When you were born, oh my dear,
No doctor—no midwife predicted,
But, oh my dear, you've been a granny,
All throughout, all throughout.

When I first saw you,
I wanted to take you home,
Adorable, lovable, and pure
I really did want to kidnap you.

Why, you ask me...
Look at yourself,
Those pure eyes,
That cute face,
And that cuddly body.

I saw you in 2024,
And you were 24 years old,
I realised you're a 24-year-old grandma.
No fun, no bun, no run.

Oh, Teddy, I so wish...
I hope that you realised it...
Your words hurt me...
How you compared hurt me...

You generalised my trauma,
How could you compare?
You said, "Disabled people even clear UPSC-CSE,"
But you didn't stop there,
And you kept misbehaving...

If you never wanted to marry me,
You could've simply told your mom.

Off and on,
Undying spirit,
Not of positivity,
But of vengeance.

You never actually apologised,
So, I never forgave,
But it's hard,
Yes, it's so hard,
Hard to forget what we forged.

I had seen a world in your eyes,
In my mind, I had seen a future,
A future where you are with me,
A future where I train you, honey.

But why did we separate out?
C'mon now, tell me, why did we?
Couldn't you just be mine?
I wanted to live with you.

What was the need for separation?
I'm perplexed by how things went.
It was so right initially, the elation.
Why did the things prematurely end?

~
I. Fog Glossaries
'Echoes don't tell lies,'
but inclement weather so often does.
look!
between whales and feverish thought,
between their sparkle and debris,
what is brewing systematically,
right under the surface,
might be terrifying.
or it might not.

II. The Cruxifiers
Time and life are machines that manufacture doom,
their sparkle and debris calculatingly withheld,
like keyholes to dark rooms that they
—in their reserved attack—never let you into.

III. Oceano Dunes
Bedouin princess—Charis Wilson tumbling
with Edward in the sand
—a photo finish.
—a young woman's triumph.
—a naked gift wrapped in sparkle and debris.

IV. Jellyfish Are Murderers
Here's a hint,
needle mark refineries are back,
expanding and contracting
in Baltic Sea,
in sparkle and debris,
smack after smack,
umbrella bell stings send
another pearl necklace
of dreams to its grave.

V. Container Ships
Substance A covers the outside hull,
Substance B is leaking from everyone's ears,
still the captain smiles, sailing straight ahead, ignoring the crew
as they turn into sparkle and debris.

VI. Mouth Guards of the Apocalypse
No one on the submarine is listening,
scopes up, spirits down,
current position unknown,
longer commutes, shorter lives
recede the fear of sparkle and debris,
by hiding out in the guest rooms,
waiting for a messiah drink
or perhaps a palindrome:
'never odd or even
no lemon, no melon.'
It's all so sour to the teeth and gums
of Armageddon's kids...

VII. Womenfish
Lost girls drive rental cars, change identities at rest stops. They shuffle down an otherwise sunny street beneath their own personal raincloud, shivering in an oversized coat. They imagine they're a parable stretched over the sea and not just mere sparkle and debris.

VIII. A Mother’s Book of Hours
At home and in her head
the roots get tangled,
so she storyboards each morning.
the lathe of heaven
must be Morse code
for death of romance.
she hears silent music
as her children sleep,
as whales sing off the coast,
they share their blood,
they share sparkle and debris.
there's a sweet little lie
baking in the oven,
she doesn’t want to talk about it.
she wishes her dreams were longer
and catches an interested eye
at the dream window,
her hands surrendering
their attempt to conceal,
naked is her perfect disguise,
you can hear her repeatedly asking,
“Who have I lived for?”

IX. The Pavilion of Dreams
How often I dream water,
some are lakes and seas,
others Olympic-sized pools,
each a self-portrait,
holding fast to the resurrections unseen,
to the digitally etiolated detail of the comedown,
every chimera ending
with my mind floating
just beneath the surface with all
the other sparkle and debris.
~