I am a blue planet,
My home is the universe.
I am a part of the solar system,
Revolving around the fiery sun.

I rotate on my own axis,
Only to give you day and night.
I walk on an oval path,
Just to give you season and climate.

I have my own luxury,
In the form of water, land, air and life.
I have my own children,
Named as plant, human, animal and microbe.

I provide them everything,
Whether it's food, water or home to live.
I provide them all resources,
Clean and pure air to breathe.

I give my everything to them,
Yet, they are expecting more.
They are so hungry of  their desires,
That they are not hesitating even to hurt me.

How long can I bear the troubles?
Now, I just want to cry on myself.
I am now suffocating in my own family,
Just need to relax in my mother's lap.

I am your mother EARTH,
What're you doing to me?
I have enough for your every need,
But yet, you're killing me slowly in your useless greed. . .

Mum wants me happy,

it's her misfortune I'm not –


cooperative.

There's something unsettling
about this feeling of loving hopelessly.

My toes
are constantly ready to push off and
dive into a pool that's empty.
It holds no water or promise,
but I get up and jump
again and again.
This is what  reparable souls are made of
Magic, drunken thoughts, and bravery all wrapped in delicate skin.

My mother has warned me
of this feeling before.
and how it ends in tissues and stitches.
But I call her and urge her indiscretion
to my father and her emotions.

I crave the feeling of feeling stuck in your gut,
where your body aches but it’s
wrapped in silk sheets.
Feelings
that consume my mind wholly, constantly, agonizing and yet
I stand on the diving board
ready to crash again.

mother you give me freedom to seek for truth and so, life is an adventure in the forest
you guided my step to the outside of this forest and seek for better life

your the sunbeam of my cells, you the reason why my seed turn into blooming petal

now i seek the truth, you will always be remembered

- son.

With every long hair oil massages and
the long tea break on sunday evenings,
mother told me the stories that she lived,
rich with genres.
The ones with her siblings are my favorite,
but there are these little stories that she often repeats.
some brings a tear or two,
and she sips the tea and says what else she could have done other than accepting.
Even with the colorful, rich genres of stories, she never had a dream.
And everytime it makes me realize how much it means to have a dream.

-Gopika Krishna

You know, this woman
Never fails
To astound me

She is mixing the ladies’ fingers
Chopped and fried
With sautéed, spiced onions
And I watch
As she dips the pan
Toward herself
And all the oil runs over
Like a lost child
At the sight of his sister
In a crowd

With the other hand
She pushes those vegetables
Into the awaiting ***
Places the pan aside
And grabs hold of the ***
Twisting her wrists
Working up the magic

She flips the greens
Over the crescent onions
Mingling them up
And in front of my eyes
She has cooked up a dish

Then she spins the wheat dough
In between her fingers
Nimble as a dove’s beak
Tossing it from palm to palm and
All of a sudden
It is a flattened sun

She turns it around on the griddle
Before exposing it to the flames
It rises, rises, then falls
A breathing thing
And
Goodness be ******
She doesn’t even burn it
Not a single mark
She cooked the sun over blue fires
Turned it into a moon

I wonder how she does it
My mother
Master an art she doesn’t even like
While I—
I fiddle around
With my pens and brushes
The smug blankness

Of neglected canvases
And unfilled pages
Mocking me of a fairy-light child
I could not become—

I can't see my future, with my present sight, but mother says that I will be alright.

I have been skipping online classes as of late; assignments turned cold, piled up on my plate.

I am uncertain of what the future holds, certainly apprehensive of tomorrow.

I think I let this blueness overflow a bit
Mother’s being tender again
She talks to me like a bee does
To a sleepy sunflower
And does not mention the missed classes
Does not remind me of the exams
She says to me
‘Ayesha,’ she says,
‘Ayesha, you brood too much.’
And I know mother.
And she jokes that she might have to
Burn this notebook I keep scribbling in
Because it does not make me happy

She says to me,
‘I know you’re brooding when you write
And all that writing makes you grey.’
She says she’ll have to throw it out
In the street
But I know she never will
She’s too tender
Too tender, my mother.
I think, ‘Will I have to myself then?’
And I think, ‘How many will I throw?’
And I think, and I think till the sun
goes down

But I brood when fairies are on their way
To the stars
And mother,
Why are dead things always the scariest?
Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be
Focusing on these Orbital radii
But I can’t stop, mother
The atomic structures
Keep mingling with dragons
And their pretty eyes

Mother’s being soft again
I am a little child stumbling up the hill
And she never asks me to help in the kitchen
But when I wander around
Light as a wind
She lets me chop the vegetables
I do
There goes an onion, so quiet
Chop, chop, chop
Mother, do you think if trees bled
We would still butcher them to pieces?

Chop, chop, chop
Mother, who carved this goddess out of my name?
It feels heavy now, wings mighty and huge
I can barely stand this mortality
Chop, chop, chop
Mother, does it not pain you
Seeing all the coriander dry in the pots?
The dirt that birthed it from a quiet seed could not keep it alive.
How are you so strong?

Mother, mother
It reminds me of my Morning Glories
Last year
They bloomed so happily every morning
And they’d wilt by the evening
And the next day
The slender plant would make more blooms
They kept dying, mother
All of them
On and on and

There was nothing I could do
Nothing the stems could do
I watered and watered and watered, they kept dying
Born to wither
And in the winter, when the sun wasn’t as cruel
Cold did the job
And all the leaves fell down
empty plastic wrappers, they were
And I pulled the hollow vine off the railings
We burned it that night, I and Faizan
The fire ate away what was left, and
Ate herself when nothing was

chop goes the last lamb
I sacrifice a lot to my wolves
The sparrows outside ask me why I do not talk
I do, mother, don’t I?
I talk a lot, a lot, a lot, my skin gets tired of hearing
The silence hops around the kitchen,
a mad cat

Mother wipes the heat off her forehead
The stove whispers on
‘You’re brooding again, Ayesha.’
‘Whatever, I told you it was not just the poems.’
Everything’s a poem to you, Ayesha
No mother, I’m just tired—