My glossary of love
Agape tattooed in wildfire,
Devotion smelted in cinder,
Joy seeded in ashfall.

Diagnosed as emotional famine.
Pulse ossifies, smiles fossilize,
Muscle calcifies beneath touch,
Affection bleeds through fissures.

Daddy's little princess found a dress
hanging in the closet of red distress.
She paired it with a crown of dazzling lie
a migraine wrapped in gold supply.

She tried it on, and the silk turned stone,
and whispered low, “Your grief is not grown."
The hem recoiled from her trembling skin,
as if to say, “You have not let sorrow in.”
The sleeves clutched tight like hands of fate,
and said-"You have yet to earn this weight.”

Her father smiled, “They fit you well,”
blindfolds forged in optical hell.
His love shaped pledges peeled too soon
like decals on glass in a monsoon.

She left behind the world he built
a kingdom dressed in love and guilt.
And in her wake, the forest sighed,
relieved that the fairy tale had died.

But somewhere still, beyond the din,
a girl weeps, lacking thickened skin.

She sunbathes on a rooftop garden
I sweat beneath tin and prayer.
Her light is leisure; mine, labor.
I watch her glow,
in my scathing love,
a heat that refuses to beg.

Some whetstones honed me,
others just scraped.
Some flints pressed on temples,
others just cracked.
Some boulders rolled on my shoulders
others just watched.
Some pebbles rained on me
others just slipped.
Some gravels bled my feet
others just pricked.
Some shards reflected me,
others just shattered.

But one marshmallow
melted in my throat.
The pink promise turned to curse,
sweetness became suffocation.

She called her dimple, a crater of charm
but the acne beside it was a constellation
She tried so hard to erase.

I saw the moon in her face,
glowing, flawed and
pulling tides in me.

You left this world on the day meant for roses
But you enter every poem I write like petals.

I remember your wallet
holding the weight of rice and survival.
Your royal chair ,reserved for those
who wronged you.
Your grayish eyes
like storm clouds that never broke.
Your plastic slippers you wore year round.
Your words and their weight.

Twenty two years, seven months, eleven days
And my eyes still flood like monsoon warnings
My throat still chokes like a pulled violin string .

Your absence is felt like a civic collapse
A callout like sirens in memory’s lapse.

Reminiscing about you is a habit,
And habits die hard.