There are those who are more enamoured
of dreams than reality
wherein lie their secret longings
cradled in imagination and fantasy--

to be in love with someone they had never met
to surrender to a face, a smile, a kiss,  a moment of ecstasy
beyond the pale of insipid daily living--
far transcending every earthly beauty.

he looked at you like you were
the ocean and he was
desperate to
drown.

Stars
Too many to count
I've tried
But I lost track
I start with one
and become discouraged
Why would god make so many?
Too many.
Billions of stars and
Trillions of plants
Thousands of galaxies
and me. just me.
Looking up into Space
Counting stars.

I gave you a blue stone
You said it was green
It was special to me
You laid it aside
Now I miss the stone
But you have forgotten about it.

I brought you a jar of peppers
Some special mustard
Imported ham
You had already eaten dinner
A week later, the ham was spoiled
You never opened the peppers and mustard.

I brought you a handful of straw,
Buttercream-colored like a baby's hair
Soft, spun from past loves and hope,
Wine pressed in my heart by my own hands.

You gave me a room, unfurnished,
A garden, dead and brown,
A well, neglected and brackish.

Something
vanishes into thick ether,
swimming ripple-less.
Faintly,
from far away,
the drumbeats of Onam.

Moth-eaten poems
in my trunk—inside, brittle,
an old love letter…

I have been fearing death
since five years old
when people told me stories
of ghosts and graves

I have feared it even more
when I lost someone special
lost someone who raised me
and gave me love for the first time

But I have missed
a terribly important aspect of death
his sibling, change
and he is everywhere, in all forms

I have never feared
anything more than change
for I never liked asking why, how,
and what did I do to deserve this

No one asked for this, but the siblings had
That is when we see the cruelty and unfairness of life
Of how we are not in charge of our own fate
And how it has been laid the moment we were born