I'm watching the trees shudder under a gentle gale;
Birds chirp, swerve hop line from line.
This day you were born,
A single small pink hand raised!
Lips parted no longer suppressing a wail.

Now come of age you're still beside me.
Your hand has outgrown mine and now -
you take steps -  crawling like infancy across a battleground,
Your eyes are shut now; you are safe and sound.

- N.C.

Leaves settling against a transparent wall
Strips of gold and white swam, from winter to fall.
The voices would often bicker, quarrel and fight,
But the ripples in the water promised hope and delight.

Throw pellets, ask why fish needed 'air'
Giggle at their curled moustaches, in contrast with their fair
Give them titles and names, stories and goals,
Dip fingers in green, trying to create non existent holes.

Years passed and my pond became nothing but decay
And lips still throw insults, even as I lay,
Mosquitoes and their infants, wriggling in my watery home
But from finger to lip I decided, 'The fishes will once more roam.'

A young adult! I could have been mocked
At how in amazement, I stared; in a plastic bag they rocked.
Childhood flooded in, as I imitated their gaping lips,
I followed their words, and measured them from tip.

I set them down and with pride I looked,
As they counted their freedom, and knew they were not hooked.
They at last together, set to the deep,
and only at the sound of pellets, would they often leap.

The arguments grew colder and the hisses relentless
But I carried on feeding and cleaning, proving selflessness.
Yet to my horror, and beyond my control,
The fishes' paces grew slow, turned barely to crawl.

Panic and fear tightened my throat
At the thought limp bodies will cast and float.
But still the war carried on without a halt,
The inner sanctum of peace, turned into an untouched vault.

A week passed, and I sat beside arched spines.
Strips of pond **** carved in feeble lines.
Their marble eyes, glazed with question.
Their lungs stained with emerald resignation.

The clash continued even as I held,
One slick body of scratched brass and felt,
for a moment a weak patter of frail heart beat
saying, "This is your tale," then a whisper: "Your greatest defeat."


- N. C.

A lost specie of youth
Her hands calloused before birth
She became a withering dream
Destined to be played by a propagandist's tongue.

Child round her thigh
Her veins still cry for justice
In the form of New York's
Impure snow.

Blood shot and restless
Torn and corrupt
Young and yet old
Fixed yet disrupt

She'll walk amongst the streets
Chameleon by emotion
She'll wear a carved smile
She'll respond: "I'm fine."

- **N.C

And say you were to look at
The delicate robin now
In the brisk of winter, casting endless song
waiting for the rain to turn to cotton.
A child would see more than its red breast,
more than the petite black coals for eyes.
Within its beating feet and wisp of a tail
It will create a story, ranging between its family, its pass times and its meals

But what about now? The countless grey in your hair,
You may merely see it as an animal, you may barely see it at all or know of its existence.
Now your voice only speaks in monotonous hisses; of finances, stability and the latter.
God forbid, your own son speaks of such a bird, for you'll merely roll your eyes, clasp his wrist and say:
"There is none, let's move."

- N.C.

We had years marked full of innocence, full of childish dreams.  Often at times in the middle of night I’m hit with a wave of nostalgia, I can touch it with my fingertips and depict a full scene in my head when we were young, still creating stories, constructing our future and how we’d be under the same roof with a rustic atmosphere bound to it.  I remember how we would often grow teary eyed and angry when we went a day without speaking words to each other or how our communication was lost to the business of young students, and how we’d be so content seeing one another again.

But now too often I think of the past and look back with a heavy amount of misery, bound to it the voice of love you spoke to me with promises tied in, of how we would live with one another, how we loved one another.  

But that was all before our demons had caught hold of us and molded us into adults, had twisted our future into impossibilities and worries, had drained the innocence out of our pores and had us lose our heads to time and labor.  As the years rolled on by, we had started to forget each other, to forget the secrets we shared and the language we created for one another – we had forgotten what it was truly like to be sordidly in love.

I look back on it now, and how we had grown estranged; and yet we both realize it, we both realize that the purity that dwelt within our hearts has diminished, that you had become a pure adult and I had followed soon after.  Often you tell me how exhausted you are, how you wish life would grab hold of you and knot your final breath, how it would deafen you from the happiness you once had.

Often I tell you how I can barely feel anything between us, how the demon perched upon is has far more presence than our childhood dreams, and how, in the end, the fingertips we once held together, are now far more separate than tip of the sky and the depth of the ocean.