There's only so much smell left in your powder box
I can tell.  I
only open it every once in a while,
to feel like a child
and hear your chuckle and smell
how
glamorous
you were.

I didn't weep at your slipping away.
I could see your pain
I could hear it screaming under
your skin, your pride burning
your age raging inside you, I
watched you crumble and I blinked, I
looked away.
I didn't want you to have to feel your pain.

But you live with me here.
In an old box you don't remember that I have,
out of all the countless
sparkly
spangly
shiny things you gave to me, this is the thing
I keep with me.

Your trash.
Your old powder box.

I open it from time to time and I smell you and I hear you rumble
and I see you
lipstick and hair and bright poofy hairbands.

Every time I open up your box it smells a little less like you.

I didn't fear your going because I knew that it was time
but I rue already the day when I might think on you
and not be able to find you.

When your powder box will just be a box.
Instead of the place I keep you inside.

I don’t remember exactly what day it was.
It was a weekday, the only thing that I remembered.
The day you left.
There was grief, sadness, pain and suffering.
Those feelings reigned in the living room of my house.
Tears were running down my cheeks from my reddened eyes.
Your soul wandered through the apartment.
Your smell, impregnated inside my nose.
Take years to accept your death.
My memories of you were all sad, even the happiest.
Today, what I cried in the past, became happy moments and smiles.

In memory of my Grandmother.

There's no way to do you justice

To quantify time in learning as I grew
sprouting from rich soil
at your hand

You are all violet & chamomile,
which you do not like but
I think of you each time
I steep its leaves

In youth I was questioned & prodded
Other children finding comedy in the
absence of mother &
the presence of you

In youth I grew shameful of time spent
bent over puzzles & mystery novels
Spent so much time apologizing
To those I thought knew better and
Pocketed my love for you

I am sorry for hesitating
For tabling the thought that maybe
This crazy was my normal, but
You are my normal
And
I couldn’t ask for a better reason
To leave the party
For another cup of tea

—
c

Decade and a half ago,
The world still fresh and new,
Good and kind. Air - not what we choked on
Your ray of light flickered
In my careless recollection
Of course, that was once upon a time.

When volumes of infusion is the blood in your veins,
And scenes change day by day, curtains drawn,
You are at the end of the line, spent, and you're
Holding up yours hands in the air, no defiance.
There is sadness in your eyes, even when you smile
"The war is not won." I said.

Bitter taste of medicine
Lingers like diseases on your tongue.
"To be or not to be"
Is a statement, not
A question, not a
Matter of choice.

Excruciation, or maybe hell, in the purest form
Perpetual realization of pain
Of the crystal mind in storm,
Peeling the psyche of it, driving it off to the edge.
But do people still go to hell
When their lives are sheer suffering
Through and through?

Down down down under the sea
There, right there, amongst the waters and the sands
A mermaid of unimaginable beauty fled her homeland

An eye for an eye, heart for heart, two lovers wouldn't be torn apart
To join a man above the waves, a precious treasure, she gave
This impossible trade the mermaid made?
She gave her tongue for legs so she might walk by his side
In a world with words she couldn't speak, lived the mute bride

~~~

She lived with bubbles beneath her tongue
and the sound of ocean in her ears
And yet, despite her rightful bloodline
A desert is where she'd spent her years

The hair of a siren, with a voice like their song
but the legs of a woman.. it was wrong, so wrong
Her exotic, other-wordly looks, a sailor boy found striking
And his familiar scent of salty breeze gave her a liking


Trailing calloused fingers through silky siren strands
The sailor murmurs to his lover, "What would you do for me?"

"I would leave my homeland"


The tang on his skin of a home she's never seen, erase her troubles
Giggling sweetly, she asks him, "And for me, my sweet, love?"

He could pop her bubbles