See how the snake coils
Crushing tender

The bones
Of your own skin.

~after watching a news feature about the identical twins, named Prince Gerald and Prince Carl, diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, an inherited condition causing increased fragility of bone.

Blue blood names
I give you, as though

A medication, a palliative
To your sufferings; or

Perhaps, to gloss over:
The Imperfect.

Every crack, foreign.
A genesis, always

Awaiting that another crack.
Never ending.

Every day, twice-told:
Pain is pain, never

An ordinary thing
To fragile bodies

Not accustomed to it.

Fully aware or not, we survive
This life thriving on clues.
How a baby beaming means
An angel is coaxing him to smile,
The elders would say. Snap,
And there it is, his only photograph
As a baby, hanging on his mother’s
Bedside green wall. Asked or not,
We tend to offer evidence that we grow up;
That indeed, we started off as tiny things,
Later into trees with unruly branches.
We try to take a second look at the faces
We see. Perchance, to remind us: Where
Have we met the unfamiliar ones? Those
Not perfectly aligned; the photograph’s
Uncomfortably pegged to a rusty nail.
Meanwhile, our eyes are gravitated
To the smudges forming around
The edges of that photograph,
Made perhaps by the mixing
Of time & water, forming maps
Of places and distances, where
The this once-child would go.

(for her; she who suffers silently)

It’s not just a river
But a river bending through
Pain and a road forking.

It’s not a stem of tender
But a branch of summer leaves
Branching out to the sun
Wilt further dry and dry
She did.

It’s the bone-dry hands
A cup to plead --
A cup to contain sky’s tears:
April’s first refuse.

It’s the barren soil she
Whose face is drought
Awaiting river’s touch:
A profuse of fresh blood.


Nothing’s left.
No more days spared
To find you.

I saw you talking to someone.
Then another came
Then another one.
One by one,
You received them all.
I told you
They will return,
One by one.

I told you.

That same story
That same book
Telling about a father
With open arms
Receiving
His returning son.

I am your new life, you say.
Every time one from your past returns
A part of me will disappear
Now, an eye
Then, an ear
Later, an arm
Then, a leg.
No violent tearing off of my body
But a voiceless disappearance of each part.
See how a puddle of water appears after the rain
Then disappears without a trace.
How an agreement though unwritten
Disappears.

That feeling.

I call your name…
You can hear me:
A whisper
Of
The
w
i
n
d
.

A name and a name will soon be forgotten.
Change a name change a name, Baden-Baden
But what's behind remains forever begotten.

When the arrow strikes,
The heart breathes its last:

They will be one.

My legs are burning;
In cupped hands, the heart.

I am burning –  the holder
Of the arrow

And I, will be one.