I looked through a make-believe mirror today,

And saw what I have forever longed to see:

Myself in another person.



Our souls were of the same colour, and our thoughts swam at the same depth.

Our lips formed the same words and our faces shifted

the same way through conversations,

Even though I am a ship

And my reflection, the horizon.



As I am, so was my reflection cold and distant at times,

Though she was right next to me.



And I have never been good company for myself;

neither was I for her

For she was cold and I was cold

So she strayed towards warmth and

Away from herself

Towards a happiness that I could not provide.

She found it among other souls and

They made a rainbow through the night.



I found my dream and lost it too;

I see my reflection every day

But now my heart is broken.

"Have you no eyes?" they asked
"Can you not see?"

"Have you no ears? Can you not listen?"

"Have you no hands? Can you not feel?"

"Have you no heart? Can you not love?"

"A heart?" I laugh

"I have no heart to see the people around me
I have no heart to listen to your incessant noise and careless excuses
I have no heart to feel the world and
I have no heart to love my life."

If I am ever lost,
Fear not, for I am either

Lurking in the shadows where the derelict live,
In a suit of fire so the cold and desperate flock toward me.

Or on the twilight streets,
My skirt made of the first twinkling stars swishing about my knees,
Bearing silent witness to the belligerent noise.

I may also be in the meadow outside town
Flaunting the crown of butterflies that the fairies made for me,
As I played with them for as long as the moon hung in the sky.

If I am there and you do not know,
Fear not
For I did not tell you
Because I would like to escape the straightjacket of my home.

Of that cold spring day when our hands froze
Clutching cones of your favorite strawberry ice cream

Of the following warm summer day when my favorite
Chocolate ice cream coated our tongues

Of that day we escaped our classes
And found ourselves held captive
By the soft cherry ice
With nuts on top

Of bubblegum sonnets, of almond praline declarations of love
Of fig and honey serenades
With soft coffee angels singing in the back
And cookie cream cherubs whispering in our ears.

Of the best first taste.

Of the worst last lick.

This is my home
This is where I sleep
This is where I hope
This is where I dream.

This is where I cry
This is where I scream
This is where I'm home
This is where I'm me.

I live for it,
Breathe it in:
All the faults
In the skyline
But the breathtaking dawn
Is my lifeline.

This is where I raise my voice
This is where I made my choice
This is where I decided what to give
This is where I decided to live.

Go outside.
Because outside is where the beasts lay.
They'll run with you all the way,
In such a sprint that you never tire
Or lose your breath
Or shiver your legs
At all.

Outside is where the sharp angles rest.
Deep cuts in straight lines, red blood dripping like rain,
And stones that have been cracking for centuries but never broken.

The great outdoors, that's where the fairies live.
They'll love you like you never knew love before.
It's the raw lips that kiss the roughest,
The calloused hands that hold on the tightest.
The rock-kissed fingers, they're designed to never let go.

Soft lips bruise. Mountainous lips live on forever.

Supple skin burns. Hard-cut edges light the flame in the sunrise.

Well-rounded means spoiled. Raw spirits mean earning the spoils.

Your fingers caress mine.
Our palms separated by a hair's breadth.
Our hands finally embrace each other.

They write poems to declare their love.
The negative spaces between fingers are filled out with warmth and sunlight and you.

But the hair's breadth is a canyon.
We both know your sunlight isn't tangible.
Are we holding hands?
Or ideas?

I am invisible.

I make everything around me invisible.

But you touch my hand,
And I become a faint silhouette.
Faint, but still I am something none the less.
I am tangible,
When you hold my hand.

But you don't hold my hand very often.
You forget to,
Because you forget me.

But I am surprised
That when you open your eyes,
You don't see your empire crumbling around you.

Because when I stood next to you,
I made your world invisible.
You couldn't see the wolves behind you,
Because I was beside you.

But now, your whole world suddenly burst into light.
And reflected off the teeth
Of the monsters at your heels.

Don't detach yourself.
It is not wrong to love

Something
Someone.

Look at the piece of earth in your hands.
That is your entire world.
That is your gravity.
That is your rock,
That you use to fill your pockets for weight.

Don't detach.

You
       Might          
    
Just

                        Float

                                                 Away

The guns won.
Humanity lost.

