The woman sitting
at the adjacent table
has left and the bus boy hasn't noticed.
A fly
could land on
the skin of her milk.

Swirling my tea
The leaves swim
to meet and cling
to other debris
like the orange rind
previously stuck
to my teeth.
I’ve installed
a filter, so as to
preserve
their flavor.

I attended the funeral
of my high school girlfriend
the pathologist told me
there is leathery, plastic
skin
covering every *****
Inside her belly
were waxy
fetal fingers
almost born.

Café is closing
So I empty the contents
of my pocket
hoping the bus boy
will come for me.

Yesterday night
driving back,
from a party
where, I was
lonely in the crowd,
felt lost, disturbed
by the sound and fury
signifying nothing,
talking *******
little too much,
exasperated,
stopped
at a watering hole,
to feel once again
that I was still myself.
I sat lost in thoughts,
it felt good,
so went bit far, and then,
saw someone like you
sitting alone, looking at me ,
as if to recollect, who I was
with such keen interest.
For a moment
I forgot the time and place
and wondered:
"How could she forget me ever?"
*Someone like you ! how could I think?
there wasn't anyone like you, ever after.

Ten years old again,
In a tree ten feet high again,
In scuffed shorts with tangled hair,
And with the boys I longed to be.

Sanctimonious girls in dresses and frills,
Boredom and constraint personified,
Stare up in incredulity
As I heave myself over mossy branches.

“Girls don’t climb trees.”
I do. I roll in mud, play racing games,
Never brush my hair.
“You’d be pretty if only you tried.”

You’d feel alive if only you tried.
The wind on my bare arms,
Dirt beneath fingernails,
Scrapes on my shins
Red and out of place
Like smudged lipstick
On children’s faces.

I’m not you. I’m me.
Boxes serve to keep us in,
Deliver us neatly packaged
To a society which cannot cope
With fluidity,
Individuality,
Uncertainty.
Boo!

She says those two misguided words:
“Make over”.
Impossible. One cannot start afresh.
This is the result of every waking moment,
Of every word heard and spoken,
Each memory joyous and painful,
A piece of art nineteen years in the making.
Not to be destroyed in one act of disguise.

Yet curiosity is my mistress.
She leads me to boundaries
I never knew existed.
Up goliath trees,
Into foreign beds,
To the brink of reality
In mind-bending worlds
Of parallels.

Like a mannequin, devoid of identity
I give my image to you
And you place yours jarringly
Onto my reticent body.

The obliging cheers
At my transformation
Into an eloquent femininity
Feel hollow and worthless.
I have done nothing of merit.

I totter like a toddler
Uncomfortable in my own skin.
I’m on stage, an act,
A project. Not a person.

How bizarre it feels
To wear a stranger’s façade
Of dresses and frills,
When you know you belong
To a different world
Of dirt, and treetops,
And freedom.

Scattered, dilapidated
       ancient monuments,
       pieces of a puzzle,
       a mute challenge,
       to someone
       who plays a mysterious game,
       unfathomable to us,

A lone girl in hot pants
      stands perplexed,
      on the incongruity of it all,
      in that vast complex,
      a tourist, with an uncertain interest.

(A curious element,
      introduced, apparently by a child,
     playing a cosmic game,
     sitting somewhere in universe)

Light dims as sun goes down,
     and the scene sinks
     in to an unknown storehouse.

                          a jumble to sort out later,
      by budding time, within an emerging star,
      in an unknown distant galaxy.

We watch silently,
      standing here, in Qutb complex,
      temporary witnesses to eternity's games.
       It looks so  deceptively simple,
       like an ordinary evening
       in Delhi.
            

What I would give to
be a lone grain within a
Sahara sandstorm
a fragment of drought
scattering itself across
nowhere, singing with
the slow erosion. I long
to be this, to be loved
despite it. You’ll always
drag your fingers through
me

how many grains can
the gusts steal before
a dune is gone? There’s
no such thing as a static
state: Everything dies
still nothing rests.