So I let the doors & windows open to the dust storm in a tribute to Rorshach, Moriarty and the Joker. And what did I realize in the aftermath? It's not watching movies, it's not reading books that does it. It's Norah Jones playing in the air, while I clean up every inch of my home, turn every brass statuette on the table to its perfect angle, separate the sequinned tops from the silks in the wardrobe, pluck away Murakami from Steinbeck and put each in the company of its namesake, and fill up all twelve egg troughs in the fridge, that leads to the most bliss. Perhaps, 'cause organizing and putting things together gives you an illusion (?) of creating. It puts the mind out of the restlessness that comes with wanting to absorb too much too soon. The future still looms...but organizing makes you realize the beauty of the now and here. Because when putting things together, everything lies so open and raw in front of you. It makes you enjoy the near ephemeral truth of the crease on your cheek that, for now, eases when your smile smoothens out. In your future much-coveted, the crease would've stopped paying rent to the smiles and instead bought that place on your cheek. Beautiful in its own time, but let's wait for it.

P.S: That said, I do not withdraw my salutation from the glorious prospects of dreamy wanderlust, into the past or the future. ...or even wafting into an unknown pocket of the now, riding in that car called imagination that should never need a garage.

I want to lie in bed all day, reading to you my favourite prose. Listen to your poetry and have your soul disguised as words laid out beautiful on a patch on mine. Laugh at that story about the soul patch you once had at the cusp of youth. Wear my favourite long white shirt with secret black venice lace flower vines underneath...make random clicks and see the uneven bronze of my skin and the rose-streaked contours of yours even out into tones on a black and white film. We shall let the memories be the colour in them whenever and wherever the album is flicked open. I want to cook by the window, while sipping wine from a glass that desires to spill over on the length of the white shirt. I want you to set me right when I read life through the lenses of theories. Or when I become mundanely predictable. Set me right like you do...with a firm hand and a gentle tone...and a joke thrown in. I have known a certain mood of self-destruction to strike once in a cluster of months...one that I climb out of the next day, but not before my words slash my loves like a knife slices through a loaf. I have heard that a certain kind of divinity heals those patches on your soul. A divinity that sits, listens, scolds and above all...feels you in all your pain and all your pleasure. A divinity that makes you not cringe with guilt or turn away from the demons that make you. But one that makes you mindfully aware of those demons and their doing...and makes you, for once, want to kiss them goodbye. Because the sunshine reaches out so selflessly, you have no reason to hold on to the blanket of darkness. A divinity that walks on nails with a bucket of that which you have craved an entire lifetime...acceptance. A divinity that is so embracing, it weathers a storm of bricks falling out of the wall of your defence mechanism...and helps you tear it down. A divinity that emotionally blackmails you if all else fails and the night gets dangerously dark, only to emboss on your skin a mark of morning-after inspiration to turn the leaf over. That divinity...is you. I want to let my fingers linger through your hair and do what words cannot. I want to do everything with you. In some life :)

Through Her Able Eyes (Post for Cafe Dissensus)

Hi everyone! Today I'd like to share with you a poem of mine that came out in Cafe Dissensus. It is written from the perspective of a woman with bipolar disorder who wonders if she could dare to claim her illness to be as serious as physical disability. I look forward to your thoughts in the comments. Have you ever had a nagging thought where you didn't know if your circumstances in life were as grave as the more socially acknowledged tragedies?

https://cafedissensus.com/2016/08/14/through-her-able-eyes/

Episode 1: An Indifferent Nature

"These trees, the rustle of the rusting leaves, the fresh crispness of the wispy air...these things will love you no matter what. They don't care if you're successful or not," he said, firm and soft.

She felt pure anger filter out of her nostrils. "Why should they!" She should be denying her everything until she proved her worth in the world! Until she had made the most of her supposed talent. Her obvious talents that she was miring in languor! And if nature didn't care about her achievements and embellishments, wasn't it really indifferent to her? After all, if it was giving her its all, withholding nothing from her even when she hadn't earned her place and peace, what would it have for her when she finally reaches the topmost of human-made branches? No! If nature comes to her, she will keep it shut out. Her senses were her friends. Together with the vile hormones in her blood, she will stop nature five inches short of her being.

