I bed hopped last week

lost my earrings and sleep,

and all your pillows and sheets,

reeked of treachery and me.

The demon caught me knee-deep

in other women's desperate dreams

In vain I tried to feel dirty

even as the cross singed me.

As winged hordes danced and leaped

and counted last night's bruises on me

I shook with laughter as I pretended to weep

(as I sat on my favourite god's knee)

and still god's favourite child I continued to be.

incorrigible

My swollen wrists

fingermarked by you

bruised thighs

black and blued by you

images of last night

hijacked by you.

Yet

I woke up alone

starved naked befuddled

once again by you.

Mesong

Not always for me the unspoken. 
Not always for me the subtle. 

I am a brown girl from the earth. 
I grew in the middle of everything. 
I grew in the corner of everywhere. 
I grew being big. Strong. Wilful. Lazy-limbed. 
Not for me the mildly hinted. 
Not for me the whispered.
I thrive on the oft-repeated. 
In the shouted. In the brutal honesty. In the Bald truth. 
I can gleefully chomp on the borrowed. 
I can woefully cry for the unknown. 
I can roll with the punches. I can take that hit. Again and Again, and Again. 
I can carry off the black and blue with the brown. 
I dont tuck my hair behind my ears. 
I dont decry my burden. My Brownness.
I dance. Drunk with the power of the transparent. 
I sway. Heady with the scent of me. Known. Common. Citrusy. 
Men fear. They laugh from afar. Or think me someone else. And hint at something and run away. When I roar at them with my eyes. 
I snap my curls and it rains camaraderie and I gather them in a knot and friends grow foe. My tense calves flex at my bursting energy.
I scatter secrets with my eyelashes and gather love stories with my ears. 
My heart is in the right place and mind sinks in the weedy waters of my neighbourhood pond. 
My intentions are always kind and my actions lost in the serpentine lanes of the monday markets of lust. 
I was born into a maze of thoughts. Into a melting pot of identities. Into the back alley of modesty. Into the slum of morality. But I grew a giantess. And chandeliers glittered in my hair. 
And I can barely see where my feet land. But I stomp on. And on. On rubble of pulled down vanities. 
On the down filled dream of the ancestors. On the mud filled gullies of a silly hometown. And sometimes I fall in puddles fiilled with rainbow. 
And sometimes I fall in trenches of the polite. 
And I grow strong and die. I grow weak but survive. 
Hope eludes me. Hope is in my pocket. Hope is my best friend. Hope deceives me. 
And I wipe my eyelashes on my torn heartsleeves. 
And I fly again. Blind. Scared. Stupid. Hopeful.

Deathwish

For each time you looked away
For every time you said no
For every time you came in uninvited
but left before  i was ready
little pieces of my eager heart chipped away

Many a times my fingers itched to touch

that nonchalant hand so close to mine.

My rejoicing finger would graze your back

as i adjusted to your nearness in a cramped space

And that would have to be enough for the night.

For every time you canceled on me

For each time you postponed
For every time you wrapped your hand around me
but you kept your head turned away
Tender Tendrils to that place froze grey


And I hurriedly answer every time you call
And my ears still prick up with your name
And I still remember, and I still remember
And I still hope you do too
But for each day you seem not to care....


Heart chipped......Tender Tendrils........Grey...

This Time With Less Trepidation

I dreamt that you gave yourself to me

walked into my bed without your mask

that you abandoned the nights of old

And I gave up the disgraces of my past

That Sheets no longer smelt of that blue deluge

I watched you dream of me watching you.

ghosts threw pebbles at our window

and I dreamt that you gave yourself to me.

Us Still.

Underneath it all

Hand in Hand,

we 'live' blindly.

Falsely. People

laugh. Underneath it

Along with it

hand in hand

I glide along.

Real life bones

to teeth in an urn.

In tandem we fly.

You died years ago

I died too

except I live still.