The love we thought we all shared,
Shattered and the shards pierced our eyes.
The dead wanted to stay dead,
But those who are slaughtered from the soul
Want all of us to be that way too.

Hollow
Dry
Hungry
Loveless.

On this day, I don't even want to pray.
I have seen what religion does to people.

It's not a War that's brewing,
It's a force field:
One that hides us from each other,
One that forbids communication.

We are a confused people.
Painting our false faces won't help.
And now,
I don't know what will.

Her body, tired.
Her limbs, overworked.
Her baby, forever wailing.

Laying bricks around,
That's who she is.
The little lady,
Who puts houses together
But couldn't build her own life.
That's who she is,
Forced to survive,
Forced to be something
That she was never born to become.

She goes to sleep after washing off the dust,
That she knows will collect in the same places tomorrow
And the day after that,
And the day after that,
And the lifetime after that.

Laying down the concrete,
That's who she is.
The old young lady,
Who mixes cement for a living
But couldn't glue her life back together.

I saw a picture of you and me together,
And I realized that I'll never  hold you like that again.

You'll never be there to hide my pain behind violent bouts of laughter;
Your warm neck will never offer me comfort anymore.

Of course, I was sad,
But then I wondered, why?
Why should I be sad when you're not here?
When you don't exist anymore?
When all the atoms that made up you are in the mud
Just like you wanted?

Of course, you didn't deserve to go,
But then I wondered, why?
Why should you not go to the place where we all will be eventually?  
When that is where you were gonna end up anyway?
When you knew that you had someone to love and be loved by
Just like you wanted?

Of course, everyone tells me it's okay to grieve,
But then I wondered, why?
Why should I be sad about something I knew would happen?
Something that I had been preparing for?
Something that would take all your woes and miseries away
Just
Like
You
Wanted?

Someone once told me,
"Find someone who puts the stars in the sky just for you."

"Don't be ridiculous,"I said,
"The stars have existed for billions of years;
Stars are dead, made of chemicals.
They can't even knew that we're here.
They don't know we survive.
They have seen more profound love than ours.

Stars do nothing for us, hell, they don't even shine that bright.
They just twinkle in the distance,
They have nothing to do with us.

How could I find someone
Who can put a gargantuan ball of gas
In a vacuum that we don't even know truly exists?

I would prefer someone who
Is smarter than you, and who knows that all I would really like is a good cup of tea."

I'm running away.
I look back.
You're standing right there.

Speechless.
Emotionless.
Tear less.

But I can still see your sorrow.
I can feel it.
I can breathe it.
I can't stop it.

I'm still running away,
And I can't quite remember why.
I floated away,
Like a wooden boat on a rough sea.
Floating, anchor less.

Wave your arms toward me, baby,
Don't speak, don't scream.
Just beckon to me.

You know that you are the fire that lights my sun.
You know that you are the wind that burns my face red.
You know that you are the water that flows through me when I feel dry.

So call to me,
Like the shore calls the tide to wash away the gritty sand.
Call to me,
Like the moon brings the waves to her lips and kisses them goodbye.
Call to me,
Like the slim beam of light calls for the safe passage of the wooden boat.

Call to me, baby,
Because you'll bring me back to shore.

You put on your bathing suit.
You make sure that nothing gets wet more than it needs to.
You take a deep breath.

The cold will definitely sting.
And it does.

The first few strokes are effortless,
You know for sure that you will make it across.
But then you open your eyes underwater,
And see the blue shifting and fading
With the moonlight.
And suddenly, the lines on the floor of the pool
Start to blur.
The lines leading  you there  
Start to blur.

You can see how far everyone else has come,
But measuring your own progress,
Finding out how far you have come
From where you started to wherever you are now,
Is **** near impossible.
The water still shifts and fades,
And entices you in the
Intimacy that stretches from the earth to the moon.

For how long?
For how long will you keep kicking your legs?
For how long will you keep waving your arms about?
For how long, exactly,
Will your head come up
And breathe?

And even if you reach the end,
Even if you get out of the water;
Even though you made sure that nothing got more wet than it needed to:
Your hair will still be dripping,
Your eyes will still sting.

