So Close, So Far
Beauty-backed brains,
Ever radiant, ever evanescent
And rejuvenating.. while life's rains
Treacherously try to tear and rent
Rippled holes into men's hearts,
Inspiration comes forth from you
Cajoled by Cupid's love-soaked darts
Encapsulating everyone in your view.
Ordinary folk like me
Metamorphose into a being
Only a favoured few see
Like snowflakes which spring
A surprise on creatures in June
Raking leaves which fell from
Aftermaths of a terrific storm
HUMILITY FOUND
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When ego's fragile form begins to fade,
a limitless expanse of soul appears.
The boundaries that once bound and confined,
now stretch, expand, transform, and astound.
In losing the ego self, another universe is found,
a world of wonder, limitless, and esoteric.
The chains of comparison are severed;
they no longer bind, no longer suffocate either you or me.
The prison of competition is left behind,
unfettered, enlightenment grows.
In this vast and open place, humility also grows, and
a web of love and Divine interconnectedness prevail.
There was a time when the child was the center of the circle. The elders sang her name into the morning, braided her hair with stories, fed her with hands that had known hunger. She was carried across rivers of doubt, through storms of becoming, and placed gently at the edge of her own path.
Now she walks with her head full of noise, measuring love by the frequency of messages, forgetting the songs that once held her upright. She says they are silent. That they do not call. But the wind remembers. The wind remembers the prayers whispered into her pillow, the sacrifices made without witness, the tears that fell into the soil to make her strong.
She has grown tall, but not deep. Her roots skim the surface, searching for mirrors instead of water. She has learned the names of stars, but not the names of those who lit them for her. The elders do not chase. They wait. They speak in the language of patience, of time that moves like rivers underground. And still, she does not hear.
ghost wind through cedars—
names carved in the bark still sing,
but no one listens
They say happiness is a flame,
brief as a match struck in rain.
I held it once—
a home, two sons,
a husband who smiled like promise.
Until his arms curled elsewhere.
Until his mouth tasted betrayal.
Until I learned beauty
was something I could not hold
no matter how tightly I bled.
The dragon woke in me that night.
Not scaled, not winged,
but clawed in grief,
fire burning holes through my ribs.
If he could snatch away my joy,
I would scorch his world in return.
My children—
his children—
became the tinder.
Their laughter, their small hands,
their faces shaped like his,
drowned in my fury.
But when the river stilled,
their silence came back louder.
My vengeance collapsed into ash.
I touched their lips
and begged them to breathe,
to forgive.
And when the willow trees bowed
like mourners on the shore,
I followed,
slipping into the water’s mouth,
hoping death would undo
what rage had done.
They say I weep at night.
They say I call for them,
cursed to wander, cursed to wail.
But tell me this—
what do you call a woman
whose heart became a dragon,
and whose bones still burn
with the tears she cannot shed?
Affirmed & Perfect
I looked at my reflect,
Green T-shirt paired with black pants,
Hopes of bright future surged ahead.
I waited long, till a van came,
Reached late when class had already commenced,
Nervous and unknown in that herd,
I thought,
Someone would know the Aditi I left.
With each passing day,
I, too, failed to recollect.
Adjusting among peers,
I left laughter, fun and ease.
All still went well,
Until I was mocked for which I was best.
Making a front bencher hide at last,
Uninterested to struggle further,
She surrendered too fast.
Leaving her nurturers disheartened,
She cried alone at dark nights on bed.
Simultaneously, a heart break came.
Cracking a whole of four chambers in million shards.
I remember I had said;
'Changes & Adjustments can't be for vain'.
I didn't knew,
How a white lie was used;
To ease our worries,
For the uncertain future ahead.
Don’t think too hard.
They sting behind your eyes.
Sharp swells
from the recessing snake pit.
Faces warp, wrap, and real.
Knotted limbs
of trying tapestry.
The marriage of scale and skin.
Remember to forget.
My soul was not to keep.
A window woe.
Through eyes not mine, I see.
Take from me
what was yours already.
Prisoner.
Each day, I bury the version of me who loved less. Enthralled by my own becoming, I have fallen out of love countless times into new love. I savour each moment spent amidst my anointment towards higher values, and I ask, is love worthy of me? The idol of love is tantalizing, patient and kind, it does not envy, it does not boast – love is erotic and sensual still, it yearns and longs for the lives of others. Love is deeply human, and in its humanity can become. It haunts us, begets us, spurns us, and yet I do believe it is worthy of me, sweet Sappho would agree…
Each day, I bury the version of me who loved less.
The clouds once brushed against my skin,
I gathered the wind’s ascent within my breath.
Shadows lingered quietly inside me
then faded as the light drew near.
Silence spread like soft velvet
and light stepped in gently.
Twilight carried truth to me
quietly filling the hollow of lingering shadows.
This clinging dark
not death, not bloom
stilled in air.
