“What is not to be had in haste, may yet echo on the grieving wind.”
— Su ****

The pallor of the desolate plain —
a wound torn by void.
Those great swathes of barren earth,
laid bare —
are my chest,
yellowed and cracked with thirst.

She holds her head high,
nonchalant —
dragging behind her a hem
as lucid and dark as eyes
that have seen through dreams.

The snowy lace, pure as accumulated frost,
stirs up dust —
like the tender light at the horizon’s edge,
trembling into dawn.

I thought it was the sweet, silken whisper
of a love just waking,
mist-drenched and dizzying…
I wandered deep into it,
entranced,
never to return.

Her steps —
mysterious as the sea’s dense murmurs
when dusk is full.

Each footfall
layered with gentle unrest,
floated
toward the dimples of innocent laughter,
ever deeper,
until freedom itself
seemed just a breath away…

And my fevered imagination
scrambled and stumbled blindly,
thrashing with futile longing.

But oh — the great ironclad of love!
Launching its voyage!
And with cannons that shattered the sky
proclaimed:

Heaven, red with blood, is boiling!
Let the burning Utopia blaze in delight!

But her steps —
her steps are also
so firm,
so forward…
As if from the unreachable gleam ahead
some force of fate
pulls her onward,
irresistible,
unmatched.

And I —
I am helpless.

Forward…
A paltry mayfly,
daring to stop
the eternal rise of the sun
with one trembling day of life.

My proud, resounding cries
were silenced,
crushed into a choking hush,
into shattered bone…

She paid them no mind.

With unbearable grace
she brushed aside the clamor —
brushed away the storms —
and moved forward.

Her heels,
cold as the blade of an axe,
hacked into my flesh.

And the rustling of her skirt
drifted farther, farther still —
until only the groans
of withered grass remained.

The moon, pale and ravenous,
devoured every ember of warmth,
and night,
black and intimate,
caressed my spine like death’s quiet hand…

I was calm —
calmer than I have ever been,
like the pulse
of the already-dead.

In vain I turned again and again
to lick the bitterness
from every grain of this earth —
each one once soaked
in the sweet sweat of youth.

And her scent, receding,
took with it
my last ray
of sunlight.

I read it twice, I still didn’t get it
I did not receive the message
I couldn’t understand the meaning

You poured in your heart
And I left it, torn apart
Because some things don’t resonate
Until it’s once again too late

And you made up your mind
While I stayed behind

Always too slow to make up my mind
Staring at the lines once more,
They look back like a locked door,
I tried knocking, but not sure what for.

Poems are like puzzles in crypts
You write in metaphors
And I respond too literally

And interstellar that didn’t align
A story written that wasn’t mine

And now there’s just silence,
Where insight should have been.
I held something breakable And didn’t feel it within.

Can you hear it?

The silence.

Everything begins there—
in the spaces between our breaths, where our words stumble, break apart,
and dissolve in our blood.

Everything begins in these silences,
when we simmer beneath the skin,
when our dreams bubble, brew, billow, then boil up into storms
that rage just beneath our calm—
when our thoughts crash against the cliffs of our hearts,
swept by the undertow of what we want, of what we hope,
and of all the things we cope with.

When I’m taking pauses while I’m talking to you, the silence isn’t empty.

There is an intimate maelstrom that swirls within me, pressing against my ribcage.

I feel the tides twist, rise, then fall—
I feel the ocean ebb and flow—
I feel its throb that thunders like war drums in my chest.

I feel… every word I hold back, every word I almost say
like a ripple that never crests,
like a wave that never breaks.

But I like silence.

Because, I also see a glimmer in it.
I see the shimmering sway of ideas.
And I feel… softness in their rolling—
softness like the backwash kissing the shore with its foam.

Sometimes… I wish I could just remain there,
nestled in that brittle fold of silence forever.

But sometimes also, the cotton of silence wrapping around me feels so comfortable
that my thoughts become deafening,
and they pull me down, trying to drown me within myself.

So quickly, in a desperate gasp for air—
I feast on noise.

And suddenly, I crave it.
The way the world roars. The way it crackles.
So I melt into its chaos.

I want to feel its pulse, its pound, its music.
I want to drown in the drunken hours.
I want to feel my heart rise with the loudest nights.
I want to cling to laughters that veil all the cracks I try to hide.

I want to stuff the silence—
as if only the noise could save me from myself.

Yet—no matter how hard I try to escape, the silence keeps coming back.

And every now and then,
Life punctuates itself with tiny bubbles of quiet.

…

Like this one.

…

But not all silences feel the same.

