When you’ve been with someone you love for a while
They leave these marks on you
Invisible, but seared onto your skin, your brain, your heart
Try as hard as you can, to wash or scrub it away
The truth is that they’re here to stay.
When you’ve been with someone you loved for a while
When you’ve breathed the same air, shared the same space,
Dreamed and lived and cried together,
Try as hard as you can, to break away
These memories are here to stay.
When you lose someone you love,
In the cruel ways this universe toys around with our lives,
How do you breathe,
How do you exist,
How do you tell yourself that you’ll become whole again,
That you’ll reminisce and smile
And not remember and cry and cry and cry?

Of nights spent awake, blank pages, empty thoughts.
Of dreams misconstrued, eyes wide open, staring at the wall.
Fear holds me prisoner, silence grips me tighter.
Words were my ally, now they have failed me too.

Sundays spent in the dark, probing memories,
Pleading to be left untouched.
Of hurt and regret, my constant companions,
Once upon a time, helped me write songs for my broken heart.

Of the moon and the stars,
The serene night sky,
Back when I could serenade them endless,
Now I greet them with empty hands.

Of days when words spilled at the brim of my chalice,
Now parched and dry, soulless and wary.
Aye, my misgivings keep me company,
As I ironically write an ode to my writer's block.

I'll paint my skin black
In every spot, in every crack
When a happy moment
Was tainted by a touch that lingered far too long.
All those days under a burning sun,
Running, hiding, from eyes that incessantly follow
Looking over my shoulder, with feet that fumble,
Praying not to fall,
Quickly dashing down a hallway,
Hoping four walls of a home will keep me secure.
As my breathless body is reduced
To a mere statue made of stone,
You run your gnarly fingers over my decaying flesh and bones.
“Smile a little more”, “Here,see what I've got”-
I cower in fear, powerless,
And they wonder why I don't speak out soon.
So instead, I'll pen this down
To stop myself from counting,
Every memory seared into my brain,
Every time I've felt less human,
Every time I've felt disgraced.
Maybe tomorrow, I won't wake up screaming.

I want to meet you between the pages of a book you can't put down
Maybe under the stars on a night as lovely as this one.
Create dreams that you can never dare to forget
Stir hearts with great stories of lovers lost at war.
Paint poetry with colours that are ineffable, indescribable
Lock lips at dawn and then at dusk.
I want to walk on a bed of exquisite flowers
Touch the skies and feel the earth.
But here I'll lay, among my thoughts and words
Maybe tomorrow I'll give reality a chance to impress.

A solitary house stands steady against the howling winds deep in a long forgotten forest. A lonely figure sits inside, hunched over a book, with a pen in hand. Gently rocking to and fro, the mind pacing back and forth, her heart bleeds onto empty pages, scripting a story in a bright crimson hue, slowly taming every wayward thought.

With incessant scribbling, the rebel of a silent night, she tears into the paper with the strength of a lion's jaw. The organized chaos in her head, breaks out like sweat on a blank page. Take note, she dances ethereally between her web of words, lightly treading between fire and ice.

She purges herself in the deepest realms her words can take her to, traversing scapes of wary prose that barely sparks a fire, eloping from a conference of cluttered minds.

Sometimes these whispers grow strong, almost to a blaring cacophony, of an endless discord between the heart and the mind, laying waste to my sanity that was once revered, so, so long ago.
And as the mind drifts over the edge, overlooking a bottomless chasm, there is little light that shines from within, battling what is left of a person that was whole.
But you watch from your safe confines, tucked away in your niche of pretentiousness, as I fall into a fathomless hole, a tut-tut for the 'poor soul', words that could mean less and for you, life goes on.
But what was lost was that what could be found, but you let it fall.