She often felt unloved when someone asked her, "What do you want to do now?" If they loved her, they would plan for her. They wouldn't be so callous and indifferent so as to leave it to her. In her head lived her mother...domination and lack of respect for choice felt like love. 

When She Met a Crush Across Half a Wispy Decade ...

I once mused that that frown of yours,
Forming as you mulled over matter, manner and method,
Was the furrow that channelled thoughts in your head!

Those three seconds of an amused naughty smile that you allow yourself,
Before hastily shrouding it with the staid solemnity suited to the stage…
Where your words and you are a concert symphony,
Where manner and method fall in line with matter,
Like method in madness,
Like the synchrony of a hundred violin bows with the song of the soprano.

Half a decade doesn’t bother to write over these…
So did I realize as you Clad in a disarming pastel
Cambered words on to an easel that was the audience,
Your rhythm becoming an anthem…
As your words painted sensibility with a brush dipped in allure.

As I found my articulation zipping itself up and tiptoeing out,
Even as my words tried to yank it back by the collar.
That rush back from the teens…
Which reddens without rouge
And freezes without ice
That part of me which I thought was far behind me,
Frozen in animation on a page from History,
Proffered me a hand that evening
And introduced herself as the nineteen year old me
Oh how I had looked for her in lost and found columns!
Ruing at her older self for her increasing collectedness,
Her casual immunity to the (c)harms of the Y chromosome,
And her lost acquaintance with heart beats skipped and voices trapped in the throat!
Enchanting it was to meet her again,
And know that she lives alive and well, …but hibernates for good!
For if she comes out more often to soak the sun,
She’ll end up musing and writing poetry on her crimson coffee break as she watches the rain fall!

Mr.Mission-in-Motion, a Victorian bow to that evening that brought a touch of teens to my twenties.
As I waltz back to being a lady in composed control!

Through Her Eyes Across the Office Aisles...

In that part of me where the autumn leaves kept falling,
I found today a songbird spreading its wings.
I dare not call it love...but...
It makes me not quite myself.
When I waft past you.
My pace follows the lead of my quickening heartbeat,
And in the mirror right after,
The honey-tan-earth hue of my cheeks,
Seems to have been kissed by a rosebush bleeding colour.
That isle of my peace,
Where my pen knows poetry, like philosophy knows hope...
That isle...lies across the aisle.
All too often, I let memories of the past stonewall my heart's freedom.
Freezing the quiet dance and soulful rush that the heart fans.
Never before has it left me blue,
That the whole world came between a friend and me.
My eyes fleet and find you, afraid to linger,
You among friends, me among mine.
As I watch you in a conversation that I don't hear.
Those five fleeing seconds that you let it show, your subdued sensitivity,
Before the cool composure sets in again like powdered wet sandalwood.
Your words, be it the written word, or the verbal,
In the depth that is your cathartic voice; almost herbal.
I dare not call it love,
Much is unknown between us, screams my rationality.
And I have tutored myself far too long, not to trust intuition.
But in those fleeting moments we have, with eyes around us indifferent and prying,
I find myself saying things to you that...
Others had to cross the Ninth Circle of the Inferno to be let in on,
Every shade I have, girlish or womanly, churlish or an anomaly,
Your dreams and hopes and dark nights, mellow mornings and mourning.
My warm mustard, and reds and roses,
Would they blossom under the shade of your cool greens and blues!
Could we share a cloud of incense,
In all its sensuality and innocence,
And see where it goes.

The Image & the Imagined

That thin line between the image and the imagined,
Like a string of pearls of yellow shimmer turned out of focus
...by lenses summoned by the serene serendipity of the finest wine...
I glance at it with eyes glassy.
Afraid to partake in the feast of the chalice,
Lest the imagined should fan that flame in my heart still raw
In the flicker of which the image stands warm and orange.
And I die a second death in this lifetime...