Winding and wide,
the path pulls us
forward. Falling
around us are
beautiful beads
of radiant rain
washing the white
cobblestone clean.
A neckless the
generous Goddess
broke for our pleasure.
Neatly around us,
undone, one by one,
the precious pearls
are riches we run
to gather, gladly
giving grace for
the gracious gift.
Slanted, the sun,
the morning’s
magnificent arch,
is wide as ever,
though now divided
by seven. The colours
we chase cheerfully,
whistling while we walk.

the town i was born in wasn't big enough
to contain the vastness of my dreams
so i moved out
i spent hours upon hours on the bank of river yamuna
looking for a sign
completely forgetting that a dead river can't speak
i misunderstood its silence for an invitation
so i moved in
i traded my inner peace for smoke filled air
and my innocence for the facade of a happy woman
delhi, i spent years of my life trying to fit in
to make sure that i belong
then why do the stares on the streets
tell me that i don't
delhi why have you been so cruel to me
like a failed mother forcing her expectations on her daughter
no matter what i did
i was never good enough
every time i tried to speak
you just didn't want to hear
you're a city trying to hide its deafness from its people
delhi why are you so unfair?
you throw stones at the workers that build you
and bow down at the feet of your destroyers
maybe you're just as confused and tired as me
people have taken more from you than you could give
so you stand exhausted, defeated and short of breath
and i do the same
for both of us have failed miserably
i could never be your daughter
and you could never be my home

lying in bed, I watch
as the sun's fickle light
bleeds translucent gold
between branches, recalling
    your soft warnings  
not to stare      longingly
at sunsets, but,
I've spent a lifetime
being reckless,
falling in love with gilded
rays I could not keep,
going blind from wanting
affection's abundant
return; it seems
  there's no tame remedy
for loving
           with a poet's heart.

I sink into my waiting depression
as a marble into molten syrup.
My hair and face drip invisibly on the clothes of passers by.  For
how long can the strings of
sadness wind around you?

You listen to my sadnesses
but no longer hear me for
I have frayed your love like
rope in too many attempts
to tie and, having failed, lay
down to the inevitable dirge
of my unrelenting tears.

Daylight brings the last notes
of silence.  The clamor of
tasks hold me up.  The
progression to the end of
diurnal relief and I am balanced
on the truth of nightime's
faithless tones of remembering.

Caroline Shank

Snow is but listening silence,
Sent from our dark past,
Inaudible ghosts made visible
In the butterfly net of cold.

"Anything you lean into deeply, with love and passion, will bring you to yourself."
                                    - @nohmtema


and what of these loves
and passions, what do
they speak
from our withered lips
when time has molded
us into monoliths baking
beneath a multitude of days;

will we recall the beauty,
the bloodthirsty rivers devoted
in toil of our worship?  
will our mind arc
in recognition of its inception;
will these feeble hands recollect
the efforts painted upon
the earth's cortex?  

will our devotions withstand
time's industrious use -
become memorialized in song,
penciled within leather tomes,
recited upon lips of lovers,
hung upon gallery walls,
or perhaps replicated
in a miracle as slight as
a child's wink?

should these devoted cathedrals
of our hearts' construction
withstand this narrow dimension,
may those who later feed upon
their artistry weld them into hope,
wander their naves and transepts,
sing from choir lofts and cultivate
their own melody of beauty
for eras to come.

When I think of those days, I only
remember gathering wood in the cold
in my black coat so I could get a fire going
in the cast iron of a gray early morning;
I dream what it is to be a man lying
beside a delicate woman, sad and quiet,
playing the mandolin, looking at her as
if she were a couple of plums together like
a cluster within reaching distance on the branch;
thinking of the lunar dust of her face, and how
her fingers were like feathers; I heard
the silence of the mill wheel not turning
in the stream and the wild turkeys not drinking;
I knew they had hypnotized themselves wide-
eyed and staring into the steel ax of the creek.

you are afraid to die in your sleep because you think you will forget how to breathe. it’s okay if you do; this mortal, dying body isn’t something familiar to you.

neither is the air you breathe, or the soil beneath your feet, or all what this body craves and all what it needs — but it’s okay, see, you’re not lost. not yet, anyway. you simply don’t know where you want to be.

you aren’t even sure if you do want to be.

but here you are.

here you stand, in all your glory, void of any connection to this planet and its people, and your ears ring. you listen. you don’t care, but you listen and you hear voices, coming from beneath your feet, and they’re calling out to you — they’re calling out your name, telling you where you need to be —

and it’s right here.

damascus. she’s a city built on seven and she has many names — the ones you call her are the ones  your heart claims. jasmine blooms at night but thrives under the sun; shameless and proud, aggressive and loud. and you love it more than you’ve ever loved.

it’s damascus, and it’s a holysite come nightfall, at midnight. you follow your heart and wander around, and you forget not to breathe so you end up drowning in the jasmines — the yasmeen, and that’s when you realise it —

you are more alive than you have ever been, standing right there, in all your glory, with the yasmeen framing the old streets and glowing in the moonbeam. you are more alive than you have ever been.

you try not to breathe, but it’s too late, and your fear of dying in your sleep is replaced.

a newfound fear of living forever swims in your head, haunting your thoughts like a shark with its eyes on a prey. you’re afraid of living forever. it’s okay if you do; you know that the world will someday turn gray, you know that it will all fade away, but you won’t be alone.

the voices calling out to you — your ancestors, kings and queens, artists and their muses, the ones who wrote history and the victims of the margins, the saints and the sinners and the ones who got away with their sins — their voices will always be there, echoing in the air you breathe, calling out your name from the soil beneath your feet.

they will always be there, and so will this city — damascus, the city with an infinite faces and endless names. the city, the beloved of fate, the sister of destiny.

and if she were not fate’s beloved, how do you explain her immortality? and if she were not the sister of destiny, how do you explain the fact that you ended up here, with all your mortal, dying glory?