Something New

Breathe in, breath out my love
Feel your heart beat, waiting
Still your soul as you prepare to leap
The world is out here, anticipating

Life used to rush by around
Swirling wild, cascading, raging
And I’d chase the empty ache inside
A storm in a child, horizon chasing

For it is brighter, more beautiful and painful to perceive
Reams of possibility we can grab like kite strings
Run so fast I am falling, flying
How could I live otherwise, without this rush?
The thrill of new smells, sights, sunrises, heartache
That stumble one after another after another after another until- break!

I didn’t know how untethered my heart had become
A compass madly spinning, unable to find my north
A vessel buffeted by ocean currents and solar winds
What rolling stone needs an anchor?
Give me stars

Until

The winds abated just enough, a moment
Settling, to feel gentle sunlight on my skin
Feet finding solid ground at last
Ears ringing, unused to silence
A moment, a minute, to wonder if I could…
Soil rich with nitrogen and possibilities

It’s slower, harder, rolled sleeves and focus given
Scheduling time for work instead of impulse
Now we lay foundations, till the earth
Making progress, planning paths
Roots daring to find their place
Sharing in symbiosis with the trees
Of others around me
As we dare grow in tandem
In the ecosystem of this community
Reaching together towards the sun

Breathe in, breathe out my love
You can be the eye in the calm of your heart in the storm
Let each heartbeat nurture the seeds of your soul
And hands tender hold you warm.

I remember

It blooms, it fades it fades
And memories float past in a daze
Knowing time is still softening raw edges
A jagged outline of what’s now gone
Layers of pages, stories, laughter
Secret evenings of tender confessions
Vulnerability, love and wonder
Now I sit and wonder what comes after
When rent asunder, trust I’d given
When disintegrated, good intentions
So much history, tarnished, broken
Saved to folders I no longer open

Did they not know how much I loved?
Memorised voices, favourites, faces,
Learned habits, pastimes, idiosyncracies
Found family in the safety of their gaze
And now empty earth lies open, bare
The impression left of plants uprooted
We busy ourselves with new growth
And let soil resettle post turmoil
Knowing that trust will never return
Their narrative is rewoven without my thread

And now I know empty eyes will drift
Past mine, not even a stranger to acknowledge
The earth still turns and seasons shift
But I carry with me this knowledge
For all the heartbreak, still memories of time
When there was love behind those eyes
But I can’t forget the story that was mine
I remember, I remember
I remember

Hope

There is something out there, waiting
There is something, unseen, but near
We can’t know when, or around which bend
But always, always know this my dear

There will be another sunrise
That’ll take your breath away
Or an unexpected kindness
That surprises & makes your day

In far-off cities and distant seas
Something sweet and joyful awaits
That sings a melody of hopefulness
You must trust in these fates

For all the world is bleak and cold
For all the clouds and rain
There’ll be something beautiful, someday
That’ll warm your heart again

An old piece from mid 2019, probably. Amazing isn’t it, the way you can forget all context for a piece, but it still resonates? I’m hoping these old pieces will help inspire me to maybe write something new again soon, maybe evolve my poetry style into something less Emily Dickinson adjacent!

Ghosts

In someone’s face, in another place
The ghosts of memories drift in space
Past selves of me reliving moments
I’m still learning to let go of

If I stop right there
I can feel and be who I was once more
All those emotions come rushing back
Dancing, twirling, laughing, living, breathing
Conflicting with me now is so confusing

Like a broken mirror, glass distorted
My memories echo, my mind’s eye open
Seeing what could be again if I just indulged
In a little bit of
Faith?
Hope?
Delusion
Because this story’s reached its conclusion

All my ghosts reach out their hands
And each one’s discarded as I try
To move on and let them fade somehow
Find new memories in some new sky

This world so big and infinitely ever changing
I still need to learn to embrace the future, trust the future me that’s watching
Reconcile my pasts
Reconcile my hearts
Exorcise the ghosts within me?
Say hello to some new journey
And pray, someday
These strings that tether cease to weigh me down, instead become my ballast
Balancing, holding me steady
Maybe one day I’ll feel ready

Maybe I can make that change

Summer!

Like a warm blanket,
the air is playful now
Caressing knees,
tousling hair
Under a stronger sunlight,
northern breeze
Summer isn’t far now!

Okay, it’s not actually summer yet, but a mid-spring heatwave that’s pushed the mercury into the 30’s certainly makes you feel like it is! Plus, writing rhymes in the park after reading Gerald Durrell certainly lends itself to being inspired in these sorts of directions

The days lengthen and roses bloom
Arching overhead, leafy trees
The idyllic summer days of childhood
Painted warm and golden in our memories

The smell of hot, sunbaked dirt
Ans sunscreen acrid, salty brine
The sound of crashing waves on sand
The joy of days that were all mine

Endless it felt, those whimsy weeks
Creating stories and adventures galore
A thousand games in a thousand different ways
Bicycles, beaches, books and more

Oh, to live in those days again
To have months of nothing planned
To explore heat soaked infinities
To the sound of cicadas and sand

Pieces of Self

I am composed of pieces,
Memories and fragments
Strung together by time alone
Figuring out, how to articulate, how?
We are all just patterns, our pathways – programming
I am just a bunch of parts, trying
To be whole, to be a functional machine
In this expansive engine of an ecosystem
In this scattered diaspora of consciousness

Memories
Who we were, past selves still shaping who we are now
When we remember, if we remember
How we remember?