Little do you know that these words
Can silence you,
Leave you questioning the ignorance
That you believe is true.
My reality is as real as yours.
So don't you dare pretend,
Everything happens behind closed doors.
This oppression I speak of,
And the rage I harbour,
Screaming from the bottom of a well.
The frustration and the sheer exhaustion, to be counted,
Begging to be heard.
There is a war,
You may not be aware of.
Pride and dignity stripped away,
On these unseen battle grounds.
You can chose to be blind,
But you cannot call me insane.
This is real,
And this is happening,
Whether you like it or not.

Heavy hearts, we're lost in the fog,
Paving roads to places unknown.
Growing sorrows, skyward bound,
Forever fleeing, like a vagabond.
If our arms could feel the weight of our souls,
And our names could reveal the battles fought,
Here, we are survivors
Unsung heroes.
Sunken ships have greater stories,
Some even worth the gold.
With time, comes healing.
With love, comes cure.

I remember, back when I was a child.
And all that mattered was not getting caught having one too many candies.
I'd come back from an exhausting day at school, to the smell of fresh dinner and a sister ready to pester.
Sleep,wake and pretend to do homework, wait to go to school the next day, because all meant was to sit next to the boy who'd make me laugh and blush
Oh! But of course I remember the bad days. The rebellious child who could not bear to hear a 'no’, choosing to go to bed crying, only to wake up to a mother always willing to forgive.
I remember wanting to run, fly, soar, dive and all forms of escapade you can imagine. I wonder why.
Now, here I am, in the dead of the night, by my window,
With my charred lips and breaths of fire,
A parched tongue with the taste of cheap wine,
Somewhere, in an unfamiliar land.
Oh yes! I ran, I flew,
Until I lost myself to everything this realm of false hopes and white lies had to offer.
I was the girl waiting for an adventure,
The smell of pine trees and the wind in my hair.
I was the girl waiting to fall in love,
Only to find myself lying next to strange men.
I still go to bed crying, however.
Now I wake to up to an empty house in the middle of nowhere.
I play with the fumes I exhale, as another day begins,
Somehow wondering when this will all end.

It was maybe just a whisper.
You and I,
Sitting by the window
And waiting for the sun to burn.
Watching as the wind blew steadily
And the leaves fell to the ground.
And this whisper,
As soft as it was inaudible
Became a voice.
Something distinct
Yet residing in the background.
The skies were turning grey
And there loomed this morbid
Atmosphere of unfortunate misery
Mingled with a sense of lost cause.
We sat by the window
Waiting for the sun to burn.
And this voice became louder
And no more singular.
It was no more a hallucination
But rather a collective conscience.
And our thoughts became one
Cradling our sense of union.
That flame we never blew out
Became the wildfire within us.
And now sitting by the window
Listening to the world sing its one song
Here I am, with you
No more in a blazing inferno
But a raging fire of change.

A faint glow of light
Casting long shadows in the corridor
Dust gathering,
In this house riddled with secrets
Lurching behind the curtains.
Time, stands still,
As these walls seem to breathe
With their eyes watching me.
In this endless solitude,
I've found my solace
In this madness,
I have begun to revel.
Intoxication finds me hospitable
Blankly staring at the photographs
Hung up high on the wall.
And I whisper into the growing darkness
An unsolvable equation to my insanity.
I have lost myself within these hallowed halls,
Built a temple around my being
With my inebriated dreams.
I fall deeper and deeper
Further away from all that is real.
Oh how comforting,
This swirling blackness,
Ushering me in to the unknown.

I am not a poet
But when thoughts, like rain,
Drench me in my solitude,
Words, they flow like a stream.
I am not a poet
But how can I see
The simpler joys of life,
And not create a song to be sung.
I am not a poet,
Nor an artist.
I am myself,
And you are my masterpiece.
I am not a poet,
If you are not the dream.
If I am a poet,
*Then you are what sets these pages on fire.

