A woman with a past, she’s forever making peace with it
Its pages written when the years were raging and wild
mellowed by time, they nurse pain in brittle folds
when I try to turn them, she breaks into tales untold.

Her heart is stone cold and yet she knows of love
How? she doesn’t know. How? I can’t begin to tell
She gives her all to me and retreats behind the stage,
when I press rewind, she slips into the act to cover-up her ache.

She tells me she wasn’t looking, and in her made-up now
she built a life whole and knit a yarn of awesomeness
I broke the many mirrors that mirrored her insta smile
She cowered and hugged me to escape her own guile

You don’t know my past, she tells with mock belief
I remind her we are both travellers having come this far
Our journeys writ on milestones dotting many a stay
We’re interesting stories we picked and lived on the way

She doubts the past won’t measure up to my idea of love
The night, I tell her, doesn’t care what you did with mornings
It just wants you to lose yourself, moor you to its dock
make it whole again, and stop looking at the clock.

What can I hold of you?

Of a fleeing cloud ‬
making good its escape ‬
‪from its wanton lodgings ‬
‪in the sea looking to empty itself  ‬
‪and in the sky seeking closure ‬

‪Of a lightning cowering‬
‪in its fleeting existence‬
‪waiting to be consoled and told, ‬
‪it’s magically alive‬
‪as a sliver of hope in the dark ‬

‪Of the bountiful waves ‬
‪retreating every time ‬
‪with a handful of sand,‬
‪clutching on to the earth ‬
‪it has made a promise of return‬

‪Of the godly Sun ‬
‪drowning in the horizon ‬
‪every day in a Spartan death‬
‪to see the moon rise ‬
‪and bask in its borrowed love‬

‪Of a cursed fate ‬
‪mooring me to the abyss‬
‪refusing to unchain me, ‬
‪to feel what it is to sail in waters ‬
‪which treasure the idea of you‬

‪What do I hold of you?

She's this insatiable urge
gaining on me,
like a herd of horses
galloping in the treachery of the wild,
their muscles brushed to a shine
rippling down their calves
to embrace the ground
beneath their ironed hooves
shaking it up, tormenting its calm,
whipping up tremors
that know no chains and travel far.

When she's around
dust and sweat break free
with muscles aching in symphony
the heart is all worked up
like a boiler room in heat
pummeling all of its adrenaline
in one fleeting indulgence
which the universe with all its hatcheries
is itching to contain
before the raging tides in
and floods my world.

She's the elusive horizon
used to passionate chases
and the sly azure lunging at it
for one sweet glimpse of the cleavage where it conjoins with the earth
looking for Elysium that never is.
Ah! But that is what it is
for the tamed to think of love
is an impossibility
for it grows in the wild
separated by a hundred chasms
and a million mazes
waiting for a fool to cross over.

When she isn't around
the rumpled sheets tell our story
for it has seen the storms
that raged in the cavernous nights
and filled up balmy noons
with the savagery of love
still crackling like embers of fire
which have seen better days,
and, light up still, with a death wish
to tell of our smouldering lives
that thrived in spasms of our last breath.