A library of your love

And should you ever happen to leave

Or in whatever case it is me,

I’ll always have the words.

So many words dipped in ink

Filled only with your scent.

So many words with so many

Letters huddled together

In your eloquent sentences.

So many words including all

 The whispers and longings

You drew on the surface of my skin.

So many words we exchanged

Without even giving them

The privilege of voice.

And so many words will always

be with me because once you

were with me.

Miss Drown

when you're missing

At times

I miss you

helplessly

And Thankfully

My eyes shed tears

From the inside out

Else,

I am quite sure

That all that live

silently in the hollow

spaces,

virginal in the dark

places

underneath

the fragile bony walls

of my ribcage;

would have to learn

how to swim.

I never learnt

Swimming, rather I

Learnt to love

I’d drown

Anyway.

one night stand

We stand facing each other

in a cosy corner

of a lavish hotel.

We argue over arguing

in front of a few known

and a lot of unknown people.

We try to knock some

sense out of our tipsy senses.

You crack a line and I- a smile.

A little prayer slips off my mouth

as I extend my left hand

to catch you just right.

A hell of high spirits

is there in the air

and baby heavens

in your eyes,

while your innocent face

bathe in the moonlight.

People sell water bottles

for 200 bucks

as if it will even faintly

extinguish what’s burning

in there.

You set yourself straight

on the backseat

quietly ask me to behave

and just pass out.

I could have almost

calculated it,

if I’d not been bad at maths.

Grounded

I like to imagine my feet taking root in the ground. On a wet land, my feet getting stuck at a particular position. Maybe I’ll remove my shoes off so that the process can take speed. The loose earth in between my toes will soon be filled with moss. Oh boy! Leaves will grow from my fingers. 

I will probably make a good tree. On some May day like this one, people would stop by to take a breather under my shade. I would prefer old couples. Naughty in their hearts and careful in their touch. To get their glands secret some adrenalin, I would let my leaves fall over them. But what I’ll need is some cool breeze.

Summers are bad with cool things. They don’t really get along. Summers make me really thirsty. And when I’ll grow into a tree I will need some water more than usual. If nobody would water me, I don’t think it will be a crime to go down on my knees and lick the grass.

the title goes down here

A melody fades in

with a tender slide of the fingertips.

As they move from here to there 

parallel to the notes of her moans.

A deep note emerges with the seal

of every warm peck on her cold skin.

From her throaty C to her shrieking A sharp

while her eyes wide shut.

She lies herself like an heirloom instrument,

to mark mystical lyrics for a second, too long.

The symphony escalates when both hands

play her, bass and treble clef alike.

As and when those lips are tongued,

a basic instinct wanders behind the jaw line

to inform how to play her brilliantly.

Fingers crossed in sync then pace up the rhythm

and harmonise with her secret slit delta.

The intense graceful treatment

brings her come to a climax.

The melody starts to dissolve with

three fingertips pressed hard where she arches

the gentle slope kissed, where she dips

and for it she inhales sharp.

Besides her, the ghosts beneath her ribs

come on their feet

to give a standing ovation.

I know it's a no

Are you in love?

In any case,

it didn’t mean to

hang like

an albatross

around our neck.

Neither the question

nor its answer.

It was simply simple.

Thus, you gracefully

folded your arms

across your chest

and said a simple

NO.

It just echoed aloud

and all the goodbyes

ever said to me

marched into my ears,

all at once.

Except for my inner-self,

nothing else moved

with a tremor,

while once again

you rocked my world.

An elephant in the room

An elephant is parked on the leather couch of your living room,

and you’re trying to spot it, far in the forest.

It prefers to stay inside rather run out to you,

because running requires lifting all 4 feet at once.

It has big ears but useful only for fanning, without your words.

It has a huge trunk that waits for you to introduce first.

Its wrinkled skin gets goose bumps with just the thought of your touch.

An elephant is parked on the leather couch of your living room,

silently thinking how you’d call it, post your booming fit of laugh.

Here inside it feels lighter without the sunburn,

but deep inside - the 50 pound heart is getting heavier.

