Rouge

Still carefully treading white lines on busy roads
Still catching crumbling pieces of the sky
Still pulling at dry skin, sacrificing meat for that unquenchable thirst
Still peering at faces passing by
Wondering who coloured the right ear red
Still running against the wind
Catching my breath in the rain
Still changing paper for other people's prints
Still smiling at pictures uploaded in an attempt to bandage relationships
And why not, if it works?
For what if it works!
How incredibly wonderful watching things as they fall into place
Painstakingly arranging themselves
Squeezing pieces together that were never meant to fit
But doing it anyway
So you have to cross your knee instead of spreading them in the comfort of unlimited space
So you have to match your undergarments every once in a while
So you have to explain the last donut that disappeared from the fridge
So what?
How wonderful it is to watch my rose arrange her petals
To have my fox see me in strawberry fields and await my return every evening
How extraordinarily wonderful
To have and to hold from this day onward
Well of course you may kiss the bride!

Stars

We lay awake nights now
Stars encased in tinted glass
In blinding fog lights
Shadowed under weary eyes

Darkness that brought with it restful sleep
Has permeated through the layers of our mind
Bringing instead a deep unrest
And settled down

Unleash the darkness
Give back the stars
I'd rather have them
In the sky

Edited for Mocaine

We lay awake nights now

Stars encased

in tinted glass

In blinding fog lights

Under my 

skin

Shadowed under 

weary eyes

Darkness come now

Permeate

Through the layers

of my mind

Bringing in

side the deep  

Settle down

Give me back the 

stars, I'd rather 

have them in the 

sky.

That One, the One Mad as Birds

I always think of her when I cross this stretch
A little lost girl with a nest on her head
A nest of wild flowers and humming birds
Playing havoc with her mind
Bursting into flight with her thoughts

On stilts she walks
Looking straight over the heads of crowds
That's the only way they're meant to be seen
Bobbing up and down to the rhythm of her personal background score

Last I heard she'd flown with that flock of hers
I imagine her chirping away
Somewhere on the branch of a gulmohar tree
Perhaps that's the only place to be
And till I see her again
I'll chirp from my verandah
Hoping she hears me.

Quiet Murmurings

One came like a storm
Turbulent and all consuming
Grey clouds, rainbows, furious rain
The whole package
Cruel, exhilarating, tempestuous and breath taking
All at once came the storm
And left all at once
Never staying long enough to heal

The other came like a breeze
Nourishing, life giving, soulful
With a different kind of fire
Blew over still smarting skin
Rekindling the flickering flame
Never too hot to burn
Picking up the pieces after I fell apart
Again and again and again

And that made all the difference.

Paper boat

She won't pick up her phone and let it drop
Like she imagines she will
She won't roll down those steps she imagines hitting her head against
She won't drop in the middle of the street and wait for the fading echo of her name amidst the din
She won't fall apart like she imagines she will
Because she can drown out the noise inside her head on a single sheet of paper
And watch the paper boat float gently along in the indifferent streams of the late afternoon showers.

Veins

There are some people who blend beautifully into your life. That terrible beauty that takes over, and having taken over continues to grow algae-like over pools of once uncontaminated moments.

She was beautiful, no doubt. Her voice had the burst of freshness of freshly plucked mint on parched morning afters. And so she came into my life. I took her by hand into the freshly painted memories of my mind. She built and rebuilt the fractured fragments of my imagination as my skin itched, the purpled veins underneath growing darker. And she would brush her fingers over my furrowed brow, "it will all be alright", she said.

I watched as she picked up wooden frames, tilting, sawing edges, I helped her even with sand paper that razed my hand. I saw myself being innocuously shifted out of the refurbished frames. Quite inconspicuously at first, just an ear or a foot until it was hard to see that they were my frames at all.

And those purple veins grew thicker and longer over my swollen fingers. Stretching, spreading, spurting new tendrils, throbbing at the joints till they ached.

Finally, one day, I found a blade. What does it take to wash purple stains?

Icarus

And suddenly it scared her
The absence of foul smell
The smoke
The heat
Of burning feathers

That empty space
Where dreams resided
But a hole in the sky

At least he had feathers to melt.