There are the ones I share with her…
the wordless seconds lost in her gaze.
The silent glances.
This all feels… different.

These silences make me whole.
Whole, and yet somehow… incomplete.

Incomplete because I often dream of chiseling
from the marble of these silences—
from the air that hangs between us—
all the words, all the promises,
everything I feel for her…

This small yet enormous statue
waiting to emerge from within—
from the rhythm of my heartbeat,
from the waves,
from the storms,
from every crack…

From this silence—
where everything begins.

And there I stand,
fingers trembling, mouth dry,
a chasm yawning between us.

And all I yearn for is to set it free—
This simple

“I love you”.

i'm deafened by the
silence; air palpable
and I can hear my
heart beat fast.

Its like I was
back there again.

I toss, I turn.
My blankets—too warm,
then too cold,
like storms across my skin.
My thoughts go.

Never silence—
just a pain burning behind my eyes,
a mind wired
to a clock not built
for this reality.

I get up and circle my room,
Sit down, play a tune,
Write my ghosts onto paper,
Reshape my pillow.

A breeze,
a hum,
a passing car—
all rise like ghosts,
but none loud enough
to drown the ones in my head.

“Please be quiet,”
I whisper to my mind.
But instead,
it grins and says:

“Remember what you did 10 years ago?”
“Wasn’t that moment strange? Embarrassing? Wrong?”

I give no reaction.
I’ve learned:
engagement feeds them.
So I lie there,
Handing off insane,
hoping the ceiling swallows me whole
And take away my pain.

I cannot shut off—
not until I’m lowered, into a silence
Surrounded by the mournful,
deep enough to dull the thoughts,
until I’m sealed away
and my mind finally softens.

I'd breathe, with fear of losing
all this air I've held in
for so long

I'd walk, with fear of flying
away from the ground I cherish
to float 'till I'm missing

I'd gaze, with fear of longing
and nothing looking back
at this insignificant me

I'd build, with fear of breaking
even myself under the cracking
weight of my tinkering

I'd write, with fear of silence
when the scribbles become wordless
only echoing worthlessness

I'd love, with fear of rejection
from expressions told too loudly
and brazenly

I'd live, with fear of death
that comes not from an end of an age
but from the motion stopping

I'd step back, with fear
of being forgotten
and lose the universe
I used as a canvas
to build systems,
write worlds,
inspire lives,
shoot frames...
and finally—
sleep

He crawled through seven weeks,
her voicemail still unplayed,
burned letters on the stovetop,
and brushed the ash away.

The mattress holds her perfume,
her hair still haunts the sheet.
It lingers just to gut him,
then breaks beneath the heat.

"I gave you what I carried,
a key, a ring, a name.
You marked it as a chapter,
the ending never came."

Streetlights blink and stutter,
pulse yellow, white, then blue.
They gnaw beneath the ribcage
and press on every bruise.

He heard her laughter echo
through gutter sweat and smoke;
coins scatter on the concrete,
a rimshot to the joke.

He cut this trail in whiskey
left dents along the floor,
no battle flag, no anthem,
just shrapnel from the war.

Her glance, a flint and trigger,
still burns behind the eyes.
Not love, not even fury,
just silence split with lies.

The bottle knew its ending;
its glitter salts the ground.
No sirens in the alley,
all bodies have been found.

He slips the lock in shadow
and drifts beneath the gray.
The gospel wilts by morning.
He never meant to stay.

Beneath now lives, what once was
Maybe not was, just never been
It was a fire, lit
A passion, lived

Now to be buried beneath the sand
Boiling land, unreached by hand
It burns to the core,
Once I wanted, now no more

The earth would have to crack
From lightning or thunder
Not from rage,
But remembrance.

Within the nature of things
You can perhaps hear a beat
Your heart, skipping
With the silence, once lived.

ओ मेरे मितवा,
मुझसे रूठो ना रे तुम।
मुझे प्यार हुआ है तुमसे,
तुझमें हो गए हैं गुम।

ख़ुदा से माँगी है एक दुआ –
मेरा प्यार तुम तक पहुँचा देना।
मिल गए तुम इस ज़िंदगी में,
तो फिर और क्या है पाना?

फ़ासले हमारे बीच के
चुभ रहे हैं अब मुझे,
बेसब्र हो गई हूँ अब
मिलने के लिए मैं तुझे।

इज़हार न कर पाई मैं
तुमसे अपने प्यार का,
बयान न कर सकी मैं
दिल से की मोहब्बत का।

इस प्यार की चुनौती में,
ऐ ख़ुदा, तुम मेरा साथ देना।
रूठा है वो मुझसे –
उसे कैसे भी है मनाना।