light years away but close

remember when you read
me a nazm about human connection?
i did not ask you but i kept thinking
if human suffering could take up space,
would it cover the distance between our hands?
(i think it would)

rumi had said, from a distance
we could only see light in people.
and let me tell you i see galaxies
colliding inside your ribcages
with bob dylan classics
as background score.
to the rhythm of
i-wasn’t-born-to-lose-you,
i dig my way through
your galaxy so desperately
that it makes my heart
feel claustrophobic
inside my own body.

so i drink in sunshine which is identical
to your presence. and glow like split
stars that are shoved inside your gut.
you have crescent moon for eyes—
heavy with incompleteness
and heartache. and i address
all my love poems to you
with hope of completing you
a little- tucked between my fingers
where i lightly hold my pen,
where your hands should be.
i put them in the pocket
of an old biege shirt that hangs
behind my bedroom door.

when i think of peaceful places,
i think of your hands that are not
big enough to hold all the love
you embody—so you give some
to everyone in brown paper bags.
when memory floods my bosom
and drench my heart, i wear
my dull shirt, gulp down
a mouthful of lovesick air,
write you another letter
and place it in my chest pocket
which is close to my heart-
where you are.

𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧

what if I told you
that you could hide
sunlight in the centre
of all that marijuana
you smoke to escape,
forming a garden
within your lungs?
that everytime your
fingers brush mine,
the clouds melt
and rain liquid gold
all over our feet?

what if I told you
that on evenings
when you send me
a photo of setting sun,
all I see is a massacre
of orange cutting through
blue and giving birth to
the kind of red that flows
in my veins, under
hollow skies I paint
on my skin?

what if I told you
that I can no longer
love you, because
I changed the night
you went and moon
made love to me?
that you should break
my ribs open and have
a look, for I have heard
there is beauty in the ashes
of a heart that burns for
what it loves?

what if I told you
I had to leave carrying
songs you whispered
into my ears, and your
photograph in the chest
pocket of my shirt,
because I think you’d save
me if a bullet goes through?
that I break myself every
night into poems
hoping someone would
take them
to you?

𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳:

i. on an evening when autumn will breathe its last breath, you will leave. and the field of green lilies we planted once, will slowly turn to brown. that year, we will see our coldest winter.

ii. I will run away from places we used to go with your hands lightly holding mine. but the breeze would whisper your name, and the city will burn. I will sit in the centre of it all and try to breathe through the ashes.

iii. you will bury my name inches deep in your flesh, in the hope that you forget it. but you won’t. my name would sink its claws inside your gut and grow. your body will become a monastery of names you used to call me and love, its religion.

iv. I will wear a white shirt and mourn the death of something that could have been great- with half filled pocket of unsung songs and memories of your touch circling in my veins. my heart will become a broken machinery and hope it doesn’t fall apart like we did.

v. I will put all the love poems I wrote for you everytime you read me a ghazal by Faiz, in an envelope under the title ‘for when the world comes to an end’.

vi. the next time you see me and gather courage to hold my hand, the world will collapse. and when it does, I will hand over the envelope to you. but you will know that if my heart had a mouth, it would not write poems for you. it would kiss you, hard and full. and I will kiss you for one last time when the world comes to an end.

A Place Where Lovers Go

there is a world
where the earth completes
a revolution in fourteen months
but you start one in my mind
in just fourteen seconds.

it’s a world where songs
talk, and they tell me to kiss
you with my clammy hands under
the moonlight which is warm,
but you are warmer.

I am a delusional traveller there,
and Spain is across the street
but it’s so loud that flowerpots
at my house slow dance
to the noise, and I want to go
to some place quiet.

when I think of quiet places,
I think of your hands, but its so
quiet I lose it when time falters.
and sometimes when its dizzy,
I set flame to all the letters
I addressed to you
even before I wrote them.

it’s a world where you carve
tattooes on my skin,
that fade little by little
each day but I hold time
in my arms, while it dies.

it’s a world where everything
we pretend leaves scars,
and you have never
looked uglier.

Nights are the hardest.

when I was a kid, I spent
all evening stuck infront of the tv,
where the world was piped
into my home. but ma did
not allow watching tv at night.
I could only imagine the colours
in my mind.

so nights were the hardest.

when I was in high school,
I ignored my homework
until it was late at night,
sleep knocked at my door.
but my fingers on the pen
were so death-grippingly hard
that you can still see a little
mark beside my nail.

nights were the hardest.

when college began,
I found people who kept
me up and sleep forgot
its way to my home.
some nights I broke down,
melting into colours I
painted with; on others
I smeared it across
my face and laughed.

nights were the hardest.

now there are nights I think of
sleep more than I sleep.
there are nights I hold onto
pieces of a broken mirror that
finds me beautiful, just as I am-
broken.

on those nights, I take up a brush,
fit it in the mark my pen has dug
and paint my own starry night,
like a van Gogh in asylum.
it’s the only time I feel like a sky-
but one that bleeds
before it turns dark.

