They said God is near.


So I carved his name


onto a brass plate


and left it at the edge


of my grief.


Not even the ants


wanted to carry it.


If the saints saw me now—


braiding longing


into a garland of yes and no—


would they spit or weep?


Would they offer sandalwood


or silence?


My throat is a temple.


My pain is its only devotee.


I light candles made of


plum skin and memory,


sing with a cracked jaw.


I stitched his absence


into my darkness,


so every night


I could sleep inside


the shape of leaving.


I watered my mouth


with his name


until my tongue


grew roots,


and the silence


began to flower.


The flowers say


I’m speaking to ghosts again.


But I know—


only ghosts


know how to stay.


There is a bowl


on my windowsill


that catches rain


just in case


his voice


falls with it.


Some days,


I tie anklets to my shadow


and let her dance


until the floor remembers


what it means


to be wanted.


They don’t teach this—


how to survive


the god who forgets you.


How to kneel


without offering.


How to sing


when the hymn


is a wound.


But I do it.


Every day.


And that


is my miracle.


And when I whisper his name—


the god, the boy, the ghost,


whoever he was—


even the crows grow quiet.


Even the blood listens.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 I am longing for death.  Forever longing for it.When people around me crave to live, do everything to have a life, I could never understand it. I could never understand the meaning of their desire. I always wanted to die… slowly, painlessly, and alone. Over time, my death instinct  became an inexorable habitual thought. The yearning to merge into an infinite darkness is there, always. The swelling torment I can't put into words. There was nothing, until him, that could dilute my urge to die. I used to think I can hold on a little, until he disappeared. I was obsessed to wither completely.  Look at me now. I think I have died, when he left. What a metaphor, the old cliché, you may think. I can declare this without embarrassment, but I can't express it. It is really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts, and consciousness... Many moons ago, I listened passively to Nee Mattume by T.M. Krishna. And yesterday night, like a little miracle, it came back to me...
Read more

THE BOOK OF SETHI

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...
Read more
If love is peeling oranges, then  God is the transcultural smell  residing inside crescent of fingernails. Consuming prayers,  a bead of fragility in hands,  he tells you that : In love we are blind,  In love we are far sighted. His delicate crockeries inside  a filthy broken sink is  his metaphor for us. The way he scrub them is his synonym for violent love  and antonym for soft grief. Once in a while, the shards of his anger  turns me into a silent film  suffocating under city lights. Then you change into a morning  with mourning , Into a ship torn under monsoons, Into a broken concave mirror, Into a prime number in solitude, Into a black hole singing opera. Still we exchange kisses with words  inside  the holes on our throat.  God chain smoking in his evening gown interrupt us with a question,  What is your religion? This is when a love letter switch into  a propaganda poem  written by plum faced ang...
Read more