The direction you have looked at
all your life.
Looking for the lost.
Searching for the reasons.
Waiting for your life.
Look opposite that direction.
You will find a kind heart.
It won’t be what you want or need.
But it will be enough
to live your life.
Enough to make you
never want to look back.

I see this small image of me

in my mind’s eye.

In a world filled with black fog,

there in the center stands someone.

Who feels like

my life personified.

I feel I am copy of whoever

stands in that darkness.

I feel I only exist there.

I feel I am the darkness.

I take each step forward

thinking about the steps you took without me.

My heart has faith

in the love that it felt

and it knows not how to give up.

But the pain of your indifference and neglect

hits the shore made of pebbles and shells

we collected all our life,

for the one we shall love.

But tonight, I am leaving this shore,

venturing into waters that I do not know of,

to feel what you feel.

So we may be united in hatred,

if not in love.

I saw you

soft as the clouds of heaven.

I felt you

covered in the condensed drops

of love that the whole world breathes out.

And I hated you for it.

I saw your skin marked with me.

I saw the cracks in your smile

covered in my kisses.

I saw my reflection in your heart

that was made for my thirst.

I saw my heart.

I saw what hid there.

I saw the storm that never calms.

I saw the poison that has no color.

I saw your eyes become the clouds,

I saw it rain.

I saw you tremble as earthquake

that tries to contain itself.

I saw you make your home

in my storm.

And I hated you for that.

In an unguarded moment

I saw what it is, to not see myself.

The fogged up mirror

didn’t let my reflection reach me.

And what reached me was

just a picture colored out of lines.

The more I looked at my obscured face,

the more I was convinced

that the faces was not mine.

The more I was convinced of the face being a stranger’s,

more easier it was for me to love and accept it.

If I could see myself as someone else

how easier it would be to live my life.

Not knowing what I know about myself,

not knowing what I think.

To  be what I am and what I am not at the same time.

How easier it would be , if this is

what I saw in mirror everyday.

How beautiful can be not knowing, not seeing.

Only smudged shades of colors.

A face not mine.

I have an idea of Myself.

And how often, in the unregistered intervals of time,

When thoughts of world avoided me

with as much  fervor as I avoid this world.

I think of what I am,

I realize that of all the people I have deceived,

the one I fooled with perfection was myself.

When I see what I do not want to,

my mind desperately grabs onto a stray thought,

to distract me from understanding

Of what I am about to realize.



But I know this game too well

and this is not a secret that I have uncovered

for the first time in life.

It is what I half-remember in all my waking hours

and all that I know of in my sleep.


I know this lie, I have been telling myself.

But today is not the day,

to shatter my Idea of Me

with one cruel realization.



The day, when it comes,

shall be the last I breathe as me.

For I cherish this Idea

more than myself.

The breaths not taken are accumulating.

It mixes with the tears not shed.

Creates a poison that lingers in my thought

but doesn’t flow into my blood.

To keep my barely alive to suffer.

Suffer from a poison of my own making.



Slowly I forget

one small detail at a time.

I realize it only when I see this gap in memory

that my frail imagination fails to fill.

Words are slipping out of my hands.

My thoughts are no longer mine.



All the parks have become graveyards.

Where tomorrow died a slow, slow death.

And it slips into an even slower decay.

Everything he was,
everything he did-
was a constant effort
to be true to the image
he had of himself.

He reminds me of struggle
to be someone else
while believing that he is
struggling to be himself.

I stop reading.

I look at these clumsily scribbled words.

I look at these fine print.

And I reach out my hand

to the page

and touch these words

to know

whether they really exist.

I reach out

to grab onto that hand,

so I can come out of water

for a moment,

to take breath

and remember what it was like

to not drown.

For that moment

I keep reading.

Every smile I have ever faked
leaves a residue
of questions on my lips.
Asking,
“Why is it,
that this smile can’t be real?
Why is it,
that the world is so easily convinced by my lie?
Why don’t they try to break
this facade when they see it
in which I am trapped?”

Rivers of people
crowded the alleys of my mind.
Every thought of mine
had to go through them.
And they were relentless.
By the time it made through them,
it was not the same.
That beautiful new born thought
had turned into a old stranger.
I learned one thing
that I can never have a thought
or an action
that is truly my own.
And even when the building and the skies
of my mind decay,
the people in those alleys will live on.

