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If I die before you,
I shall build a home
Amongst the stars,
And watch the world go on,
And when it all halts -
With you,
I shall build another home -
For two,
Upon a different star,
And watch -
As all the world ends.
It’s not as good as what I normally write but I just wanted to write something to ease my mind.
 Jan 31 Vishal Pant
snuf
Small eyes full of love.
Fear.
Anger.
Big eyes full of pity.
Her mouth moves, but nothing is heard.
Her volume rises. Nothing changes.
Time passes as her voice drops.
She moves less and takes care just the same.
Life giver, oh life giver, what are you saying?
She bears on, drained, yet persists.
It will go on unseen.
Her mother is viewed as frivolous and silly, yet admired.
She too will be seen as such soon by the small eyes turned big.
Strong, tall, and determined.
Frail, twisted tree.
She speaks,
Her words are treated as silence.
She knows, so she speaks less.
Small eyes turned big begin to pity.
Repeat repeat as her words are run through and over.
Respectless and loved.
Unappreciated while fed.
Worshipped but unheard.
She is a quiet woman.
She is a quite woman.
She is quite a woman.
She is my mother.
I am her in every way I disdain and admire.
Someday, I too will swallow my words.
For you, mom. I see you.
 Jan 31 Vishal Pant
Zywa
Accept, narrow or

broad, the way of love, because --


it never will end.
"Ghazal 73" ("Ode 73", 14th century, Hafez)

Collection "Love Mind and Death"
if i could, i’d let it go -
long ago,
so you’d never know
how i felt
when you had me knelt
before the sinister
price i owe.

i gave you my world
with fists uncurled;
you gave me your spite
with a tongue that twirled
at the whims of a curse
so foul, it reeked
of a bane too vile,
and unreasonably
perverse.

can’t blame you, though,
the things i know
could rip the heart,
and have it show
the crimson shards of
memories jarred,
and a quiver so bare
from all the blows.  

perhaps,
there’s still a place for you
in my heart, that’s yet
to know what’s true;
but i cannot allow
my head to bow
to scorn, and spite,
to name a few…
This time,
I wore
a parachute
before
I jumped
off the
edge
of
fa
ll
in
g
 Jan 31 Vishal Pant
Charan P
The kid in me stares,
through the wreckage I call my life.

His lips tremble with questions
I’ll never have the courage to answer.

His eyes do the screaming—
a silent howl that claws through my chest
and leaves me gasping for air I can’t find.
He stands there, barefoot and trembling,
holding pieces of me I swore I’d never let go of.

He’s asking me questions I don’t have answers to.
Why did I leave him in the dark?
Why did I trade his light for this hollow shell?
Why did I let the world win?
Why?
I want to tell him it wasn’t my fault—
that the cracks started small,
and before I knew it,
I was too broken to hold him.
But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?

He only knows that I was supposed to protect him.
And I didn’t.

I left him.
I let him to rot in the shadows of my survival.
I buried him under all the things I couldn’t bear to feel.
And now he stands here,
small and fragile and impossibly naive,
holding my guilt in his tiny hands
like it’s something he’s willing to forgive.

But I can’t forgive myself.
Not for what I’ve done to him.
Not for the way I’ve become everything
he used to fear.
Not for the way I let the world cut him up,
piece by piece,
while I stood by and called it growing up.

And God,
I want to tell him I’m sorry.
But what’s the point?
Sorry doesn’t unburn the bridges.
Sorry doesn’t bring back the innocence
I traded for armor that doesn’t even fit.

He watches me burn,
and I can see it—
the confusion, the betrayal,
the faint, flickering hope
that I might still save us.

But how do I tell him
that the flames are mine?
That I struck the match,
fed the fire,
let it consume everything we were
just to survive?

He doesn’t know
what it feels like to be gutted by people who swore they loved you.
He doesn’t know
how heavy it gets when you carry the weight of everyone’s indifference.
He doesn’t know
that there’s no bottom to this kind of pain—
just an endless free fall.

But he will.
One day, he will.

And when that day comes,
he’ll look at me again,
with those same pleading eyes,
that same puzzled look.
And I’ll still have no answers.
Just this fire,
and the ashes of who we might’ve been.

I want to scream at him,
shake him,
make him understand—
that this wasn’t the plan,
that I didn’t choose this.
But the truth is heavier than any excuse.
I broke him.
And I know it.

He looks at me with pleading eyes,
as if I can fix this.
As if I can go back.
But how do I tell him that I’m too far gone?
That the fire raging inside me
isn’t something I want to put out?
That I’ve grown to love the way it burns,
even as it devours what’s left of us?

He steps closer,
and I flinch.
I can’t bear it—
the hope in his eyes,
the quiet belief that I can still be something better.
Because I can’t.
Because I won’t.

He reaches out,
his tiny fingers brushing against my burnt skin,
and for a moment,
just a moment,
I feel it.
The weight of what I’ve lost.
The pieces of myself I’ve scattered to the wind,
never expecting that one day I’d want them back.

But I can’t hold him.
I can’t let him in.
Because if I do,
he’ll see what I’ve become.
He’ll see the ashes,
the emptiness,
where a heart used to be.

And he doesn’t deserve that.
He doesn’t deserve me.

So I turn away.
I let the fire take me.
I let the flames rise higher,
consuming what’s left of the kid
I couldn’t protect.

Behind me,
I hear him whisper.
It’s not anger,
or hatred,
or even sadness.
It’s worse.
It’s hope.

“Come back,” he says.
“Please.”

But I don’t.
I can’t.
Because the truth is,
I don’t know how to.
And maybe I never will.

So I just watch him watching me,
until he fades into the smoke,
leaving me alone in the ashes—
a stranger to the boy
I was supposed to protect.

I look for him in the mirror,
but he’s gone.
And all that’s left staring back at me
is the shell of someone
he used to believe in.
~ crying the whole time while writing this.
I want to write honestly.
Speak the truth.
I want to stare in a mirror
and see anyone but you.

I want to love out loud
and speak my feelings, too.
I'm not the kind of brave
that counts, no matter what I do.

I wish it wasn't almost over
that I had more time to spend.
I want to speak words into facts,
to stand tall but only ever bend.
I'm working toward a finish
but only coming to an end.
tick, tick, tick.
tick, tick, tick.
the silence is filled
with a steady pulse.
a calming, steady rhyme.
so soft a sound, it could
send me to sleep.

then, an incessant whine
slowly feeds into my
intravenous drip.
this is from a year ago
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