Look how you are breaking my heart

Look how you are
breaking my heart,
Look how you have got me
all muddled up inside.
And what coincidence to have
"Lovers in Paris" start
playing from my playlist;
a sign from the universe
to let you go or to keep you?
I have to give it to you
for doing it in the most
delicious way.

What is a girl to do?

A sickness pervades my being,
I can feel your absence spreading
through my blood, slowly, pain-
stakingly meandering its way
to my heart, even the air that I
breathe hangs heavy and contorted,
suspended in its wake because
you are not around, this sickness
wounds its way to my wrist which
you last held, your touch is
imprinted in my bones.
I can trace the onset of this illness
from my lips which you last kissed,
its aftertaste still strong in my mouth.
My heart is full of you,
what is a girl to do?

Look how we have disassembled each other

I don't want to love you
if I can't be with you.
It's as simple and complicated
as that, because I don't want to
carry this ache around with me;
this irrational illogical desire
for you, I don't want you
just as forbidden fruit,
I want you accessible, real.
You say you love me,
and I am in love with you
but is that the same thing?
But to say it would be
sending it out to the universe,
to say it would be making
a promise and I don't want to
make promises I can't keep.
How did we get here, you and I,
so soon so fast, would it last?
Look how we have utterly
disassembled each other.

Look what you have done.

How did we get here,
you and I?
You, with your infectious laughter,
carrying an air of being at home
anywhere in the world.
And I, who smiled for the first
time when we met after
 a year of sulking around.
You, with your terrible jokes
that make my stomach ache,
the easiness with which you
hold my attention, my hand, my mouth
And I, with my acute awkwardness
at anything to do with feelings,
and my obsessive desire to kiss you,
as persistant as a toothache.
So there I was
being perfectly miserable but now
you have changed everything.
Because here I am,
missing you and longing for you;
not even a bearable once-in-a-while
thing, but this awful reminder
of your absence, like a sickness.
Look what you have done.

A thing of wonder

It feels strange to be so utterly
happy and contended when I am
with you, as though the world has
been set right somehow, stranger still
because we both know it isn't so, not
in this place we call home shimmering
with discontent and misgivings.
But I forget that when I am with you,
I can only think of your hands
holding mine and how it falls
perfectly into place, and that I want
to kiss you everytime I look at you,
sometimes I don't even care if
people are looking or judging.
When I am with you, I could
sit for hours and we don't even have
to be talking and I would still
be smiling to myself counting the
black dots on your hands, and suddenly
the most mundane matters of existence
would become a thing of wonder.

Is this the life you wanted?

Always this reticent heart

trying to retreat into itself,

Always this doubt when it comes

to loving, being loved.

Life is happening too fast,

too soon, how do you get a

grip on it? You are accustomed

to life moving slowly, all you

wanted was to write and have

a house by the sea; but what 

I have now holding in the palm

of my hands, this terrible beauty

you and I, this bewildering

 transition in my life and 

here I am asking myself-

Is this the life you wanted?

Light- headedness

You are getting to me, I can tell

 because I can barely stop thinking 

about kissing you, barely contain

this light-headedness I feel around 

you, and I am thinking when

 will I get to see you next, 

and I am thinking even though

 I burnt my tongue drinking coffee

 due to sheer giddiness the last time

I was with you, it is as though 

I am back to being a sixteen 

year old and this is happening

for the first time.

Semiotics

Our goodbyes aren't punctuated

 by hugs, but with an awkward 

detachment hanging midair;

You, with caution,

I, with propriety in mind.

because the air between us feels

so tense that I am conscious

of even the slightest of movements.

I laughed so much last night

when you mentioned that

I might be averse to hugs

because you don't know the half of it

and I am not sure I am willing 

to tell you; and if I sent you a poem

would it confuse you further?

Poems as prayers

Halfway through the year

and how you have changed since,

here you are now
offering poems as prayers.

All I want

All I want is to make it
till the end of this year
without breaking down.
A year in this place is getting to me
it's turning my blood toxic and
my heart all twisted up.
How awful it would be to die
not having lived much,
it makes me sick just thinking of it
I long so much for freedom,
after all these years still struggling
for it, after all these years dreaming
the same dream.
What a dread life is without
the freedom to love, to feel,
to make mistakes.
What a relief it would be
to be holding a cup of coffee
while sitting across from you.

Meeting at the coffeeshop

Our laughter lingers in the coffeeshop;
I hardly went to one before you,
Our voices mingling with so many others;
Strangers who are now
serving slices of themselves
to the human warmth of living
before death gets us all.
How absurd, how insignificant
this day might seem in retrospect
that you would drive down all
the way just to see me for the few minutes
that I could give you.
And how our lives have been rearranging
 themselves this whole time
based on random chances;
a word, a message, a smile.

Hoping that writing would hold me

My swollen heart is aching again,

it loves too easily, it sinks all too often

Sometimes life feels like a minefield

of anxieties and I think I stepped on one day.

I am always waiting for my life to start 

Today it felt like its a long time coming

And anxiety, my old friend, came back again

to sit beside me, shaking me out of

the lull of everyday life. 