There is a soft tune that
moves beneath your fingers
as they move over the pages
and words and worlds
that you will never see.
All the words of hope
that I whisper
to the you
who exists within these barriers
of skin, bones and sorrow.
I fear these words will be like the music
that doesn’t stop but fades,
dissolving into time and distance.
Like that music
it will pass from me to you,
from you to nothingness.

I feel two lines etched on my face.

One longer than the other.

Feeling a little more colder

each time I step out.

They will lie there,

and dry there,

but never erased.

There is a soft tune that
moves beneath your fingers
as they move over the pages
and words and worlds
that you will never see.
All the words of hope
that I whisper
to the you
who exists within these barriers
of skin, bones and sorrow.
I fear these words will be like the music
that doesn’t stop but fades,
dissolving into time and distance.
Like that music
it will pass from me to you,
from you to nothingness.

I have to sit quiet,

Wait for the wind

To blow away my tears before they fall.

I have to keep watch

On what I say, what I think.

Even in my sleep, I can’t betray myself.

Gulp each cry, each word I speak,

To be dropped off on a paper no one reads.

Everyone wants a rock to hold onto.

A quick mire, no one needs.

For what do I owe

This heartbreaking happiness?

This eternal river of tears?

For my love, my ego and my fears.

Who can I turn to?

Who can I blame?

For these sad affairs and my sorry state.

My story is better unwritten.

My sorrows untold.

People are fed up of giving sympathies after all.

Bound by the choices, by free will, I made.

I do not have the liberty to complain.

My life is divided into different rooms
as is my heart.
For as long as I remember,
from the time I used to care for decorations
to the time I am too lazy to clean up.
From the moments of sweet solitude by the window
to the clinking glasses and winking eyes.
The room belonged more to them
than to me.



And I often found it unsettling,
as if on a night
when I would be hiding under covers
not knowing what to fear,
someone would knock at the door
and with that knock, would come a pair of shoes
and a set of clothes, holding a person
whose face, motive or aim
would soon be inconsequential.



And slowly she would drag me
out of each room,
snatching away each memory that she touched,
knocking down my bookcases filled with my escape,
tearing away the wallpapers
behind which I hid my unvoiced cries.
The doors would be shut on my face,
leaving me out in a storm on a moonless night,
leaving me alone to face all that I didn’t know of
taking away all that I know.

The tissues I have cried into
are my excuses,
to hide the clutter of calls and love I forgot to return.
Sometimes it is too late to clear the mess I made.
It is more difficult to retain my will to clean it all up,
which sort of made me guilty
of creating another sad person.
But what is another tissue in another sea.
Everyone dreams of sailing into a brighter morning
leaving behind their darkness in another’s mind.
What if I am as selfish as them.
What is another ship, another selfish wish
amidst thousand such others-
all stranded on a water-less heart
all looking for a flood, instead of directions.

I want to slip into the spots of the moon
that you look at so fondly
on the nights that you are about to break.

I cried and complained
and wrote of this sadness.
I said the same stuff again and again
and still I felt
that I wasn’t saying enough.
I saw your face
in every word I wrote.
I saw your face
till I couldn’t see anymore.
Till I became blind
to all reason.
Till I created the world
where I do not have to wait for you.
Where you didn’t exist, I didn’t exist.
But it was all wrong.
I realized you had to exist somewhere
for me to keep on writing.

For me, every moment of contentment
is often followed by the realization
of having a lack of either ambition
or the means or ability to achieve it.
And though I can live with the lack of both.
I often wonder
why do we feel the need to be validated
by some measure,
by some reason,
to belong in one of the circles
that the world is divided into.
When we end up questioning our self,
“Who would be actually there for me
if not for the pieces of me
that I am feeding them everyday?”

I sat on the stairs
long after they stopped shouting.
As the shout and anger
made room for themselves
in our lives.
As muted cries
became muted sighs.
I would look at the sky
and see no stars,
but only the tears
that pooled my eyes.
For long, a portion of time
got stuck in my heart
to remind of how lonely a child could be
in spite of having all.

I can’t hear your sighs

while you think I do not care enough.

I would love to bind myself and my life

around you,

Had I not been so sure

that freedom is the only measure of happiness for me.



The love they talk about

is not in my heart.

I can’t harbor such sweetness.

I can’t live in surrender.

I was not made for that.

My heart was made to be loved,

but to be cherished.

I won’t settle for anything less.

I do not ask for anything more.



My idea of love was never

the protection or sense of safety I always lacked.

Or admiration true or false

that could put to sleep the complexes I have.

Or to be touched in ways

that make human hearts race.



My idea of love was

to be so precious to someone

that they you never

change me or break me.