In this fleeting existence, we call life
Breaths of air, unlabored, unsought,
We are but specks in an infinite universe
Colliding with another, now and again.
And as time effaces all strides of victory
We hold a part of each other,
Treasured and locked.
Sing anthems to our plight
To how our love, untainted,
Turned into a story.
As we held our hands and looked to the stars
Leaving our woes to burn with the fire,
We were silent that night,
That beautiful night,
Yet we never stopped speaking.
And to the faint glow of ember,
The smell of the ocean,
We sat there gazing at the endless sky.
To what we owe this joy we have,
Finding each other, holding our fragile hearts.
For you heard my song,
And I, yours.
Now living seems less arduous,
Existence is bliss.
Because we found each other
In this infinite universe.

We wander, lost and unfound
Our lives, stories untold.
Weary souls, we walk an endless road
In the light of a burning star,
We rise and fall.

You may see the universe in our eyes,
Bright stars swirling in the deepest black.
Aren't we all waiting for the same thing?
By the side of dusty roads,
Waiting for love to cease us in this moment.
And we let our hearts lust, and be wild.
Because only then are we alive.
Love is pain and pleasure,
Sadness and joy,
And everything in between,
The darkness and the light,
The wrong and the right.

Let the storms take over
And the wind howl through the night.
Let the tides rise
And the waves rush to the shore.
We are everything we've ever wanted to be,
Everything, we can ever be.

I dream,
Let me slumber, kind heart.
Stare into the fire,
Burn your eyes with the truth.
As a falling star turns to dust,
Dreamers will awake
To the sound of an ending world.

I cry,
Sing to me, minstrel.
A tear will flood this barren land
Our hearts have run dry of love.
Listen as the sisterhood prays,
Shouting out to the gods
That forgot us.

I crawl,
In the dark, take me.
These wounds have turned septic,
With the poison in our veins.
Read my lips as I sing of a battle,
A page out of an endless book,
Written with the sins we bled.

I forget,*
Enlighten me, lost soul.
Have the gates been closed,
Have we lost all hope?
Blood and dust,
Pain and misery,
Where have all the good men gone?

This night,  these stars,
This breeze, that embraces my heart,
As it entwines with every fold of my skin,
Oh,  how I wish it was you, rather,
Here,  holding me in your arms.
May this wind carry my longing,
To where you are,
And find you in all earnest hope,
Wanting the same,
And hear my song as a whisper in the night.

"We're all made of stars.",
He said.
Isn't that beautiful?
You and I,
Specks of dust and gas,
Floating around in space.
Before any concept of love,
Even evolved into existence,
You and I,
Were still spinning around
In a burning star,
Call it our own little dance.
And as we collided,
That essence of your particulate nature,
Embedded into my own.
And through eons of time and space,
Every bit of me wanting to reach out,
To you.
Maybe that's why it feels right,
Everything we are
Or could ever be.
You and I,
We are made of stars.

What is that swirling darkness,
That velvety shroud of comfort?
Falling slowly into an abyss,
Devoid of all reality.
Let me lie here,
Let me slumber,
Maybe dissolve into this blackness.

This silence is music,
A lust, I cannot comprehend.
Let me rest,
No, let me wander.
A dreamland to discover,
A temple for my insanity.

Voices peak,
Noises from afar,
As a daunting fear settles in.
A bounding pulse, a throbbing ache,
As shadows begin to creep.
Please, let me dream,
Just let me be.
Here,
In this void,
In this realm,
There's no one who'll want to forget me.

A vast endless plain, wet from the storm and the hail,
Rolling hills with a perpetually infinite progression of scenery.
Here, the rules of life, are those in a game of cards,
Play well, forget not, with each turn of the wheel.
And at the horizon, beyond the reach of man or beast,
After the heavy grey and rain,
Forms a rainbow, a bridge with the dreams.
This storm passed, long before the shadows could haunt,
What to fear, my mind at peace,
Yet here I stand in a soulless valley,
Where is that *** of gold, they promised,
At the end of the colour scheme?

