She’s back.
After doing time
without committing a crime.
Changed but
undamaged by her walk
through the fire.
Still smelling of wine and madness.
Her hug, still all or nothing.
Her laughter, straight from her gut.
Wiser and crazier.
She’s back.
To take back what’s rightfully hers.
You’re like a snowflake
on my tongue.
Gone before I know it.
You are like a
ray of hope in hell.
Gone before I know it.
You are never there.
You don’t have time to spare.
You don’t look like you care.
You are like a sudden
summer storm.
Gone before I know it
You are just a
pretty hit and run.
Gone before I know it .
You will never fit in,
you crazy thing!
You an unicorn in a cow herd.
A butterfly in a beehive.
A scrabble piece on a chess board.
Their rules you don’t play by.
Their scales can’t measure you.
Don’t be them.
Don’t lose your magic,
Don’t cut off your wings,
Don’t abandon your poetry,
To merely belong.
Learn to enjoy
your own company.
To feel at home with strangers.
To travel halfway around the
world just to be yourself.
Think of it as the price of
being unique.
There is nothing
crazy people love
more than acting sane.
It’s an ego thing.
It’s a dare they relish.
Like finding out how
long you can hold your
breath underwater.
I can feel myself turning blue
as I flash my brightest smile
at the depressing fucks across
the gleaming conference tables.
But I am not quitting
anytime soon.
No one can be sane forever.
But I am going for a world record at least.
Stop talking and
before you know it
there is there is nothing
left to say.
Silence has a way of
seeping in like dry sand
through the cracks in a relationship,
choking off conversation.
Before long,
every sentence
sounds strange.
Every word, unbelievable.
All that is left is just a
shimmering mirage
of misunderstanding.
There have been so many nights
when I have gone to your profile
and stared at the green dot that says
you are online.
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know where to begin.
I don’t know when we ended.
My wide-eyed three year old
leans forward on her mother’s lap,
her nose pressed against
the plexiglass window
watching skyscrapers turn
into lego bricks
as our plane climbs
into the clear blue sky.
Her giddy shrieks of
amazement at clouds
at clutching distance
cuts through the
groan of the labouring engines,
make our co-passengers
smile.
All of us adults
try and imagine how
she must be feeling .
But we can’t.
We don’t
remember awe.
As evening falls over
over a frantic city
my thoughts snap out
of the tight leash of the day
and leap hungrily towards you
over the glittering skyscrapers.
Suddenly ravenous for your
honey mouth,
your silken laughter,
your porcelain skin.
Your arms from which
the sun borrows its warmth.
You hair that falls like a patch
on one eye, you pirate!
Looter of my peace!
I snarl and growl
in the gathering darkness
sniffing the air for your
maddening scent.
Your taste an itch
on the tip of my
famished tongue
licking the bared fangs of desire.
Come here, you!
She opens her eyes
and thinks of him,
and brushes her teeth
and thinks of him,
and forgets to eat
breakfast thinking of him,
and thinks of him in the shower
and looks at the time and wonders
if it will seem too needy
if she messages him so early
and fiddles with her phone
looking out of the window of the
cab on her way to work
wondering what he is doing now
and then gets angry at herself
and switches off her phone
and sits fuming
and vowing not to check
her messages like a addict
looking for a fix and plunges
headlong into work
all fake smile and
desperate enthusiasm.
Thankfully, there are fires to fight
and real problems to solve
and half a day goes by.
And after lunch without
thinking she checks her
phone again.
Nothing.
And she hates herself
for needing him so much
when he so obviously needs
her so little and gets busy
again so that she can out-busy
the busy man with no time
to love her back and when she
looks up it’s dark outside and
she’s tired and hungry and
needs a hug and she checks
her phone absolutely sure there
won’t be a message from him.
And there isn’t.
And suddenly
she’s biting back
tears of a sadness
so overwhelming
it wrecks her insides
and she hurries
home beyond exhausted
like a zombie, bathes,
eats dinner makes herself a
drink and then another and another
till she overcomes her pride
and hating herself messages him.
‘You there?’
Fifteen agonising,
humiliating minutes
later a beep.
With a thudding heart
she opens her inbox.
‘ Hey… wiped out. Talk tom?’
‘Sure’ she types ‘Good night’
Outside,
the night is cold
like her heart
and dry like her eyes.
Once upon a time
I knew a girl
who’d visit
Chandigarh often.
She had family there.
‘I’m off to Chandi!’
she’d breezily
inform me, as if we had
both agreed on this
abbreviation since
our early childhood.
I had only known her for
six months.
She had translucent skin
with green veins, startled
eyes the colour of eddies
in clear mountain streams,
and a mouth like
an open wound
that needed urgent
attention.
God, I ached
for her and she kind
of liked that
I did.
We left it at that though.
Anything else was
impossible,
of course.
Our lives were
post-modern
parallel lines like
Le Corbusier
designed streets.
Years later,
I am on a plane
to Chandi.
My first visit there.
But it’s already
kind of familiar.
Like a woman
whose daughter
you’ve once
loved,
is.
There are days when
she wakes up,
checks her phone,
sees a ‘love you’
message from me,
brushes, showers,
has muesli and cold milk
for breakfast,
wears ‘I mean business’ clothes,
ditches the eyeliner,
ties her hair in a bun
and clutching a laptop bag
descends into the madness
to earn the rent.
There are days when
she’s too busy to
even type ‘fuck you’.
gleamingblackwords 