I keep losing a piece of myself every time I feel unworthy of your time,
          then I realized it’s not you, it’s me wasting my time in pleasing you.
      So I stop and pick-up the pieces of what’s left,
                  for me to move on and start caring for myself.

She kissed me on perfect spaces,
     With stars,
          Into constellations.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Life drained departed
Into a land of silence
But somehow
Now
I feel you
In the night's breeze
In the whisper of trees
Rustling in the wind
I can hear your sigh
Your voice echoing
In the silence of the night
All of a sudden I realize
That you are here nearby
I feel your presence
Up close next to me
Trying to tell me something
Suddenly I awake
Feeling your presence
In my room
I see not nor do I hear you
But I still believe
You have never left me
Living on forever
Even in still life

I still smell her hair
coconut, it smelled like coconut
and her little earrings tinkled
when she laughed too hard
and she sang
like it was the last song she'd ever sing
and she ran
like she would leave the world behind
but now I'm alone
with only her memories
to provide me company

they said we couldn't be one
because she joined her palms while praying
and I didn't
because she sang praises of Krishna and Shiva
and I didn't
because I was to read the Quran
and she didn't
because her god and my god
were just not the same.

I wonder if all these gods,
and all these messengers
had an agreement
that one god's people
were not supposed to mingle
with the other's
and one who defied this law
would have only one fate.

if it is so,
then I shun all gods
because I'd rather be defined
by who I am
than by who I bow down to.

-a.g.

My heart squeezed tight when I got the call
I'd not prepared myself at all
The journey seemed so painfully slow
Allowing fear to gradually grow
Greeted by that clinic smell
A silent bell began to knell
My shock I could not keep inside
At how you'd changed, oh how I cried
You looked so gaunt, so pale, so thin
It angered me that it should win
The cancer that you'd fought so hard
About to have the final word
Yet still you smiled, your eyes awake
The sparkle that it could not take
You held my hand and in my ear
A whisper, glad that I was here
Never will I forget your face
Changed, another in your place
Never can I forget that day
Your face so drawn, your skin so grey
I hope, I yearn, I wish, I pray
The memory will fade away
And every time I think of you
The happier times come breaking through

Taken from the book Breakfast Bites, and published in the Anthology "A Day in Time"