First I am not and  then I am not again.

And the things spin out.

and questions old and musty

come tumbling out of that closet.

she crept along that once yellow road
and one by one her bread crumbs flew away
she became her own leftover
she stopped for a song, never walked again.

Every night,

The Idol in my head

and I

fight.

9 yellow moons

die

and resurrect themselves

and smile

Bud like Bruises

Open up

shop on my chin.

Blood vessels burst,

paint

a van Gogh

in the canvas

of the whites of my eye.

I crack a rib

I crack two

Alright

I crack quite a few.

It hides

making tents

of my bed clothes.

I wander from

pillow to post

pillar and bed

itching

for the next round of hurt.

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.

Late Night Coffee

Idol in my head

and I

start conversations

every night.

We fight minutely

over details

that matter to noone else,

Ideal Idol in my head

and I.

Idle and argumentative

we reach a draw,

For I go for 'Epic'

and it

'for the Time Being,'
every single time.

Gentle Men

With such care you move

this heart within my breast

leaves every old story it knew.

with such care you move

me to tears at every word you say

I have to leave behind my old skin.

with such care you move.

I gleefully jump into an old fire

burn aside all that was easy.

with such care you move,

that i remove soul hinges and

steal into your room.

With such care you move-

away with me still at your feet

dreaming am flying with you.

With such care you move

ghost of your gentle touch

burns still on my back and neck and...

With such care you move

the imprint of you left a hole

which now I plug with earthly beings.

Single Brown Female on Fridays.

Shiny little lights on the ceiling

reflect intermittently what's within

There's no space for our bodies to gasp

and that crude cry's lost in the making.

Shiny skin on my arms

potent with sweat and charms of tonight

we twirl and twist as if in discomfort.

Till the shoe comes off at midnight.

Legs stretch out before me

(encased in chocolate smeared denim)

crossed at the ankle

heels airborne

toes writhing in restlessness

(freshly painted in silver)

make patterns in air

which smell of me

(cigarettes, tea and ... je ne sais quoi)

calves round up on the shin

taut with false tension.

This black book on my lap,

I begin my day.

streetlight

False red light instead

floods the floor where

once you and I had lain

in abstract darkness.

Everynight's street light

streams in

revealing a face

that's not yours;

and even in the throes of

that otherwordly hit,

I am aware of how it

mocks my fragile fidelity

and I shut my eyes tight.

to chase it away

May be its cos we were all beaten up as Young Indian girls. Slapped, pinched, ears boxed, hair pulled, verbally abused as young girls for not listening to them, that we grew up with an even more solid determination to not listen to them -To be as ‘mule-headed’ as we could be. Never listen to them. I force myself to be better at ‘seeing’ than them - Better at being wiser - Better at being their parents and giving them advice than they were. But all that physical and mental abuse did change us - Made us more susceptible to feeling loved at similar pain. “Harder!” we exclaim, making beasts out of our men. May be its cos we were beaten up as young Indian girls that we all ended up being masochists.

Still

Its like I am floating

hooked to the chandelier

Its like I am chained

to an uprooted tether

I might have been sitting

But I didnot really notice

Or I might have been buried alive,

Numbed blue,

Or breathing.

I am in a coffin

still

floating.

I am chained

chained

still swimming.

I am me

me at last,

sometimes I am you still.

Afterwards

Underneath it.
I sit.
Awaiting
a pat
or shove
of familiarity.


Lace overhangs
obscuring my vision.
I wait
blinded.
For table scraps
of leftover love.

Love in the city of joy!

Little pieces of paper flutter and fly

over the pile of garbage,

somewhere in the city.

Little pieces of paper.

Some square some not.

Browned by time and misuse?

Unloved,

Folded into little crevices

in someone’s cupboard,

Found one spring cleaning day.

Found and torn away.

Torn and thrown away.

Little pieces of paper flutter and fly.

Passersby pass by,

Nobody bothers to look at them.

Nobody thinks of finishing this jigsaw.

If they had had the time,

they would have met

an unspoken love affair,

written in green ink

on the back of old envelopes.

Always

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!

Pablo Neruda

among strewn clothes and remnants of last night,
lies tiny bits of my heart.
my knees hurt from the hardness of the floor,
my chest from the missing part.