I imagine the brightest shade
of blue, but spill black instead.
and it’s okay. I like it like this.
it has no other audience.
nobody sees the night sky bleed
like an internal rupture
where stars die.

and nights still are the hardest.

until all the lilies have died

on sunny days I hold lilies in my hands
and promise to love you,
with all the cracks in my heart
and your wrinkled shirts.
I give you a flower for every time
you speak, and a kiss for every time
you choose to stay silent.
my hands uncork bottles
when they run out of lillies.
and my mouth whispers
‘I love you’ even with alcohol
spilling out from the sides.
I love you when you don’t love yourself,
like a stray cat that has waited
too long for home.

on days that sun hides, I am furious;
a goddess of enchanted ebony,
I bend and the sky rips itself open
in a blistering display of rain.
I have seventeen stars in my hair
ready to burn if things go wrong
because even on days that are not warm
I’m clear that love loses letters and
familiar accents without you.
so I love you even when all the light
in my hair has burnt out,
and the goddess in me, is close
to death. she needs devotion.
and yet I love you
when I shouldn’t love
you any longer.

The Fault in Our Stars series (3/3)

I have chills in my spine
from the warmth of your hugs.
and there are walls in my mind
that look like your arms
and I cannot see anything
beyond them.

you stirred so many galaxies
inside me, that the wounds
you left behind, bleed stars.
and I had to wrap up the long trail
of storms you left in a sigh.

the magic tricks from when
we ran out of summers
but you made one up for us,
my blanket soaked all of
our magic like water
on a cement ground
but it did leave a stain.

I am surrounded by the
echoes of the rhythm
of your heartbeat,
a sound that I would
always hear, something
that would haunt me,
and ask me
how good was our bad luck?

The Fault in Our Stars series (2/3)

the hushed words you leave
on the side of my neck
is my favourite poetry,
you read it to me with
your mismatched breaths
between the kisses I steal
at the traffic lights.

you become a comfortable
silence to soothe my troubled
heart and the loudest music
to which my soul dances
on wednesday nights.
your words are the lyrics
to my melody and your
love becomes my life’s
symphony.

you feel like a song
that has a human name.
the verses talk of the scar
under your eyebrow,
of gardens buried deep
in your heart,
and of everything you
have ever broken.

while the chorus sings with
soft vocals and loud backup
singers about the baggage
you carry inside your ribcage,
it says the only thing broken
in your life is you.

and yet the mountains I carry
on my shoulders, crumble
in your arms that smell
of roses you give me.

The Fault in Our Stars series (1/3)

my mind is a winter
in the middle of june.
and my body follows cycles
and phases of the moon-
too many battles and very
little calm, my mind fights
wars to which you bring
peace. with the fingers you
take to the top of my head,
and trace a passing line
between the eyes that
look at you without
stealing a breath,
while love looks like a
revolution in yours.

you descend down to
my face, until you reach
the centre of my chest
where my heart sings a
balladry of hurricanes
at seaside and palm trees
under which we make love.

the sand from that day,
is stuck to my hair, it tells me
that home is nothing but
a place we miss when
we leave, and I know
I am more yours
than I am mine
but you do not know
what to do with so much.

and my mind is a winter
where snow falls through
my heart and freezes it
with time, only to break it
slowly. but when you’d
ask me how I feel,
I’d smile so wide that
it breaks a sweat and
tell you “this might be
warmest I have ever
felt around you”.

Blue.

The blue of the sky drip into my eyes
Slashing through my whole
It goes down inside and lies
I try to vocalise
But bicker and dispute dies in my throat; my motions and expressions find an overcoat
It’s exhausting me
Little drops of sweat break behind my neck
and meander down my body 
I feel it
I turn blue with the fear of time cascading on my back without my consent
like a snake that lurks up from within and chills your spine.
There is a battlefield inside, with prisons at the sides
and you know,
that the only victors in wars 
are 
the dead.
The blue turns to crimson and burns in my gut
and I,
I would still be brave because my words are safe inside that thick coat.
But it grows wild and catches the hems of the coat
and by the time it sears down a hole inside me, 
the wary of flames turns that coat into ashes,
and,
it rises
from the dead remains of my gulped hidden words.
It grips my throat, wet with perspiration,
I scratch at its hands, throwing futile kicks
But the air inside is dry now
my neck sore and no blue in the sky
Black. Pitch. Apodictic. Dark.
I.
Give.
Up.