I can remember a time when I loved you
And my world had a future that still looked real.
My dreams had not been dashed yet,
I held that happiness and warmth for you in my heart.
I still remember being her,
I get reminded, she returns to me at times
Whispering in my ear, how easy it would be
To slip into her skin and accept your embrace
To trust again
In that possibility you painted for me

You are composed of pieces too
It wasn’t meant to be all a lie
Maybe I only saw the parts I liked
And hoped, believing that was enough
Faith or delusion, something in between, tethering, holding together until-

I don’t need your apology
I try not to think in terms of forgiveness
Life moves on, and so should I, right?
Find ways to become someone else
Unfurl pieces of myself in new memories and faces
Try to grow and flourish beyond all that’s past
And just hold,
Reassure, and hug the inner child of me
The part of me that is always crying
Heart aching for a dream I dreamed in time gone by
And set her aside to sleep
With all the other past pieces of who we all were
And find my way forward
To a new place? A new sense of self
To carry on into what will be?
…I guess we’ll find out, eventually

Love, at the wrong time

Like ships in the night
Passing glances, eyes meet
Breath hitches, hearts alight
But steps out of time, two left feet

The hands tick, clocks out of time
Just stuttering, trying, never quite there
The universe spins and potentials shine
You’re reaching out, only finding air

Maybe you tried and it didn’t quite fit
Maybe the moment was never to be
So you carry on just a little bit sad
It was no one’s fault though, c’est la vie

Breathless Diwali

The sun had set but the stars weren’t out
It was too polluted for our sight
They’d taken me to the top of their apartment
Climbing concrete stairs, stepping over diya’s light

It was only the second day of it all
But the sugar rush had already kicked in
Barely slept, dazed from jetlag
This felt like a dream, fueled on adrenalin

A cacophony of sounds surrounded us
Alone on that rooftop, the sprawling city lay
A jungle of highrises, a maze of streets
Car horns and fireworks every which way…

I breathe

And the air catches in my throat, I can’t-
Swirling breezes carrying smells of smoke,
Cooking food, gunpowder, decay and flowers
A world I had dreamed of for hours and hours
And there it all was;

In the horizon’s haze city lights glowed
Each window a family celebrating
Colours colliding, a kaleidoscope of displays
And fireworks around us, showering, exploding
Millions around me, this world so vivid
Every sensory input buffetted with just so much
Millenia culminating in this modern patchwork
And here it was, hitting me on all sides

Too overjoyed to breathe, too enraptured to cry
What a dazzling moment it was – Mumbai

There was a time when it all made sense

And my life lay clear ahead
What arrogance I had, to think
Anything could be so predicted

There was a time when my path was bright
Illuminated like a highway, unquestioned
So few shades of grey, no concerns
I never considered there’d be issues

There’s always more we cannot see
Both within and of the world
I didn’t know myself at all
And people still confused me

For life to even make sense at all
We simplify our truths
Eliminate the uncertainties
And lower the resolution on life

I cannot know what lies ahead
So I hypothesise, plan and dream
I try to welcome all this complexity
And only learn from where I’ve been

Mayflies

One of these days, the sky is going to open up
And the heavens will cascade down…probably
It’s inevitable, isn’t it?
The world will crumple like tissue paper – none of this was designed to last
The ecosystems, the cities, us
Even the sky, reaching endless over our heads, is just a thin film of air clinging to our spinning rock as we hurtle through space
Can you imagine?
Nothing, around us, is going to last
None of this will survive for long – comparatively
Isn’t that wild?
We are so fleeting, mayflies dancing
– that one moment in late autumn when the weather is perfect for just a week before winter kicks in
Humanity will have a winter too, eventually
We were just not meant to live forever
Even just breathing! In and out – oxidisation kills us while keeping us alive.
What a world we live in
What a life we have been given
We live inside the moment of a bubble that hasn’t yet popped-
Swirling oils make rainbows, across the surface of something too unstable and yet-
This is the moment the universe has given us
This beauty, this joy, this wonder, this love? All these experiences…
And yes
One of these days the sky will be washed away by solar winds, and humanity might not even be around to witness it
So why don’t we at least witness now – anything and everything we can
Because maybe we are the last generation before the ice caps melt completely
Or the last to have this standard of international produce
Probably the last generation before something irreversibly terrible cascades across our world
– and I live in fear and grief for that
God.
Each of these moments may be the last – of something, even trivial, something
But, they will also continue
Somehow, to be a first of something, too
Life, and death, two sides of a coin
And to mourn as new flowers also bloom – is that not what it is, to be human?
No, more than that
Is that not what it is
To stand on this ever-rolling stone, of dust and nitrogen and electricity
And watch, marvelling, at the beauty of these ephemeral, fleeting swirls of colour
That this bubble of existence has created?
That in this moment, is just for us
And what a view it is