I see colors.
But all I think of is black.
The bright blue of the sky
Is always clouded by ugly grey clouds
In my mind.

Each of my eyes
Sees different things.
One of them sees everything
That any normal eye should;
Family, friends, birds, trees.
A vast blanket of normalness.

The other one, however,
Sees how threadbare the blanket really is.
Sees only the shadows that fall behind
Family, friends, birds and trees.

The other eye sees everything
As it really is.
The other eye realises
That the lush lawn of our humanity
Is really just a concrete floor
Painted green.

I finally figured out
Mankind's obsession with stars.
They are ten thousand lifetimes away.

We can see them from such a great distance,
Even though they are shrouded by the all-consuming night.

They signify love,
They twinkle only for our eyes.

They are so lonely,
In a void that consumes everything.
But they all come together
Just to give us a sky worth remembering.

They are the only things that we can't touch.
They are
The only things that don't hurt us back.
And that is why
They are the only things we can trust
With our deepest secrets.

Why does everyone say
That pain is a negative emotion?

I could not find a more positive one,
Anywhere I look.

Pain makes us see new colors
That never existed before.
Pain shows us words
That we couldn't speak before.
Pain guides my hand,
As I paint what I feel.
Pain makes my works of art masterpieces.
Pain builds a platinum wall around me,
And covers my heart with stone.
It exposes me till there is nothing left to show
Except my nobly bones.
It shows the world
The truest form of me.

Say what you will,
Try to move on as much as you want.
At the end of the day, you can be sure,
That pain will be
Your best enemy.

No, please, I need to go.

My home glides with the river.
My friends soar above the clouds
And watch the world through their snow-speckled eyes.
My parents are the rocks
That give me purchase when there is only icy sleet.
My teachers are the swift and rough waters
That don't let the cold catch up with them.
My love is the elusive beast,
That I see out of the corner of my eye.
I can't quite see him through the dappled trees,
But I know he watches me, guides me.
My memories are of the mountains,
Of the water that roars my name,
Of the elements that made these callouses on my hands.
I travel with the wind,
The breeze whistles the tune I sing.

So, if you forgive me, I have an appointment with my life to keep.

I thought I knew you.
I thought I knew what you liked,
What you knew,
What you were.
I thought that you knew your limits.

But now I wonder
If you were ever that person at all,
If it really was you,
Talking with me,
Laughing with me,
Making me feel safe.

But was I ever safe?

I try to think about how
I myself have changed,
And I can't even figure out why.

Everything is abstract.
Can change in a second.
Doesn't need to follow a pattern at all.

Knowing that I may never know the true you
Ever again
Scares me more than life itself.

I don't think deep thoughts every day.
I think of them when I'm alone in a car, with my headphones on,
And when I'm on a bus, when I don't have a friend to pass the time.

The buildings rush by me, and I concentrate on their cracks and blemishes
Only for those few seconds.

But in those few seconds:
I think about how that particular crack came to be,
Why that particular color was chosen,
Why they weren't able to afford a better house,
My favorite memories,
My best friends,
My favorite songs,
How poor our society is,
How I want to help,
How I know that whatever I do,
Things will always revert to what they were.

You want me to cut straight to the deep stuff,
To have intelligent conversation,
To ask me my opinion on everything.
You can ask me all you want,
But I already would have forgotten the answers.

I want my words to be beautiful.
Beautiful like yours.
I want to see ordinary things,
Find the magic in them,
And put the magic on a page, for everyone to understand.

I want to have a way with words.
I want every poem of mine
To become a masterpiece.
Just like yours.

I am not broken.

But you are.

You see the world through pain,
And pain makes the colors brighter.
It makes the value of feelings
Climb higher.

Sometimes I wonder
If I should be broken like you
If I want my words to resonate
Like yours.

Sometimes I wonder,
If it will be truly worth it
In the end.

I wonder what it will be like,
To cut myself up to pour out the beauty inside me.

Just like you.

I imagine that you
Raise the blade
Slice your feelings open
And write your masterpiece
In red.

Love is not the silly game we play, of who's going to call whom first;

Love is the beautiful dance I perform with the idea of you.
The way our bodies swirl and touch,
The way your soul melds into mine.
The way my heart heats up, and my whole being weighs down with warmth.

