the night we watched two candles burn,
it was moonless and starless and
that accentuated the fires.

i remember you said,
with the breeze combing your hair,
that our love was just like two candles.

i agreed, as it seemed then
the flames of our passion and desire
were similar to the candles - restlessly burning.

we kept silent after, admiring the symbols of our love
both their wax bodies melting in rhythm.
you said, we will be beside each other forever.

and a poetic couple we were, i noted how
the melted wax conjoined the two candles
and you said our love brought light to others.

the flames extinguished simultaneously, shortly after,
and in a unanimous duet, as if pre-planned, we whispered:
'till death do us part'.

last night, it was me with two candles
though, with a gleaming moon and a dozen stars
that stole the attention and outshone the two.

and while the flames still faded simultaneously,
it was extinguished only by the saltiness
of tears belonging to a broken lover

and the mercilessness of your absence.

this is us,

sitting in the dusty corners,
sifting through the genres,
avid and voracious readers of
lugubrious paper-backs which
narrate the plots of self-pity and regret.

this is us,

losing our sense of time in there,
like undergrounds creatures fascinated
with the scent and sight of ground,
ignoring the less conspicuous collection
of sanguine and rhythmic biographies.

we are stubborn readers in the library of memories
reading the wrong genres over and over...

a single raindrop
trickles down,
sphered
like a pearl,
racing down
the window,
with itself.

racing down
its life
until it
finally
loses its
shape,
loses its
wetness.
turns to
nothing.

at least,
it left
a trail,
made its
mark.

at least,
it--

no, silly,
it evaporates.

January - the calender is flipped to.
with it, an image of red, bloated tomatoes
creeping in pregnant clusters across the page.

my books are sprawled across the desk
like nomads in search of a home.

the earpieces have cords that are entangled and
immersed in its messy and inextricable life.

my phone sits silently and unproductive
depleting its fruitless existence away.

and here too i sit under the whirring fan
watching these objects help tell my story.

even the tomatoes are productive this january.

some sit silently.
soaking in the sounds of bells.
acknowledging it.

others, teary-eyed,
watching a bad year subside
into better years.

another, smiling
eyes ablaze with fireworks
of the bright past year.

ev'ryone with pens
and smudgy resolutions,
mapping their future.

buildings shed clothings.
sheets, curtains change like seasons.
posters, promotions.

and it seems:

flipping calendars
unfathomably transform
us happy creatures.

me? if ev'ry day
can be seen as a new year:
oh, happy planet!

i burned the bridges between us,
whittled down this love into dust,
and watched the river weave it away.

i told myself to

build new bridges with the old and broken bricks,
carve and sculpt the dust into someone new,
or wait for the river to return me another lost lover.

or at the least,

leave it there charred and in a thousand pieces,
leave the whittled love as a broken-winged bird,
stop weeping by the waters and feeding it with tears.

and yet you,

you appeared not even as a physical reminder,
not even as a ghost who haunted me, it was  
just a word that remotely resembled your name

and you throw me back to
building bridges.

poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul

it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.

if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.

as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.

and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.

yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.

then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.

if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.