Walking back from the train station,
Holding nothing but a bag and my back,
A gripping pain to encompass and a loss of hearing,
From all the rat-tat of the engine,
An incessantly crying baby,
And a mother-in-law who felt no need
To hide her animosity with the new girl in the family.
Sweat and dust, never, ever is it the most pleasant combination.

Walking amongst the noise and talk of the town,  
Lost in a herd of rickshaws,
I left my mind to wander to the extent
Of remembering the scenes speeding past on the journey back,
The flush greenery and the intermittent glimpses of cattle,
With the uncanny uninterested look on their faces.
As the rhythmic chug-chug and the whistle utterly failed to lull my senses,
No peace attained there, but mere longing to be out and about.
And yet, out here, amongst the chai-wallas
And the shopkeepers trying to buy their way with the foreigners,
As the sun stubbornly keeping its promise to shine, on none but me,
All that kept my feet moving, was the urge to see him.

And as I think of the last time I saw his face,
Pressed against my mother's,
Tears well up, waiting to burst out.
Leaving him to grow amongst strangers,
Unfamiliarity was his bedrock,
Merely seven, only beginning to understand his way around the world.
Footsteps became faster, involuntarily,
And the heat bore no sympathy for my afflictions.

Ten years, long gone and forgotten,
Growing with the world and aging with the universe,
Amassing knowledge and nurturing a personality,
Every milestone I missed, every step I didn't take along with him,
The guilt was bearing me down,
A burden I will forever carry.

Running back home,
This prodigal daughter,
Running back to my son.
Give me peace, my mind,
For this life I chose,
Was bitter and hard.
What I left behind,
Is what every night, remainder,
Haunts me, in the dark.

When you have arrived at the farthest reaches of the horizon,
Where the sun light is entwined with the waves of your hair,
The sound of the ocean, as clear as
These pictures on the wall,
When the sand of time has worn you of your dreams
All that is left is but the whispers in the air,
That time, forgotten, you and I,
As we sat underneath a star lit sky.

And in this empty house,
All I see is shadows,
Of when everything we had or wanted,
Was each other.
How easily have we let our fingers slip past,
Our voices, we let them fade with the light.
Time never healed my scars,
Smiling through these tears,
Here I am,
Cold and alone.

Seasons have changed,
Storms have passed,
I hold onto a washed out picture,
Holding hands, dreaming of a tomorrow,
Bright eyes and smiles,
A sepia toned photograph,
Of a time bygone.
Yet, here I am,
In this empty house.

And all I want to remember,
Is that night,
Sitting with you,
Underneath the starlit sky.

She stood in the middle of the courtyard
Her arms outstretched, embracing life,
What little she knew of it.
In the rain, she let her bonds fall to the ground,
This sense of freedom, if only for a moment,
She wanted it to be her own.
That brief time, between fearing and dreaming,
She let herself loose.
As the rain washed the blood and the mud,
Her soul needed the cleansing, she thought.
For the first time in years, she chose not to look for scars,
She forgot the pain.
In this big house, she was a prisoner.
Prisoner of rites and beliefs,
Of men and patriarchy.
And only when the rains came to visit,
Did she forget the cruelty and the evil.
Only then, did she believe of balance and equilibrium,
Only then, did she wish for rights and freedom.
In her dreams she saw a much better world,
Outside these four walls.
And in those dreams,
She wasn't a prisoner of fate or creed,
She was a woman of no fears.

Aren't we all hiding behind lies,
Stuck staring at the window pane.
Meaningless disparity lashing out within
A feud between the soul and the mind.
Washed out skin, colourless eyes
Most of the time, exhibiting tyranny.

Isn't it obvious, why we spent so much time
With our heads bowed down, on our knees,
Begging for mercy.
Even as the sirens go off inside our heads,
Distracted by all the fallacy.

What if we just stopped for a second,
Lift our eyes upto the skies?
Maybe wonder why there are so many stars,
Hung up so high.
Why do we try to find ways to look down and feel lost
When all we need is a little love, to give and behold.

