There's a pinprick on each of your knuckles on one hand and I think I can hear you say they're for weekdays of guilt.

You're saying you'll scratch out "sorry" on your palm and press it on everything you own so the blood stains leave their mark.

You think the world is much easier to live in if you don't have to apologize with your lips.

“Don’t take too many pictures of the same thing,” you snapped once but it was only because you wanted them to see the sky turn from pink to orange for themselves and not on glossy paper. It was almost like you were saying sorry to the sky.

You watched something funny once and I remember you kneeling over with your face in the carpet. I thought you were laughing until you refused to get up hours later and I saw tears seeping through the fabric and realized you were begging on your knees.

You stand by the glass window, your eyelashes catching the light with your eyes downcast. You do that every time you think you cannot tell the difference between being ruthless and pretending you don’t care.

I remember the day you stood across and finally looked right at me with your black eyes and your gritted teeth, your breath steadied in patterned gulps, your hands hanging down the sides of your hips.

Your biggest apology was this stone cold silence.

Spiralling downwards,
Bitter taste of coke slipping in between the bumps on your tongue
And months from now when I try to think about you
I will remember the way you looked at me
And how time stood still
So it felt just like you were standing across from me
Throwing your unsaid medals at my throat
I let them slide down to my chest
It burns
Like the acid streams of coke surfacing my lungs
And I cannot breathe
All I can think about is why do I cross paths with people I am not supposed to fall in love with
Coke sliding down your throat
Swallow your golden apologies you never were brave enough to say
Crackling fizzling drink
I have been in love with you since May
And every look out has been a habit, I still try to find you in a crowd
I still try to swallow the bitter fizzy only slightly sweet taste of coke down my throat
The same way I choke
On every apology I never said to you and how I almost but never did tell you how much your cheekbones remind me of the sunset.
Timeless
This drink will never age and neither will your eyes
Visceral bubbling youthful
I have been waiting on nothing
I feel the acid burn in my throat in my chest and it erupts as I ***** every scent I’ve had of you, every gaze we have exchanged while she looks at you and smiles
Electric
Like the fizz that touches the insides of my stomach
I want to look at you and smile
And all you do is watch me
Sipping through your straw
I am drinking coke
And your eyes say it has been a while and look at me, look at what I do I want to show you what I do because it has been far too long
Child
I am not a child I am a hazy incense drifting through hollow walls, corridors and people infested places
Everywhere I turn I cannot breathe
I need something to quench this thirst of longing
I have collected from every instance I never get to see you, every moment you look at me and she is with you
I want to keep these aluminium tabs
I want to push the bubbles down your throat, tell you this is how I feel every time I look at you and you look at me and we say nothing
I want to tell you I have been doing just fine
And that you are wearing the same shade of red I’ve been feeling and this coke can shares the red we are crying
I want to say I am sorry I looked back and I wished so very hard
Sohrab
You are between these lines the coke can holds, every droplet that condenses on this metal surface, cool
I have something to hold and I don’t know what to feel
Only the acid taste of coke

He smells of nothing
sometimes of trees, salt, rain, and everything pure
like moonlight
he is the colour grey under flesh, muscle and cloth
like rain; fresh, gentle yet violent
a silhouette
elusive but perhaps far more beautiful

The paths have fallen in love with your footsteps
there are cracks in the asphalt where flowers bloom
I swear they are trying to wrap themselves
around your ankles when you walk

I stopped counting
while the mountains stopped screaming
and Sohrab, you are beautiful and breathing

On mountaintops these echoes
are hollow and empty as they should be
exactly how I feel when I look at you
and how I feel when I don’t

It’s a battle of sorts
I need the reminder that there exists
the ability to feel so hard the cold will not win this war
but I know that in the end it will

I know that you are scared to breathe so deep
your ribs scrape the underside of your chest
tell me, who wants to be reminded of their ability to feel so hard?

It’s a tremor under your bones,
you’ve plunged your hand into your chest
to stop the heaving, the hurling, the surging
but everything is fading violently,
spiralling
in a decadent whirl of stubborn silence,
clenched teeth
and eyes that refuse to meet

Nothing, I am nothing

A PARSI'S VOICE.

SO SAY WOULD, OUR ANCESTORS.
"Far, very far away from my Motherland I am;
Where lived Sohrab, Rustom, Jal and Sam.
Adopted India, after many adjustments I did, as my very own.
Here, by me, seeds of development were sown".

Toiled, sweated n happily gave to our Country, my all.
With my hard work n honesty, I then stood tall.
Of life, I eventually did pass, the difficult test.
Then shared my wealth willingly, I did, with the rest."

In unison, feeling very much at home, here I stay.
All the duties of a good citizen perform I; day to day.
Ask I don't for favours; I, with my arms open, just give.
Shabbily treat me do not; to me, my due respect give.

I ask for nothing more than the protection of my religion.
Request you I, to change your concept n vision.

Armin Dutia Motashaw