My hands hurt when I touch your essence; your presence in my fingers burns me.

I dance with the ethereal you, with a soft piano waltz lamenting in the distance.
I jump, waiting for you to catch me,
I'm stuck in the air.

The being that I dance with is intangible, it's not really there.
But I'm stuck in the air,
And I hope that you come to soften the blow when I fall.

If you're gonna love any one, love me.
I'll make sure you don't starve.

If you're gonna trust any one, trust me.
I'm the toughest safe in the world to crack.

If you're gonna cry with any one, cry with me.
I'm all your favorite things put into one.

If you're gonna sing with any one, sing with me.
I'm just as off-key as you.



If you're gonna hate any one, hate me.
I'm the only one who will still love you after.

I've known you long enough.
I know it when you hold your body just so,
And this movement is invisible to others,
But I know when your muscles tense
And when your heart tenses
And when your world tenses
You will strike.

It's so subtle, your actions are known only to yourself.
And me.
I won't help you, you need to solve your own problems.
But that doesn't mean that I can't sit in the distance and admire
Your beautiful patchwork.

She wasn't his world.  

She built it for him.
She poured in sunlight with her smile.
His nighttime came when she was sad.
The glint in her eyes made his stars.  
Her fingers played the tune he hummed.
Her feet walked on every surface that he would come to call home.  
She made it all for him.

And wanted nothing in return.

But sometimes,  as a small gift,

He would borrow a little bit of the sky and put it back in her eyes.
So that they would be blue again.
So that the glint would be brighter than ever once more.
He did all this for her.

Even though she never once asked for it.

No.
I will not listen to you
When you say
I am too soft.
That my will is too easily bent.
That I apologize too much.
That I am what is wrong with this world.

I am soft
Because I want to be.
You toss and turn on your hard mattress of brutality.
Me,
I use my heart as a pillow at night, to get a good night's rest.

So let me sleep and dream in peace.

Who knew
That when the world was finally coming to an end,
We were the first to go.
We
Who even though are introverts,
Antisocials of the highest order
Were seen as real threats.
We
Who voiced our opinions unabashed,
Who fearlessly tackled the world head-on.
All this, using just words.
Come to think of it,
Poets are the most dangerous of them all.
No wonder they saw us as a threat.

I am stronger than you think.
The things I have seen, the things I have done,
One would think I have been scarred for life;
But my skin remains unblemished.
The things I have experienced, the things I have felt,
One would think that my heart remains tethered only by a few strings,
But it beats harder than ever.
I am stronger because I realised
I have the love of my family, my friends, my supporters;
I have my intelligence, my playfulness, my stubbornness;
I have everything I need to heal.
Haters have tried to tackle me straight on,
But I display their heads proudly on spikes in front of my door.

They are right when they say
Words cannot be silenced.
They are not meant to be.
You cannot stop the wildfire of ideas
With mere bullets of the physical world.
We are more than Charlie.
Our ideas are bullet proof,
Invincible.

There comes a time, it is inevitable, when one does realize
On a warm, sun-kissed day, when one closes their eyes;
No matter how great their achievement, no matter how big their feat,
They will still have to hang their heads in defeat
When Death comes to welcome them, much to their misery.
It is written throughout history
That many monuments have been erected to personify through the ages a kings’ fame,
But after years, decades, centuries have passed, no one even remembers their name.
In today’s fast, brutal, unforgiving world,
One might think himself a pearl
Without whom, the earth will find itself in a stitch.
But they are one among a million, a drop of sewage in a ditch.
One might believe in a dream that is waiting in the distance afar
But they are merely wishing on a remote, lifeless star,
As dead inside as the wisher of the dream.
The human race, it does seem,
Refuses to believe this truth anyway.
We are but a small rock, floating away,
No other being even knows of our existence.
Yet it is our stubbornness, our resilience
That struggles to find a way of remembrance.
We strive to find a fluorescence
That lights the way for no one,
Liking to think that we have won.
We are alone out there, even if we aren’t, no matter.
Our endless degrees of banter
Harm no one but us.
As much as we think otherwise, we are animals, slaves to our lust.
To those who say that their going is rough,
I laugh in their face and say this is all you get, and it has to be enough.

                                                                                                                                  -Aditi Kumar.