Old fears came to haunt me again,

what if life is but endless hours

of dreadful mediocre conversations,

and fullfillment of duties,

mechanical loving and working?
Whatever happened to great passion?

And am I truly living life on my own terms?

Weaknesses stepped out,

looking to hold me hostage,

So here I am,

asking for small miracles,

Hoping that writing would hold me

so that I won't break into

tiny little pieces I can't glue back.

So here I am,

hoping for the strength to return

and keep me company

while I wait for the despair to subside.

Time doesn't stop for us

Time doesn't stop for us,
it accelerates and swirls
We maintain an unbearable distance
between us, for propriety's sake.
We still catch each other's glances
and smile from across the room,
always heavily aware of each other's presence
even when we aren't in each other's
line of sight; the secrets that lovers keep
And whenever evening draws to a close
my heart sinks like that time in school
when Sunday outings used to end
and there was the unmistakable
dread of the drudgery of Monday.
Our hearts sink in perfect congruity.
And you ask me if I am alright,
like you always do.
I leave with a whispered goodbye,
my heart breaking as I turn away from you;
no goodbye hugs and kisses
 for lovers like you and I.

Toothache

The first flush of desire

is akin to a toothache,

you are constantly running

your tongue over it,

fixated on the acute pain.

Humming of your heart

What we want from lovers
is their stories, all the details
that make up the person we yearn for
We want to know the first time
you scalded your knee, the first
girl you fell in love with,
even that distance you keep with
your father, and were you loved?
We want to know
how you appeared in my life
and changed everything even by
the most mundane of encounters.

We want to know the feel of your skin,
already our hands lying in proximity on the table
before us seem to shoot electric currents,
we want to know how it feels like
to sink into your world and then swim up again,
we want so much all at once,
it's as though we set ourselves
up for disappointment,
Sometimes we think the whole damn world
is contained in a person,
in lovers who aren't yet lovers,
What we want is as incoherent as this
poem, full of fits and starts,
of restless waiting and longing,
the whole world suspended in the wake of
the whirlwind of whatever-this-insanity-is.
And what I wouldn't give to be beside you again,
on the road to somewhere, nowhere,
leaning against you, listening to
the humming of your heart.

Grief is intimate

Grief is intimate in a way
joy can never be,
It chokes you out of breath,
It carves rivulets of hollow-nothings
in the cavity of your chest
By now you know one can
grieve for oneself, selfishly, childishly.
Grief lurks in waits for you
when you are hanging onto\a mugful
of tea one uneventful afternoon
to take possession of you,
to make you realise the gravity
of your loss.
Even that rage you carried
with you all of last year,
it dissipated like everything else,
lost, irretrievably lost,
shedding parts of you
that you thought you couldn't
possibly live without.
It's as though the world has finally
opened its gates for you
and you are hurtling
in a pace and direction
you can't quite control.
And those mental images that
you still hold on to somehow,
Childhood relics that haunt you,
asking you if you really found
the great adventure you were looking for?













you 

Stay

We started with awkward smiles

now we are asking about dream houses,

City or countryside?

Collecting intimate details

as lovers do(but we aren't lovers,

not yet)

In this little town, admidst rumblings

of history and misfortunes,

we have somehow found 

in each other

a reason to stay.

I could love you

But you are settled in your ways,

I am still forming myself

And haven't really decided on

the life I want.

So I tell myself

not to be swept away

by the storm of your arrival.

I could love you

but these are years of my life

when I will always put myself first.

You tell me that you haven't felt such

desperation to come home as you do now,

But home is not where

I imagined I would be in my twenties.

I still let myself have an alternate 

storyline though,

one in which we could have ended up 

together and I wouldn't be so worried

about rushing into a storm

I can't control.

the one in which

you asked me to stay
and I did.

and I did.

Oh it does

Maybe that is how life chooses you,

when you are reading a book

wondering how to turn your life around

And it does,

Oh it does.

Desire

You are always going away

Somewhere, inhabiting a life

I know so little of,

And I am always retreating a little 

into myself.

I could say a number of things

For instance, I have often wondered 

how it would be like to kiss you,

but there is so much at stake.

We are always surrounded by friends,

a precaution you have made a point to take

at a place like ours;

small-town stifling atmosphere

where people talk

and anything can be a fodder for scandals.

I long for you even as I sit next 

to you in the car,

the air tense with our mutual desire;

I wonder if other people can sense it too.

Some days you give me hints,

But for all your years, you seem

As bewildered and confused

On where we stand.

By now it has grown into a fever,

consuming me like cancer,

By now you send me notes,

all along your travels,

probably missing me a little.

What remains of us

What remains of us?
Not the unaccounted-for-love,
Not the devastating fights
Just plain wonder
at how it had overwhelmed us,
Struck us like a disease in the beginning
and left us so drained in the end.
I am no longer searching for you
in other people
and that is something.
What remains of us;
a worn-out pair of shoes,
a few drops of perfume,
and something that could pass for kindness.