When you pray

When you pray You stand like a painting Brush strokes, straight lines Perpendicular back, a royal blue Brown deep eyes brewed like A barbecue of truth, marinated With the anguish of life, grated And squeezed, a penetrating Lament, Your kind hands Weaving fingers, interlocked An antique courage, palms Cupped into a void, open Into which

An obstinate yearning

Yearning picks at bruises slow slender movements scars on each petal, my memory, still fragile and recovering an en bloc extraction of my innards   Self medication heals clumsily, it tranquilizes breaks news, hovering as petals fall like corpses into their last piles, breath devoured by a crass earth   Balms permeate a calm wrapping

The drowning

The drowning I became Water I breathed Water I learned Water I dreaded Water I regretted Water I brimmed with attention I listened Water urged me to put my ear to songs Of sea shells, sea urchins, sea shores They sung on repeat a human checklist of caution They begged me to become water and

Count your age

Age to me is about maturity Sometimes wisdom, of light Age to me is about sleeplessness Sometimes reckoning, with self Age to me is about wonder Sometimes questions, about everything Age to me is about spring cleaning Sometimes of clothes, mostly memories Age to me is about leading prayers Sometimes space, within chants Age to

There are always options

A letter about my options, to me 5 ways you could die You could die at once Or maybe you will vaporize Into loss, like a spluttering Apology, just a bookmark Of your usual daily self Option 1 You could die Shot in the head With no time for thoughts Admittedly no formality Fuck you,

again and again and again

oh ma, I am numb I am numb, a shadow no matter how I hug my knees numbed since the day I swallowed many forced desires, startled silences sometimes the clock forgets to chime days dare to hurtle into nights, I sit drenched, palms down, flight ready in a corner behind a dead door the

Fistful of spices

That India , like my home, homeland her crowning glory sulks today in crisp kahwa leaves, shudders inside kangri embers, she trips into colorful phulkari’s and pagri’s spread out for protection of a rare crop, and then decides to rest because dilli will always have her heart, she rests only to waken to a city

Embodying womanhood

days Always in my head, a sense of being distraught Over- brimmed with one color, an unassuming rust red Mundane chit chat, litters into feather like afterthoughts Scribbling screams tethered tight on mental farm stands nights A photo collage like experiment, reflecting cacophony Every square inch, is of a body sucked into vacuums Calculated planetary

learning to pray

learning to pray from those younger   I learned how to pray Unpretentiously Unabashedly Uncomplicatedly from you, my child holding a prayer book that nani gave you when you decided to be a voyager feeling the prayer beads, specially the two broken beads making your own grace memento’s on rushed days pausing to offer thanks

light without darkness

Days are getting darker, universally Human existence learns devastating heartbreak, compelled to accept, condemned to otherness Crossing boundaries, bridges, walls, centuries; human occupation of lands marked by race, subject to violence Actions embedded in daily routine; specific sadness, unabashedly showing anger Herds more, individuals less; selectively eliminating questions from vocabulary Because questions are a speaking