You changed me.

You broke me.

And I only remember the sighs you took while doing so.

Making me feel less than what I am.



But still, I breathe the same air as you,

Cause,

Once,

You almost loved me.

I will give you a list houses
that once used to be my home
and addresses that are the only memory
that has not been blurred
or manipulated by my mind.
If you ever want to find me,
go there.


You will see the line of trees that
framed my sunrise
and almost dry riversbeds of
round white stones, where
I slipped once (or more).
You will see the duststorms,
and the heavy rains
I stood in.
You will see the the intersections,
I could never quite cross.
But all this you see,
is not me.



If you want to find the ‘me’,
‘me’ that I do not know of,
that I cannot give you,
go there.
And look for windows I sat by.
Look for the cold floor I lied on.
Sit there and think of a girl
who never felt quite like a person,
who could look at what lay ahead
and know
that neither the path, nor the journey was hers.
Who only wanted a room flooded with
gentle light of drowning sun,
and songs that could make her sadness beautiful.

I knew in that moment
that I must run out into the darkness
and find a way
that even the streetlights avoid.
Find a place with no roads
where flowers of new season
will hide my unsure steps.
I knew I had to run away
Or I will never be the same.
So that I don’t loose everything
I (almost) have.
I must run back to that house in wilderness
that I left behind,
to the life I left behind.
So that there are no more graves
of my loved ones
with my name as the murderer engraved.

We twist in the grip
of our own prejudices.
The valleys of our hatred
have become a part of our scars
that has a throbbing bitterness,
that impairs our vision
and numbs our heart.
Our lives divided by this fissure into
one half looking for a way out of hostility
and other half feeding on it.

I place myself in the center of room
as you panic to pack up your stuff,
being careful that nothing is left behind.
There are flowers growing in the corners of the room
that ask you to stay.
There are green skies
that we painted.
There are flaws your and mine
that decorate this wall.
There are TV channels
that we can surf through,
there are days to be wasted.
And I want to waste them with you.

I want you to stay.
I almost blurt it out.
But had it not been for these flowers and skies
and days written in color of your name,
I could have left
to find the dreams I never had.
There is a chandelier
of blood red glass
of your sighs and goodbyes.
I know you are not running away from me
but from our devils,
from our destruction,
that lay between us
every night.

I want to tell you
how you slowly became the tree
that guards me from the happiness and sadness
of the world,
and let me create my own.
How it was lovely to see you grow.
How it hurt to love you.
How beautiful you were even in the worst of your moments.
How I selfishly wanted to be the only scar on your heart
and only smile on your face.
How,on days that I desperately
looked for a reason to stay,
yours was the only name
that anchored me in this world.
I will tell you how I always lived
dreaming of death,
dreaming of release,
and how thankful I am that
you kept me alive.
I will tell you all this.
But not today.
Some other time.

The silence wrapping our words
was not born out of a deed or two.
Or out of lack of love.
We didn’t wake up one day
and began feeling alone.
The day we held hands,
we felt the alienation
that only love can bring.
No great love can
change what we were.
Where the plains of our own
lives and its insecurities met
there we see a crack,
to remind us everyday
that we never fit with each other.

There is a sleep so light
that it rests upon my brow
ever so careful no to slip into my eyes
and I hear its laughter
on my thoughts that have no meaning
or reason
And when it notices
my tears
it takes pity on me
and holds my eyelids down
with the weight of its love
That’s how morning comes
and finds me,
clinging to the sleep,
clinging to the life,
that will soon leave me.

Would people have been more kinder
and affectionate,
if only the world didn’t misunderstand
niceness on a daily basis?
How come we live with such a distorted view
that we are afraid of being good to each other?
From the fear of being judged.
From the fear of being ridiculed.
From the fear of being burdened forever.
From the fear of being taken advantage of.
From the fear of being looked down on.

The colors that have drained
from the dreams of people,
lie cluttered on the doorway
of their homes.
Everytime they try to leave
for something more practical
and more safe life, that they chose,
that awaits them everyday
and does not keep them worrying
about what all they can loose.
Everytime they step out,
even in hurry,
they sidestep that clutter.
Look at it from the corner of their eyes
and for a second their heart seems aware
of the frost that is killing it.
For a second the reasons for the
sleepless night and blank gazes is recalled.
But the limbs keep moving
to keep a distance from hopes
that never materialize.
On their way back home
they dread to see
the clutter of discarded dreams.
But they want to believe
that ignoring and forgetting it
becomes easier with time.
Although it never has.