Soft walls resist what dares to come
The skin forgets its former hue,
Will light find purchase there?
A hush before the body breaks,
not wing, not wound, but something near...
The splitting shell reveals a vast, cold, bright despair.
Awakened! I returned a stream in Spring
to flow and grow on nature’s snowmelt milk.
I came to be of earth and sky (...a fling;),
my sire a winter storm. Like liquid silk
emerging, I was born; a water-child.
Between two banks I nestled with my dreams
and bloomed a gAnGLy creek ‘til solstice. Wild
I played— not meek but sleek. I crested s-e-a-m-s,
a juvenile with ~snaky-curves~ and —==>speed.
Mid June rebellion, ripples bared, I’d run
as sweet as rum and swelled with rain, (a)greed;
the gasoline with which my wish was spun…
by August dusk, a river-woman reigned!
Oh, stars— those s.t.u.d.s— did r!se [as if ordained].
I was saved by quiet things—
The rustle of the morning breeze,
The way the robin spreads its wings,
The golden drift of autumn leaves.
I was saved by threads of light
That touched my skin through broken blinds,
By distant stars that pierced the night,
By echoes I had left behind.
I was saved by falling rain—
The softest tears the sky could spill.
Each drop a whisper in my brain
That life could move, and I was still.
I was saved by silent seas,
By moonlight painted on the floor,
By all the things that asked no pleas
But held me when I asked no more.
I was saved by open hands—
The strangers’ smiles, the quiet nods,
The random footprints in the sand,
The laughter shared in fleeting odds.
I was saved by little songs
That only sorrow’s heart could hear,
By knowing pain does not belong,
Yet teaches us to persevere.
I was saved by seeds that grew
Inside the ruins of my chest,
By learning endings are not true—
That every grave gives birth to rest.
I was saved by love unseen,
By gentler winds, by whispered grace.
And though the hurt has always been,
The quiet things still find their place.
I carry a house upon my back,
A fragile frame of dreams and stone.
Its windows cracked, its timbers black,
But still I walk, and still alone.
Each wall is built from words unsaid,
From nights I stitched with fraying thread.
Its roof is shingled with the dread
Of all the tears I never shed.
I pass through valleys, rivers wide,
This house sways gently as I climb.
It holds the ones I left behind,
The echoes trapped in rooms of time.
It shelters me from bitter rain,
Yet weighs me down with silent years.
A monument to love and pain,
A quiet vault of hopes and fears.
I cannot leave it on the shore,
No matter how I long to flee.
It is my burden, evermore,
It is the marrow under me.
And still I rise, though shadows press,
And still I breathe beneath its beams.
I learn to walk with weight and mess,
To carve new roads from broken dreams.
For though I carry walls of glass,
I also carry seeds of spring.
And somewhere deep, beyond the past,
I carry hope. I carry wings.
The river moves but never dies,
It carries all it cannot keep.
Beneath its glass, the silence lies,
A cradle where the old dreams sleep.
I watch it wind through stone and silt,
A silver ribbon pulled by time.
It bears the weight of love and guilt,
And every joy we failed to climb.
I see my face in trembling glass,
A thousand selves the waters hold.
I see the lives I let slip past,
The words unsaid, the hands left cold.
The river whispers soft and low,
It tells of storms it once endured.
It tells me there is room to grow,
That broken paths can be assured.
It teaches me to yield, not break,
To carry scars but still move on.
To weave the heartache and the ache
Into the light of every dawn.
It remembers what we forget:
The way the smallest stones can steer,
The way we carry quiet debt,
The weight of every vanished year.
And as it bends and drifts away,
I learn the art of soft release.
The river takes, the river stays,
And leaves behind a wordless peace.
She was a field–
soft, wide, aching.
He was the match,
small
but hungry.
They met
not in spring,
but in that breathless hush
before things grow–
where hope is still half-buried
beneath frost.
She held the rain
like a secret.
He wore the fire
like a promise
He never meant to keep.
She broke
without a sound
He burned
like it was prayer.
and yet–
in the blackened soil,
something small,
something stubborn
began to bloom.
They locked her in a box of gold,
with chains that shimmered, stories told.
"Stay pretty, still–don't ask for more,
The fire in you? Just folklore".
she smiled like myths were make–believe,
But hid a flame beneath her sleeve.
each breath she took was kindling slow,
A furnace marked in ash and glow.
The saw her feathers, red and bright,
But clipped her wings do dim her light.
"You burn too loud", they used to say,
"And blaze is not the woman way".
Yet silence cracks, and embers bite –
she burst the cage in blaze and flight.
Not tamed, not torn, not anyone’s—
she rose to kiss forbidden suns.
Now when they speak her name in fear,
It echoes loud and crystal clear:
You cannot cage what’s born to rise
A phoenix lives in ashes's guise
~hira~
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