i want to kiss you underwater
in an aquarium
while strangers admire us
from their captivity

i want you to be the only thing
keeping me alive

i want to taste your stale
exhalation of whisky breath
and you
can have all my spent cigarettes

i want to drown
with you grasping at my abdomen
digging into my chest cavity

i want to give up
all my oxygen and watch you
ascend into refracting light

The sun sets on the decisions made,
Those that you were so proud of.
Those that hade you happy.
But your vision constantly changes.
All you knew burns in flames,
There in the horizon!
Do you finally see what you’ve done?
Does the luminosity of the moon make it clear?
Or is her gravity tearing you apart?
Either way all is set in stone.
The clock’s chiming at last,
And everything becomes permanent at midnight.
As thousands stare at time with weary eyes,
Tell me your sins and I’ll tell you mine.

I dare you to love more than yourself
to embrace that around you
which you cannot understand
and to take it upon yourself
to struggle to understand it as best you can.

A silence with you
Is not
a silence

But a moment rich
with peace

And here I am.
One a.m.
Writing about you again, although I swore I wouldn't.
There's just so much to write about.
You fill me with poetic words and phrases that can't help but fall from my mind onto the pages beneath my pen.
I can't help but write about you, everything about you.
I want the world to know how you're a paradox with your big-*** truck and your hipster music.
And how you softly kiss my forehead while you hold me in your arms.
I want to yell and scream about our love, but I'm shy, so I silently write about your big eyes that so seriously look into mine.
And your strong hands that slowly run over my skin.
I need the world to know about your mind, how smart and interesting it is.
So I fill the pages of my book with tiny praises of you.
My biggest compliments strewn across the lined paper, compliments that you will never read.
But that's okay.
You know what your mind, hands, and eyes are like---it's the world that doesn't.
So, world, read my poem and see the big-eyed, strong-handed boy that for some reason has chosen to love me.
Picture him with his unsteady walk because he's afraid of what's in store for him.
But don't miss those flashes of courage that sometimes radiate from him as he chooses to fall in love anyway.
See the boy so full of life, yet unaware of what he's capable of.
Do you love him?
I do.

i do not wish that
no silence lies between us;
there must be those silences
interlaced with our deep breaths
as we meet.
but when our silences
cease to speak
when they have
told us all they can
--in the space of a heartbeat
or the entire span of creation
when they have exhausted themselves
then,
i shall want words
i would have them fall
not gently or slowly
but in great energetic torrents
electrified with our passions
for the words that pass
between us
are not the usual cacophony;
they are music
when words
yours and mine
crisscross.

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
  29.05.2013
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish