I often think back to the times before school
Times when I was 3
When my mother would stand in the rain with my big brother
Rain boots and umbrellas keeping them dry
I remember getting scared of the thunder and I'd wake up in a panic, because she wasn't next to me.
She always came back inside,
Tossed a movie into the VCR
And stroked my hair
Promising me it was just God bowling
Celebrating the new angels he's welcomed home
She always mentioned that he was sorry for being so loud, but couldn't contain his excitement.

Now I'm almost finished with school
And it's never phased me, when I dont wake up to her
I don't wake up to her at all
She left.
And I dont think much of the thunderstorms anymore
Its just rain
And I just feel empty and anxious
Petrichor always arrives at my door step
Welcome home petrichor...
Maybe I'll throw a bowling party for you since my mother won't return...

I feel rage inside of my chest
Like the air is aggressively trying to escape my lungs
As if they just got into a fight with the walls again
My knuckles are strawberry red and glistening like the ghosts of our past
I am constantly reopening battle wounds that should not have even been touched since he went away.
I grow tired each and every morning by pathetic prayers of you returning or for just once someone to show up on my doorstep and not be like you
To not... Lead me through meadows and babbling brooks
Only to tell me that there are piranhas in the water
I want so badly to be held
Like how my grandmother carefully holds knitting needles as she works away
I want to be missed like forgotten swing sets miss the laughter of tiny children, who have grown too big and no longer visit
I want to stop be so ******* different from everyone else
Maybe if I start acting like everyone else
If maybe I can grow out my hair and wear the same brand on my jeans as everyone else,
Maybe I can fit it.
I keep telling myself  "you are you, and who ******* cares if people are different. Who ******* cares if people don't like you voicing your opinions. Who ******* cares about anything small and superficial. WHO ******* CARES ABOUT THAT STUPID BOY THAT PUSHED YOUR SELF ESTEEM TO THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SOCK DRAWER?"
I should stop reading poetry at night to people who toss the words in the trash.
I should stop reading poetry to boys who try to pretend they are into me only to **** me over.
I am so angry and this is so ******.
So goodnight.

While they sit and watch comfortably,
Baltimore burns.

They use dollars as tinder and the starving and hysterical ancient scream of: 'help us', is nothing but black noise to them,

They sit and watch you like ally rats running riot bruising your own city.

Baltimore.

Hear me when I say
You have every right to be angry.

You have the right to want better for yourself
To not be pulled over for the crime of having a nice car and skin that matches the leather
To have a 'black sounding name' and still have a chance in getting a white collar job
To be represented as humans and not savages.  
To be emancipated from the steel eagle claws of the media.
To not be abducted, beaten, publicly shamed or killed by the police.

Baltimore I hear your crying
I feel your pain like 6 'warning' shots to the back.

One day it's MLK.
One day it's Trayvon.
One day it's Freddie.
Executed by the state without a word of repent,
without a snippet of change.
It's been this way for as long as we can remember
and they can't seem to forget that they were never better than you.

There are only men with anger
and then men with authority.

While the rich live in their charm and picket fences, they let the poor decay
in dens and gangs with **** poor education and no chance at all.

I can't offer you arms, but I can offer you heart.

Baltimore;

I feel your pain
But don't be their slaves.

Don't let them turn you into monsters on the streets

Don't let them say: this is what they're like.

Don't let them play chess with your city.

Because this is no more than a game to them.

Don't back down,
Play them back.

Win the freedom and equality you should have been granted in 1863, in 1954, 1960.

Scrap that.

The day you were born.

First things first
I'd like to apologise

I'm sorry I'm not the good Indian girl I was bred to be
I'm sorry I don't make round rotis
I'm sorry that the tongue I use to speak punjabi is broken and hides in my mouth unused until desperately needed
I'm sorry that I don't cook and clean efficiently enough to be wifey material
Sorry that I love who I love and don't hate who I was told to
Sorry that I can't follow gods blindly and not try to sneak back stage to see their shining gold adornments and blue body paints and multiple arms in full and bare glory and scandal

I'm sorry that I'm actually not sorry for any of this
I'm sorry that these are false and empty apologies

I am unapologetically whole
A human not just a race
A female not a trust fund or business transaction

I filter out the good parts of the culture I'm from and the ones I identify with
I'll wear docs under my saari no apologies
I'll grind on dancefloors and do the best Bhangra dance you'll ever see unashamedly

Hareems and hoodies
Bindies and pin up eyeliner
Hedonism and head in the clouds

My ambition is Ambedkar untouchable
My drive is a salt march surging silently non violently through cities
My hometown pride is built in concrete and rickshaw dust,
Prejudice and Bollywood lust

Dear girl who dreams of my  manic pixie nightmare

You are the one I never expected to meet
I am the one you have met a million times before

You're the girl obsessed with film craving invasion on television screens, propagandist **** muse, docs and a **** cut
I'm the girl obsessed with ******* and using boundaries as skipping ropes or thread to turn my hair to tapestry

You're Bowie
I'm Hendrix

You like visuals, shapes and sound and pretty cinematography and things I can't understand, your mind is a transcript in calligraphy I can't decipher,
I like books that come in three and getting to the end and not knowing how to live anymore

You're brimming full of hope and dreams and set lighting
I'm disappointment and drowning shame in the bottom of tumblers, spilling the leftovers into quotable dialogue

You're too good for my obscenity to taint, you can't find what you're looking for in me
I'll be your undoing spiralling constantly in a figure 8

You are the manic pixie dream girl we've all been searching for

Let me tell you a secret
I am bored

I'm bored of corporate America flashing their endless subliminal ******* in my face every second
So much so that sometimes without me realising I adopt their accent and mimic and quote what they want me to think and say

I'm bored of reality TV
Of keeping up with the Kardashians and how their name fits so nicely in my mouth like a chunk of poison apple

I'm bored
Of skipping past adverts of skinny black children starving to watch skinny white children starving themselves pretty
I'm scared that I'm the only one whose minds those adverts cling to,
I can only do so much and I can't even trust that I'm helping

I'm bored
Of seeing perfect white girls on TV in their perfect clothes with their perfect hair and their perfect families in their perfect churches with their perfect god who somehow claimed dominance over all the other gods, over my gods
and called me backwards for worshipping the sun and the moon for giving me life and light as opposed to a man who may or may not have existed who they claim split seas

I am bored
I'm bored of being the supporting role
never being pretty enough
but being hot for an Asian girl
being told 'when I think of a beautiful Asian girl I think of you'
being asked 'what are you?', 'no where are you really from?' 'are you gunna go back?' 'were you born on international waters?' Always followed with a 'If you don't mind me asking',  I do,
Let me tell you about the waters that broke and brought me here on this home soil,
let me tell you about the struggle of my mother and the mothers before me and the lightness of being dark skinned in a community of dark skinned beings,
let me tell you about my heritage not like it's a story in a child's book like or a myth, it is real history,
let me tell you about the struggle of my people about the beauty of our most simple words and minds,
let me tell you about how our bodies moulded from the dust and sand around us is no less than yours,
let me tell you what it means to be nothing in your eyes.

We are the products of your mishandling, broken artefacts caged in a glass box with a steel rod stuck up our **** to keep up still in a viewing room in the media's museum
keep us down and keep us quiet keep us looking brutal try to tear us apart from the inside,

Try and tell me I'm a terrorist not a freedom fighter for daring to breathe to speak.
Try to blotch out your wrongdoings by scapegoating us as a region as a religion I don't even belong to as a pigment in a skin colour I can do nothing about I couldn't change it even if I wanted to
Just wait and see how we react

I'm bored of your Islamophobia
I'm bored of you telling me to hate myself
I'm bored of trying to be middle man for two cultures whose only real difference are climate
So *******
**** both of you
Excuse my English
No my Punjabi.
No
I'm done with your negotiations and attempts at tolerance I'm done with trying to blend you both together within me I can't be what either of you want me to be
I can't do this
I won't be a part of your glamourised butchery
Anymore

