I try to fix it,
But the more I try,
The more I destroy.

The paint smears,
A bloodied mess under my fingertips.
Each flaw is magnified,
Twisted in the light,
A grotesque reminder of my failure.
The work I once cherished
Now looks like a battlefield,
A war between my vision and reality,
Where nothing wins.

I tear the canvas in half,
The fabric screams in protest,
But I can’t stop.
I rip it apart—
Brutal, raw—
The fibers of my frustration
Fraying in the air.
Nothing feels like it's mine anymore.
The brush trembles in my hand,
A weight too heavy to carry.

I collapse into the mess,
The chaos I’ve made,
And the silence comes,
Not as a void, but as a truth—
The eerie quiet of an artist
Who’s found their shape in the ruins.
In the stillness,
I see the pieces of my soul
Scattered across the floor—
But they’re not broken.
They are just pieces.
I wonder—
Am I the painting,
Or is the painting me?
And perhaps…
We both need this destruction to be whole.

I stand, brush in hand,
Ready to start again—
With the same trembling hands,
The same uncertainty,
But this time with a quieter resolve.
I lay a fresh canvas before me,
The blankness no longer a threat,
But a promise.
A chance to begin anew,
To make something beautiful
From the mess of the past.
And so, I paint—
Not for perfection,
But for the beauty in the trying.

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.