We stood on the flowerbeds
rooted in my ripe, velvet spine
We danced in waves of milky lilac,
the world was yours and mine.

For once, my mind was serene
although I heard a tiny whisper.
A whistle-blower distorted and mild;
I think you drowned her in the river,

Striking tapestries unscroll from your lips,
blindly shedding colours as the leaves fall
Lies were tucked snug under your tongue
and so was I, (it gets chilly after all),

You liked to pace ahead,
in a rush to build a promised fort.
I trudge behind you, stitching our skin-
a needle too dull, a thread too short

Thumbs hooked in my sunken stomach;
a snack for every time I strolled astray
but you were laced around my throat,
and so my hunger seemed to stay,

I drank from your stretched-out palms;
I waited for the day that it quenches me.
But a blade of grass in that barren patch,
is all that I will ever be

We went for these walks so often,
(I might as well have walked in all fours)
we danced in waves of milky lilac,
the world is only ever yours

                               a.r.

stuck in an hourglass of identity,
muffled hustling around my eyelids
head buried deep in the shifting sand,
my body wrestles with the happening

stiff legs pulled by horizontal gravity,
brain soaking, turning into electric mush
my eyes bleeding in black as it is
only in my dreams, that I can feel alive

lied naked on the slippery floor of reality,
dipped in and out of the pool of mind
fractals slowly falling off from my vision,
then swaying freely in the air

freed by a different form of mortality,
face sinking, melting into familiar figures
what's hidden below and behind evaporates
to every corner of my shut, rapid eyes

I feel every fibre of peace,
every time the world disentangles from its name
knowing they are all but shapes projected
for the hazy buzzing screen,
that is my present

They have spent their
content of simpering,
holding their lips this
and that way, winding
the lines between
their brows. Old folks
allow their bellies to jiggle like slow
tamborines.
The hollers
rise up and spill
over any way they want.
When old folks laugh, they free the world.
They turn slowly, slyly knowing
the best and the worst
of remembering.
Saliva glistens in
the corners of their mouths,
their heads wobble
on brittle necks, but
their laps
are filled with memories.
When old folks laugh, they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them.

There is freedom in isolation,
in being idle and invisible,
where one could sit in muteness,
swim widely in dusk and ask,
"Am I really here,
if no one is around to see?"
A different kind of suicide

There is pleasure in being a shadow,
in pretending you don't exist,
to avoid acting like you do

Solitude isn't a time for me
to let myself free
but rather a time to free myself
from who I am

Outside the confinement of company,
I am anyone and anything,
I am someone else, somewhere else
I am alive,
but I am no one
I am alone

a.r.

three o'clock every afternoon,
you would come out to play
only fifteen feet from home,
mother wouldn't let you stray

said the birthmark on your feet,
a symbol for your itch to explore
only fifteen feet from home,
but you have always wanted more

drawing on the ground with pebbles,
making a canvas out of the street
bouncy steps on bumpy, hot cement,
careless of the dirt on your feet

running in wide, drunk circles,
scraping your scarred little knees
forgetting why you were laughing,
but you chased the sun, at least

she shouts your name from the house,
thick orange juice and sweet bread
a small towel on your sticky back,
she tied the wet hair on your head

the daytime moon followed you home,
with its humble clouds not far behind
how vast, you thought, was the world,
but it wasn't as vast as your mind

a.r.

The hair on your forehead is soft umber wheat
with a cerulean sky behind it,
the dent on your cheek is deep-
enough for me to rest in it

You are the emerald mountains
and the tranquil rain,
that calms me down
and hands me pain

You are jazz and blues
and if yellow ochre had a sound,
Lying in between our smiles,
was a place that you found

I miss you
and the little church in Lisbon,
across the lone bench,
with a stick that you relied on

In the back of my mind,
how could I ever?
When I've never met you
and I've never been to Lisbon

a.r.