how do I love myself,
when I can see myself inflicting pain
on those who loved me first?

Some days I will pick up an itchy caterpillar
with two pieces of cardboard
and move it out of harms way.

Other days,
I will kick a harmless beetle
because it breathes too loud
too close to my home.

I never tried to be not nice,
but borders get dizzy sometimes
I am human on both sides of the coin
after all.

the sun waved to me
said something about a breathtaking smile.

the moon leaned in
whispered something about sorrowful eyes.

I saw you walking towards me,
green and blue and full of life.

Flowers bloomed, the wind sighed.
They were teaching me about
love and sacrifice.

april skies have such potential
     and i never understood why they chose to waste
it away on
r
   a
i
      n
   s
when instead the sun can become a magician
and radiate wonders when it disappears

it's just the empty thunderbolts, my darling
they wouldn't dare ruin our evening.

all the energy they would've held surrounds us now.
all their spark is between our fingertips, their fires in our heart,
the light in our eyes.

they're just the empty thunderbolts, my darling
and the thunder a proclamation of my love.

We're here now,
and theres more than the two of us.
But there's one feeling, and the same ache
yet different struggles
- * -
We all think the same things,
yet in different tongues.
The histories do not include us.
Our taste buds have had to adapt to the wind here,
we have learnt from the best of the chameleons.
- * -
It's the same stage set up and the curtains were never drawn,
but our eyes see a completely different story being played out.
Collective whispers greater than a shout.
Peace of mind has been a while, it'll take long...
Home isn't where the heart is, when the heart keeps moving around.

you carry the burden of our histories on your shoulders,
not to repeat them but to know where we went
wrong to end up this way.

You carry the pride of our histories in your heart,
not to repeat them but to know someone's always cared,
and that it's our turn to care now.

इस बोझ को अकेले मत उठाना, इस ख़ुशी को बिखेरके चलना।

The silence and darkness are like twins joined at the hip,
like lovers holding hands,
like tress rooted to the soil.

Why do you let fear fill up these crevices
that form because
anything dim yearns for the quiet,
and silence curls her fingers around the dark,

The bond remains, however twisted,
till the end of time,
a bond of love.

I'm in a beautiful place,
a place where the wind blows and the people smile,
the trees sway and time flies.

I am where I thought I wanted to be,
then what is this crushing feeling that won't let me breathe?

the regions that mother nature spares,
the places saved from raging oceans, and trembling grounds,
from erupting fires and disease and drought,

those are for you to go and ****,
with knives and words,
guns, bombs and
those are the regions for humanity to destroy.

Let me tell you about that fleeting moment
when I felt an emotion
that I cannot describe.

LIGHT.
drowsy and switched on by that little flutter in your heart,
the shine glides across the space
till it has molded the world
around it into warmth.

DISTANCE.
far enough to be another world, yet just close enough to be real.
the warmth is out of reach now
but we’ll get there someday, soon, but
the metres between turn my sight blue.

BODIES.
his hands twirling her and her hands guiding him,
their movements spell out words and raw beauty.
so while the world falls deaf to my ears and
their shadows dance with them-
I hear echoes of laughter, clinking glass and…love.

HAPPINESS.
I feel it all at once, yet the words escape my mind before I can
make a sound to spit them out, I don’t understand
what this feeling is.

It’s a wish to see that happiness reflect in my life,
a wish to not fear the future.
So I, a boy with the world at my fingertips and
a cloud over my heart,
describe that fleeting moment
in an attempt to understand it.

i am surrounded by warm bodies,
but i crave a loving touch.
the world is fast pacing
but i feel like i am stuck.

my stomach isn't doing well, and neither is my brain
                my heart just got up from a  grave, and oh look- it's falling again.

"
There are two kinds of space exploration:
One: you do with physics.
The other: you do with poetry.
The best astronauts I know
Defy gravity with words.
And it gives me hope
That maybe I don’t need
12,000 kilonewtons of sheer force
To know the universe where I belong.
"

i was told that she moved like the wind,
and her eyes carried whispers from the ocean that
her hands breathed like the leaves but

it wasn't till i saw her in the lights,
dancing as the music swirled around
speaking like she could chase away sorrows and
singing because the world depended on her words, that

her voice reminded me of the home where i belong.

I've heard people who are away from each other say-
"at least we're under the same sky"

but we're not,
because it doesn't rain here the way it does back home,
the sun isn't warm enough to tingle my bones.
the sky here bends to meet buildings and towers,
not the hills and mountains and their wonder

So I say-
*"but we're not. the sky here is different."

Part 1

Because I was a part of my mother once,
and her essence is cherry blossoms,
her mind is  streaming warmth
and nothing that is from her can be insignificant.

Somewhere there is a piece of paper flying over an ocean,
over mountains no one can measure or name,
over houses that haven't felt a heartbeat
in years.

