Find You

perhaps here
you and i
will still be
where
we were

swinging in
during the
afternoon lull,
over teas
brailleing
poetry into queer shapes

perhaps here
i never have to worry
about losing you

i wonder

i often find myself wondering if you found this blog and hoping you haven't found it, because i don't write for you to discover me here. i write because for some reason, my writing has been dedicated to you completely, last couple of years and i can't seem to find a way to pull myself away from it. maybe it's gradual. maybe it will be a slow process, just like the way i now feel like am beginning to form a deep connection with B. over hours of discussing politics and work, i'm getting addicted to talking to him. it feels like we must be very good friends if we can behave like that- just talk. but i do know that some day we will behave besides friendship. maybe we will start talking love some day. i wonder how i will feel about you then. will i feel guilty loving you and still being with him? will i feel like a drama queen, an opportunist and every name else you call me? i wonder what i have become to you now. i wonder if you ever wonder why i stopped writing poetry.

Finally, I've been kissed

once again in my dreams,

i decided it was alright

to taste your lips

as you press me

against the kitchen tiles

while the rest of the world slept, unawares.

and so you came back to me last night, i imagined, from a place called lindaloma, a name that's always sounded like something you made up in your head to give your existence, existence. the entire floor was alseep and you led me to the kitchen, where just a slice of light reflected on the white tiles and pressed me against them, kissing me into a pain i have known in all our conversations but never really been able to express to you. i don't know what your kisses would taste like. i will never know. but in my dream last night, i knew that mouth was yours. and although i woke up with a holey stomach, i felt it was your way of forgiving me for being the whore i am inside, while i pretend to be a nun outside of me. i like to believe, you sealed what love we had in that kiss, even if it was only make believe.

i'm redeemed, even as the feel of the kiss makes my eyes run.

Rumi?

there was Rumi who stuck a chord in me. and there was you who did the same. something about stirring people's souls is so individual and queer that it chokes me if i think too much of it. Rumi, you, i.

i wish you thought of me as me, without poetry, without anything. i wish you loved me with nothing, for nothing. but how may i ask you to love with nothing, when you never loved in the first place?

Hollow

how can you make me fall apart
and break my fall with loving lies...
how can you treat me like a child?
and like a child i yearn for you...
As I listen to Katie Melua singing, you become a slab of silence nestling in my cavity, melting gracefully, spreading through my mouth and sliding down my throat into my guts, knocking me hollow.

never

there was warmth, longing and the need to walk away from you, when we tread along that sidewalk yesterday evening. i've never quite understood how you found my soul, when everyone else only found my hands. and yet in the warming of these hands sometimes, i almost forget that you never held them. never.

you

you set me adrift
you're the shore

May Day

April should have been the month to thaw- to draw back the curtains, let the sunshine in, pull off stoles from around our shoulders and march into the yard. This should have been the time for us to look into the eyes and affirm that something called compassion does hold people together.

But other things always get in the way. There are things like want, greed, jealousy and lust that destroys everything compassion is capable of instilling. And always, when sex interferes with relationships, you end up losing what you wouldn't give up for anything in life. Not even yourself.
Yes, so everyone likes sex. We are much too often guided by our libidos. But why should an orgasm be allowed to decide what the other person feels for you is or isn't love. Why should a touch of want be termed love and perhaps a loving so permanent be termed passe just because there is no touch? At the end of the day, it's something deeper than sex that keeps a heart happy.

So anyway, it's almost May.

I would have rested indoors this month after the sunshine in April. I would have sat down by the grotto, weaving wreaths for Mother Mary's Tiara, singing by the shade of the grotto. But since April wasn't the time to thaw, May won't mean devotion, either. This is the month of rebellion, when the Maoists will bring out their parades on the streets and the rest of the nation will sit and wonder whether to retaliate, or believe that after a four-year gap, it was high time Nepal saw some serious stunts on the streets. We're so used to unstable governments, fractured politics and of forever complaining and not doing anything about what can be done.

Anklet

L gave me a new set of payal she bought for herself but no longer wants to wear. I haven't worn any payal for ages. But I wear these ones because it almost feels like a parting gift. Somehow, payals become connected to weddings. Smriti had given me a very pretty payal with green beads the year she was getting married- no, the year she was leaving for the United States. Anyhow, they do find an association with departure.

Payals have all kinds of patriarchal connotations according to feminism. They're supposed to have been invented by men in the Indian society to monitor their women's mobility. As long as the payal is making the tingling-jingle, you know the woman/girl is still in the house. Hmmmm...one could call payals "euphemism" in that sense. Make a girl feel pretty without telling her you are giving her shackles.

But I wore the payal to bed last night, even when I am not in the habit of wearing anything that touches my skin closely, to bed. I noticed how the thin silver string made my ankles took frail and pretty and I didn't care what feminism said about it. But are women pretty only when they are frail? (I find strong women beautiful.)

When I lay in bed, I could feel the silver clinging to my ankles. But I soon forgot about them and thought about impossible you, who refuses to leave, especially at night, even when you have nothing to do with touching my skin.

Nostalgia

everything makes me sad these days.
i can't find the mood to write emails, even though i seem to have begun a series of emails conversations with people. even emails make me sad. i see through the emails, clearly, how much people are made of- all their needs, angst, aches, wants, aspirations, greed, motives, lust- everything. and seeing through people makes me sad. it feels as though at the end of the day, we're all just sad people, who go to bed longing for things that are so beyond reach.
but i just found myself an occupation. am watching Kanchu sleep as I write this and if there's anything called bliss, it's what i feel when i watch her sleeping. it makes me want to capture that tranquility for her always. but i know that someday, Kanchu will also grow old like the other pets i've had and in a reversal of role, i'll be taking care of an old girl, and probably have to watch her die. when i think of all these things, i feel like giving her away, just so that i don't have to watch her suffer, ever.
am thinking maybe it's a good thing you died on me. it can only mean that i can't bother you with anything, anything at all, now that i'm as good as dead. i say death, because that's what people become when you stop thinking of them. even the dead are alive as long as you remember and speak to them.
so it's a good thing i'll never see you grow old, sick and die. it's a good thing you'll never see me grow old, sick and die. if ever there is memory, we will remain confined to memories. and memories are always beautiful, even when you think there are lies, bitterness and betrayal in it. memory is always tinged with the beauty of it not being here anymore.
memory- you'll always be beautiful to me.

BLANK

the spaces
are closing in fast
and i hear, the world is speeding toward destruction

i wonder if you will see my lips lisp your name
when i abandon this wreck.