chaiNboli

 You ask me what I had for dinner,  but I have nothing to say.  So I smile and talk about this book  I recently read.  Your voice is soft as a bird's song and warm as a cup of tea. You wish me luck and tell me I matter,  calling me your best friend.  You are a face less fish  looking at me from the bottom while I cry my pretty tears in pain. I don't tell you  How sleeping pills float on my tongue,  How I am painting my fences,  How I gifted myself grape coloured bruises on my birthday,  How I burned my throat swallowing a poem I wanted to write, How the baby blue carpet in my aunts house drained in red,  How broad is the grey sky, How cruel is the summer for a hummingbird without wings, How I finished an epitaph for personal use,  How the pink kisses turned to beautiful lies,  How my delicate parts quake in the wind, How colour blind am turning day by day. Instead I say am busy and go, a honey drenched cake ignor...

 Brother Do you remember the day I burned my poems to keep your feet warm? The man whom we mistook as our father smiled at us and his yellow hands lifted the hem of our mother's skirt her half sung prayers withering to ugly kisses quenching his tobacco fatigue. We waited outside playing games and licking the lollipops until our tongues changed into red,  weaving death beds for ourselves.  We had August hidden in our throats, the fifteenth day shining in golden.  We saw our names in the blue prints of new guns while we searched for bread in the diamond pockets of the man's khaki pants.  We heard bullets singing ragas and covered our ears with Kashmiri shawls.  Still we couldn't erase the ghosts dancing kathak, their anklets made of teeth of forgotten children burned in streets.  As the day entered into its black coffin, we pressed our tongue to the cold metal and looked up to see our grand mother's breath moving through the chimney. We collected tooth p...

 I wear left over love in my wrists and when ever a guy smiles at me,  I look at it reminding myself of its weight dragging me to the bathroom floor with  over flowing bath tub mingling with bitter tears. I hold colours in my cornea afraid about filling my pockets with laughter of the child in the park, running. I write haikus in dirty linen with cheap markers. I dry my socks in the sun, smelling of peaches . The girl next door sings a song for me on my birthday and it's suffocating grip makes my bones to stay heavy. Take a deep breath,  I scold myself while thinking why both  love and blood are tinted in same shades of crimson. There is a bag of sins no one can see in my shoulders which are moisturised with apricot cream, filling my collarbones and hiding my lucky mole.  Nails digged in old floral bed sheets while a quill of blade draws new patterns in skin.  A wasp whispering about it's travel to the next city where he kisses his love.  Alice pl...

 The white lillies in my lungs  aren't the ones that tries to stop my breath,   I know better. The spot under the trees are vacant  without lovers to hold each other's hands because it's night. White angels with pills in their hands walk through the corridors smiling , and I stay under the blankets,  a fruit scooped out,  hollow without it's sweet flesh.  At night the guests come in a line,  smiling and crying  preparing their eulogy.  There is a mermaid with broken tail  swimming in a glass of water. The smell of early summer  I won't be able to hold. The love stained first kiss in the wooden memory box.  The "he" shaped wound  pressed in moonlight cobblestones.  The dramatic post cards from coastal town of Spain  I never visited. The cherry blossoms dipped in the morning tea  . Tiny stars spilling  from the tongue of  an  internet friend whom I never met. Perfect easter eggs gifted...

 Every breath I take is a mutiny , a revolution. The goddess and I have  the same blood in us,  She is adored and  I am told that am impure. Women like me die everyday  but then wears our shed skins  in the next morning  listening to the quarrelling  of  mustard seeds bathing in hot oil. Strawberry moons hide  behind silver clouds while  women like me are eaten by drunk penises. Panting they leave to  the other side of the bed  and dream about salary hikes.  Women like me then bleed  in thousand scarlet shades  and pens down grief  in the words we know,  knowing no one reads it  nor understands.  Fear taste like black coffee  we take in the office,  and plays around us  like a child chasing  shadows of evening. We feed ourselves  with little salted lies  packed in yellow pouches  and brushes our teeth  to shine bright in made up smiles. There is an ...

 These days  I forget the names of books  I noted in literature class  in hope to read on sunday afternoons. I wish to climb mountains  of another continent, panting in the golden sun. The kitchen is lonely. Silence sleeps there. There is pain and I hear the chorus of demons  while I fight the ghosts. Dirty boots clutching my lungs,  my breath  a poor prisoner. People move around me their eyes so big like cartoons,  sniffibg like dogs asking me  "how are you ". When I pull my clothes out of hangers  In my head  I count the pills I swallowed. One. Two. ..... Thirteen.  The unlucky number they say.  But if I could I will  tattoo  it in my back with acid. The boy chanted he loved me  and then left me  I should thrust a book  on his throat  So that his words  with dripping honey  won't kill anyone else. Still I think about him,  a parasite in neon red. It hurts. I feel cold. Am...

 February hurries away  like a house wife who walks fast   to home to make  her husband's favorite dinner . I am vomiting out all the love poems,  my heart swell in the chest  crashing the breath. My hair black as the tadpoles ,  dripping down the shoulders My fear, in its blue dress  running deep in my veins. Heavy signs and red face lined with tears, Whispers of ghosts staying in the head. I write his name in cursive letters,  like a fly buzzing around  rotten pineapple memories. Like the melting butter in a pan. Mother tells me not to go out without her. Are you afraid I will return in a red casket?  Will that break your heart?  I have stabbed myself so many times  in front of you, but that's my magic_ I don't let you see my scars  telling am not a baby  while collecting metaphors  with hands pale as white peonies.  If there is a God, he is having a good laugh at me.  Give me a break. This ...