It's a paper with your initials and mine,
a message to me from you.

And while it travels over magic and forgotten adventures,
I sit in anticipation for those strokes of ink
on paper, and the warmth of your fingers
with skylines in my sight.

i find myself wishing,
that history does not repeat itself.
especially not
on the anniversary of sad events.

since it was almost exactly a year ago
that tragedy struck and lives
came crashing to the ground.

almost a year ago, and i don't want to see
the tears and pain resurface from cracks again.

i am the poem and the poetess,
with irregular rhyme patterns and
dreams in clouds brewed from midnight coffee.

i am a prose neatly typed out,
handed in ten minutes after the deadline
stained with morning black tea.

what is keeping me from reaching out and grabbing my dream?

your A minuses, your rejection letters, your mundane home-works,
your beauty and size standards, appropriate clothing manners
your gender roles and restrictions.

you.

and countless other things that end at me too,
but i am too angry to recall them.

i wish people still wrote letters,

i wish we still penned down our thoughts,
so that your tear stains could guide me to your heart
and the coffee or wine stains to those sleepless nights

so that the scent of the sheet could tell me
what perfume was your new favourite
and your lazy handwriting showed how tired you were

theres so much more of you on paper,
and theres so much of you i miss.

my thoughts are paper planes
that don't seem to see the runways that i drew
on the blank sheets in front of me.

thoughts hang around my head like an itch that won't go away
       and they're *making me scratch my brains out

I won't be plucking off petals from my rose
like those lovesick Romeos and Juliets on park benches.
I don't need luck and petal symmetry to believe.

I won't litter the petals
like lipstick marks or blood stains on white sheets.
I won't be placing them in a vase half full,
that's temporary.

I have a better plan in mind,
a better way to immortalize
my rose. Deep within a gift,
pressed between pages
is a symbol of your love to me.

Why do I need to love myself,
when I have your words comforting me
                 like the cup of hot tea in my hands and the blanket around me
                         this cold winter night.

there is something unsettling in the air

maybe it's the sound of thunder rattling the windows,
                               maybe it's the lightning tearing the sky apart
      or the vibration of the earth below my feet, maybe it's her laugh.
                                        
                 ­     something is adding to that fire ablaze in my heart.

                                                                ­                  whatever it is *it scares me

another day
a few more hours
till this time comes again.
look out, for i will make
the same mistakes.
but these errors are not random
they are natural fluctuations.

I was told to write about how I feel.

But what I feel isn’t just a noun I can express in words and pages. Tremendous waves of emotions come crashing and I forget how to swim. Rarely are they a calm sea, where sooner or later, I find a boat and am safe.

There is no boat today. The sea is churning. The sky is enraged.

Sometimes the emotions are a fire, orange and warm, fueling me to keep moving on. But when they are blue and searing hot, it burns me from within. I’m afraid you will catch fire too.

But the fire is my light in the darkness, my lighthouse. Not attracting boats, but giving them a signal to stay away.

I am torn between right and wrong, and the only way I can talk about my ‘feelings’ is by referring to them as natural occurrences and disasters.

Disasters. That reminds me of a lot of things.

Step by step we move forward
Whispers crowd the atmosphere
With fire in our hands
and hearts torn apart
we keep looking ahead
we walk under the stars,
while you are somewhere beyond.

My heart at times
feels like empty skies
devoid of suns and stars.
Painted with clouds,
All the blue thrown out.
Like a slate wiped clean.
Sometimes you feel so much,
that you can feel
no more.
Not cleansed, not neat, not free.
You become
Empty.

It's easy to get obsessed with something
that isn't good for the self.

For me, it was you.

You were that ****** song,
I couldn't get out of my head.
That type of chocolate,
I could never get enough of.
Those hours I overslept.
That escape I found,
every time I wept.

Those day dreams.
Those feelings.
That smile.

None were good for me,
yet that is what I'm craving.

I'm afraid I'll end up living a small life,
in a small place,
and my small dreams
are just what remain.
That when I'm decaying somewhere
far underground and returning
to where I began
All I'll be is a small memory
in just another brain.
The words I've scribbled (or typed)
will all be long gone.
the people I made smile
will be all far away.
I'm afraid of when
my small spirit starts to fade.

We believe scars are weaknesses.
They are not, they shouldn’t be.
They should be prizes and trophies
To hang on walls and dust everyday
And when someone comes over you can say,
“Look, I was there. I tried, I fought,
and I survived. I lived.
I am alive.”

Sleep holds no comfort
Burning eyes don't
soothe the soul

Broken and jagged
pieces of me
litter the floor

No poem, no song
no kisses or hug
can make me feel
whole

You came over and
sat next to me
I froze the moment
and that is where
i'll be.