Confusion
It settles over me
Not like cherry blossom petals on a still lake
But more like how lighting strikes tall figures lying between the atmosphere and the relentless floor, trying to stand its ground
He tells me I'm more beautiful than all of the sunsets and sunrises
Clearly, his blue eyes have never seen the beginning of autumn.
He asks me to come over
He wants to spoil me and give me treats
I'm not a dog, darling.
He wants to kiss the indents in my cheeks
Smother me with affection, I think.
But then I remember her.
I wonder if she's well, if they are collectively well.
Clearly, something is missing from her.
She is so dainty and careful, and I don't even know her.
I know she must swim with her head above the water, but I am guessing soon she will drown.
Her wits are more than a series of books, however, she's clueless.
She may have a perfect complexion.
She may be unique, with an ethnicity I'd never be able to own
She may, speak swiftly of her problems, instead of shoving them to the bottom of the ocean
Which of course is something I've always been guilty of
So
Why is it that he runs to me at night with a bouquet of complimentary thoughts???
Why is it that he reads me his poetry at midnight?
"You're so easy to talk to." He says.
Maybe everyone is looking into the doll house and seeing two perfect figures and small acts of kindness, affection.
But when the lights go out, things get ugly.
Back to confusion
He says he loved her, but he always comes running to me
Mixed emotions
I'd tell you I love you in a heartbeat, if it meant you'd never leave me stranded,
Waist high in sand with blood dripping from my forehead
You know that's how he left me, so I can only hope you understand.
What are you doing with a girl who no longer satisfies your needs?
Why is it that love always becomes more complicated, rather becoming silk?
I'm praying someone will answer my questions before I become Ophelia.

He's got these hazel blue eyes that I like to look in sometimes
His hands are much bigger than mine, and I've always felt so small compared to him.
He's hurt me again
And again
And again
But lately we find reason to come back together like opposite ends of magnets
The ones you stick on refrigerators
The really strong ones
That's us
He let's me call him and talk his ear off until 3 in the morning, because he knows that I get lonely at night
We always fight
I tell him to *******
And he swears at me too
I ask him why the **** he cheated on me
And he tells me he's such a **** up and I can hear the cracking of voice
It reminds me of the summers spent around the fire and the woods catching
He asks me about the other guy
"Have you kissed him"
"Do you like him?"
"Does he feel like home?"
I say no to most of the questions
He says how do you feel about me?
I reply with I dont know
He says I'm tired of I dont know
And I say I'm tired of your **** up excuse
It gets quiet and I remember nights like these
I tell my friends I hate him
I tell my family I loathe him
But when its 3 a.m. and the only thing between us is air and coded particles I can't help but want to kiss him
He was always good at that
From lots of practice I reckon
I don't tell him I'm going to be with another boy tomorrow
He never told me about the other girls
I can't help it
I loved him so much but I can't figure out if I'm just lonely or I actually miss him
I say I'm confused
He says
I know I know I know
I read him poetry
He starts falling asleep
And I get off the phone whispering I love you in different tones.
I wonder if he heard me
There's a part of me that hopes not.

I think I'm still depressed.
I have trouble leaving my bed anymore.
It's a miracle if I wake up before 3 in the afternoon.
I like to talk to you on the phone so late, so maybe that's part of the problem.
I've never laid eyes on something so broken.
Sometimes, I listen to her poetry at night and I cry, because her voice reminds me of you and how we used to play it through out your stereo.
I always knew all the words.
You were always seemingly impressed.
I don't want to tell anybody about the sadness, because I am afraid of going back to that place.
I always think about Craig.
I think about how his chest heaves, because he's never experienced love.
Then again, it was love that broke me.
We are walking contradictions.
Both sad of lost love or too small proportions.
All I want to do is let my blankets envelope me in my coldness.
I want to think about the words you left on my lips.
You get so angry when I repeat
You cheated. You cheated. You ******* cheated.
And you say you feel so bad about it, but that's thing with people like you.
They never change and they leave people like me like glass in the bottom of feet.
We are paralyzed.
You say you want to go to sleep, but I just want you to sing me lullabies and read me poetry.
I have never been good enough to hear words of your ignition.
Your own mind.
You take pieces from TV shows and old movies.
You never let your pen write from your own mind.
I found your book, but I didn't buy it because every time I try to read a page I think
"HIM. HIM. THIS STORY IS WRITTEN WITH HIS HANDS"
You take away from stories and cloud my memory, so forgive me for not doing my homework last night
He wrote his name on my book when we went out to dinner.
He drew smiley faces all over it, but lashed out at me when I did it to his.
I used to shake when we would talk on the phone
And you will never understand how many tines I have choked back tears.
Remember February?
I cried myself to sleep every single night.
I distorted my habits, body, and mind to fit yours.
You laughed at me.
I wish my walls could speak to yours.
Mine would explain the darkness in the room
And yours would explain her pleasured moans.
I haven't left my bed in days.