It expects your vague realities to be poured in not less than a gallon.

They make its favourite cup of tea, especially on a hot and dry evening.

Just offer them without any peanuts, as elephants don’t like them.

An elephant is parked on the leather couch of your living room,

hoping to see you before it turns into a stone, into a statue.

While its big wet eyes give a chase to the quarter moon of the night,

the eerie quietness stays and refuses to go away.

Unlike the people who go away.

They always do when they give

a fuck about the damn elephant in the room.

Listening beautifully

I can’t count how many sounds I’ve heard all my life and never listened. But I know listening is beautiful like no other. We were born with two ears and only one mouth because we’re meant to listen more than we utter. And silence among all screams is the loudest. It certainly conveys volumes. So, it can’t be ignored. Apparently the word LISTEN contains the same letters as the word SILENT and share a perpetual bond. 

I may not be able to put the wonderful silence just before the dawn into words. Or the quiet and calm just after a storm ends. Or perhaps about the silence that hums when you don’t have an answer to the question you’ve been asked. I have listened to the hush of a country road at the late hours of night and it’s one of a kind. The silence when there is an expectant pause of a room full of people when someone just about to speak, is thrilling and inexpressible in words. It just touches the human shaped emptiness and poises itself as a well-informed entity. The most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house. For some, this silence is to die for.

If only, you’d listen to it carefully. 

Parts of Me

There are gazillion parts of me

I do not know how many more

I will be before I tumble into a single unit.

There is the part of me that sees the sunset

and there is the part that falls in love

 with it every time it happens.

There is the part of me that keeps

running away in order to be found some day.

Then there’s the part of me that wants to

grab people by their shoulders and shake them hard

when they say I am shy.

There is the part of me that coughs

into my hands and there is the part of

me that forgets to say god bless you when

the other part of me sneezes.

There is the part of me that pins hundred

needles in my brain when someone talks in numbers.

There is the part of me that makes swoosh noises

in my eardrums when I read words.

There is the part of me that watches the darkness

of the moon on the walls and there is the part that

 waits for the stars to emerge out.

There is the part of me that wants to rise up

from the reality like a cloud and float away

And there’s a part of me like a block of concrete

 filled with no air making the former part quit.

There is the part of me that says

nothing matters and there is the part of me

that does everything to make that true and there is

the part of me that realizes how ridiculous

that is.

There is the part of me that feels

it is solemnly the best I can ever be.

SERENDIPITY

They say the earth laughs in flowers. And sometimes even the earthlings get to share it. 

On a not so very special evening you’re waiting for the red light to turn green. Those 120 seconds of your life make your heart run away wearing your blue reebok shoes with a wide smile. It is like it can’t stay at its position anymore. 

Right after you use the brakes and the wheels of your car stop spinning, your inklings begin to process. And you don’t realize the window is half opened; until the process of your thoughts gets interrupted by a voice. A voice of a boy who in his adolescence is clothed in poverty. He smiles at you with a broken tooth. You give him I-don’t-want-any-nonsense look and he smiles hard in his tattered clothes. 

Even before you roll your window up, he drops a red carnation flower inside. You don’t want it, you say.  He says please and his eyes grow bright. You nod in reassurance. He compliments saying ‘it’s looking so beautiful here, please take it. I don’t want money for it’. You’re silent and he goes on. You are confused and you involuntarily accept it. The next moment he winks at you and goes behind the auto rickshaw standing next to your car. Leaving you feel awkward.  You realize the auto driver is observing everything. He seems perplexed too.  

You take the red carnation flower in your hand, give it a baffled look and pan your eyes to the side mirror. And for the next ten seconds your eyes are stuck to it because the boy peeks from behind and hides back. He is playful and you can’t stop yourself from calling him back with a grin. A huge one. You feel the different shades of a usual day and then you present it to me before I learn the sweet fragranced tale hidden in its wilted petals. And it’s only afterwards I realise how it tickled the chime of laughter inside me just because of a flower. And what it confirms is that the universe is always speaking to us. Sending us little messages, treating us with reasons to smile and causing serendipities to make us stop, look around and believe in it.