trembling, fearful of a
raw untamed passion as they
almost touch and
inhale the scent of a
last, lingering kiss.

slight smile
knowing, yet intrigued
by the wonderfulness of life
that seems dreamlike to be real;
by the inkling of a poem
that’s like a baby refusing to leave its womb;
by the sparks that fly
at the thought of your lover.
just a slight smile
knowing, yet intrigued,
when billions of volts of electricity
transport the smiler
to a world that
exists
but not really.

new leaves clung
to their branches
kissing
flirting
holding
but they fell away
(awkward) -
within arm radius of the bark,
of course,
close enough to touch
(still in his territory); but
not close enough.

wondering, wistful, whether
they were allowed
that magic
even outside
     outside their intimate bubble of secrecy,
even after
     after the spring of the sparks
of their
first kiss and
they wondered and wondered
- too long -
and now they leave.

She was always
Simply
           A
              Lock
                      Away; all they needed was the
Key.
Those who found it
Lost it soon enough too.
But those who fashioned it,
themselves
Without deterring from the task
Without trying to replicate a lost key
With nothing but a
egami euqinu
In their minds
Of what the lock looked like
And what the key should look like
Only those few,
Few, very few
Wizards
who toiled to work their magic
Succeeded.
And they never lost their key
They necklaced it around their heart
A symbol that was now etched into
their existence
Entangled in the life of the veins
That this heart so solely depended on
Becoming one with them

Those were the lucky ones

The others, the ones she wished mattered
Were still only searching
Searching
Meandering
Probing
Ferreting
Still only looking for
A key that had once been used
And whose lock was now
Rust rusting rusted
With time.

Still searching
But never creating, of course
Always only searching
Until they found it



        And then lost it again.

Why is it so difficult to maintain
And to keep maintaining
An equilibrium?
Why is it so impossible to be
A little of both,
A little of none?
Why is it so, so unthinkable to have
That stability
That acceptance
That sheer pleasure of
Not having to lose one in order to keep another?
Why can’t one be
A pivot?

Why must there be
A victor?
Why must an
Equal
Always become some sort of a
subordinate runner up
For you to prove your own worth?

Do you see competition
When you look at your own
Virtuality
In the honesty of a mirror?
Do you wonder whether the
Fragility of the glass
Prefers your face to that of your reflection?
And then,
With all that might
You pretend to have to the world,
Do you pound down on
That very same glassy frangibility
And
Break
It
For a supposition,
For an assumption
of inferiority
That the crystal did nothing
To prove, provoke or propel?

If not, then why are you
Shattering
Both, the glass and the reflection?
Why are you so eager
To run away from the exactness of your proximity
To the glass;
from the equality of your peer?
And why,
Why do the actions of the image
Bother you
When it actually does nothing but
replicate your own?

Why does the shattered glass
Create no shard of
The solidity of your soul
When its only sin was being
A pivot
Between you and your compeer.
Why.

Feelings masked
Under a boulder of
Suppression
Painted with smiles
To hide the frustration that was
Bubbling, bubbling
Inside, never escaping
Because it shouldn’t, right?
Fatality:
The consequence of a mistaken exposure of the
Achilles’ heel,
carefully veiled by
socks or such something,
Shrouded by indifference and a pretence of amnesia.

And yet, yet sometimes, sometimes
At the sight of the clear blue sky
Where two dreams had once soared together;
At the sound of the synced rhythm
Of the bell-like laughter
that still echoed
In the present silence of an absence;
At the memory of numbers,
The date of union,
The date of parting;
At the smell of small things -
Coffees and teas and wet earth and flowers
The preferences of which had been tiffs
Time and again, time and again
In a distant past;
At the taste of tears of another loved one,
That seasoned the bitter sorrow of loss
With tangy flavours
That left not ever the tongue.
Just sometimes, sometimes,
Even at the gentle
Trickling
               of
                 rain
That had once inspired a
Melodious dance of a now-truant soulfulness

Somewhere, something, sometimes
Cracks.

A hint of sheer pressed down sorrow
Visible in the gradually extinguishing eye
Heard in the reluctantly cracking voice
As one breaks
Shard by jagged shard
Falling out of a patched up soul
Like petals of a flower, counting:
Missing him, missing him not…
Missing him.
And a now porous wall
Leaves a gaping peephole to expose
A separate world full of hidden memories,
The reminder of which still always
leads to such an
Unprecedented
Moment of weakness.

Distance, the sole aim, 
Far away from anyone she ever knew
Some sugar, some spice
Some difference
Something erratic and unpredictable
Unseen to her eyes, unheard of to her ears,
A newness, to contrast the
Monotony that is routine.
Perhaps a thrill of people actually
Missing her presence,
Couple with an anonymity,
An emancipation from having to 
Conform
To the rules of where she belonged.
The runaway face of a vagabond,
Searching, searching for somewhere
To trash the label that
People had already  plastered to her identity.
Masked under a smile,
Prepared to be whoever she wanted 
To be;
Finally fulfilling dreams 
That were otherwise shackled 
By chains of her own ipseity, 
By words she never said
But were quoted as hers anyways.
The runaway face of a stranger now,
Tasting tears that those who loved her
Would shed in her memory.
She revelled in this finality,
This realisation that hit them now
That she was gone.
As though a hidden price tag had been revealed 
As though a number had just been scanned from a 
Barcode,
For her real worth hadn’t been comprehended
By those who saw the bars of the cryptogram
As mere lines
Of varying width (moods),
Wholly existing amidst 
The conventional, yet strangely unattainable  
Black and white
That was her, and her alone,
But had now morphed
As distinct colours of a 
Different kind of light into
The runaway face of a lone victor.