If I were to give value to emotions packed away,
Locked up twice, even thrice in safety boxes
With maximum security and minimum dignity,
If I were to remember even a single moment of the time
I spent worshipping the very ground you walked,
Let alone give heed to my seemingly uncaring eyes
That craved to have the tiniest glance of you,
You will have succeeded to burn me entirely
From within, leaving scars deep enough
To be an unceasing pain for years to come.
This will I have forged, from heaven knows where,
Gives me the strength to appear unscathed and untouched,
By the very drug you are.
The essence of my being, dry and weary by your absence,
Knowing very well that I can only be scorched by everything you are.
No, you're not the tempting desire to set myself on fire,
But the very force that makes me want to be a part of the raging fire...

*You are.

I am the Wind
Chaotic, Dynamic,
But often the soft*  Breeze,
Gently treading,
Silently whispering,
*Creating ripples in the water.

'Tis easier to look at a mirror
Than to dare introspect,
As the reflection subdues
The deceit buried in a tangled web of lies.
As the light dances on ripples in the water,
The shimmer it casts
To a void that is our souls.
There's darkness all around,
In our hearts and in our minds.
And in times like these
When our thirst is quenched with only more fire,
Our thoughts become inked in red,
Reminded of the weakness of our fortitudes,
And the shallowness of our words,
Let alone be our deeds.

The story of how a good man goes to war,
Lost to the morals of an unsound mind,
Resounds like a thunder in the midst of nowhere.
And as he raised his hand
And plunged a knife
Into the very heart of another his kind,
There he lost himself to the deafening screams of mankind.

And we find ourselves without voices
Drowning in a sea full of tears.
There is ONLY us,
THIS is all us...
OUR tragedies
OUR failures
OUR deeds.
We let ourselves fall,
**Even before the walls came tumbling down.

See, I can smile
Like the sun only shines on me.
But with every wrinkle and every fold,
Every muscle that works to create this fallacy on my face,
It hurts more than the pain,
I try to keep hidden inside.

Look at those stars we claimed our own,
Picked them one by one and named them too.
Now as I look up to the sky at night
Tears, I try to hold back.
Fighting to make myself believe what you are..
Only a lie imprinted in the back of my mind,
Slowly fading into the dark.

I have learnt to forget memories,
The ones that hurt the most.
I have learnt to not look at a star
And wish that things could be bright.
I have stopped dreaming,
Knowing they don't help at night.
I have stopped waiting,
Because its time that deepens the scar.

When I'm picking up broken pieces,
Of a life that derailed when I lost you to time,
All that remains are your words,
Leaving me writhing in pain,
On endless dark nights.

He stares into empty space,
In his eyes, faces fade and die.
Darkness creeps from the corners of his mind,
Slowly losing self to time and tide.
Standing in the midst of chaos,
Charred remains of humanity clings on barely.
As the very foundation seems to crumble and fall,
Blood and dust
Fills the crevices of his heart.

He sits by the window,
Pale face,
Scared.
Outside,
Not even light finds way through the smog.
Bloodied knuckles and broken bones,
His small hands hold onto the remains of a burnt picture,
Smiling faces and sad eyes.
Afraid of the shadows,
Crimson dreams visit him at night.
He looks at the reflection in the window,
Watching as his sunken eyes brim with tears,
Wondering why they left him here alone.

As he lies down under the covers,
Trying to forget the gunshots and the screams
Echoing thru the night,
He wishes to never grow up,
Not here,
Not now,
Not when *hope is dead and gone.

Wake up to the morning stars as dew drops fall on silent ground.
The night falls short of a breathless whisper,
As the pitter patter of falling rain drowns all the noise.
Your kiss is an awakening from the nightmare of life,
Struck with poison from a broken arrow,
My eyes bewitched by all that you are.
Tear me into pieces for everything I know is buried beneath lies.
Cover me with your passion.
I
Can't
Breathe.
You've got stars in your eyes
And in them I am lost to the night.