The Extra Dot

My sister and I

shared counted commonalities

amongst a shitload of differences:

a last name,

a house that smelled like antiseptic

and inherited silence,

and two people

we were taught to call

Maa and Baba.

That’s where the symmetry ended.

We had the same mother,

the same father —

but very different parents.

She got the beginning of their love story.

I arrived at the epilogue

they never wanted to read aloud.

She was the spark.

I was the ash that wouldn't blow away.

She was the miracle —

a child sculpted from longing,

a fragile heartbeat they prayed for

in temple queues and fertility clinics.

She came wrapped in awe.

I came because —

the condoms had run out

the disgust hadn't crept in

consequences are often conspiracies.

She was the child of hope.

I was the child of habit.

She was born to a script

they wrote in candlelight.

I stumbled into the scene

like a drunk line

they forgot to edit.

You know how a single dot

ends a sentence —

a full stop

clean, complete, confident?

She was that dot.

I was the second dot.

That awkward, dangling punctuation

that doesn’t clarify —

just lingers.

I was the extra dot.

The one that ruins the grammar

but gets left in anyway

because no one has the time

to delete what they didn’t ask for.

Her breath was definitive. 

My existence was vague.

She had parents.

I had two tired people

counting the years till tuition fees stopped.

She got bedtime stories.

I got shut doors and

"not now."

She got “we made you from love.”

I got “well, we had room for one more.”

Even her tantrums were adorable.

Mine were diagnoses.

She was raised

like a poem pinned to the fridge.

I was raised

like a reminder on a bill they forgot to pay.

Even the air changed

when she walked into a room.

When I did,

they asked who left the lights on.

She was the headline.

I was the asterisk 

at the bottom of the page.

She was the shrine.

I was the dust 

settled in the neglected corners of the deity.

And this isn’t resentment.

This is archaeology.

I’m not digging for blame —

I’m just naming the bones

that built the difference.

Because love has tiers.

And parenting has expiry dates.

And sometimes,

the only thing you inherit

is proof

you weren’t the plan.

So no —

I’m not angry.

I’m just done trying

to turn ellipses

into poetry.

She was the full stop.

I was the ghost

that followed it.

And now,

three and a half decades later,

my sister has a son —

the apple of her eye.

And I smile.

Not because she has someone to love,

but because fate finally sent her

a mirror with tiny feet.

Let her learn what it feels like

to give your everything

and be remembered as background noise.

Let her witness

the same glazed-over gaze

she once watched them give me.

And when her prodigal son forgets her birthday,

or leaves her texts on read,

or calls her love “too much,”

I hope it stings

just enough

to sound familiar.

Once, not so long ago

she was the full stop.

I was the extra dot.

And now?

She is the extra dot.

Life's come full circle.

Welcome to the margin, dear sister!

Confessions Of An Unpardonable Bastard

There are optimists,

pessimists,

realists,

and then there are the rest —

those too spineless to choose a delusion,

so they call it nuance

and masturbate to moderation.

And then there’s me —

a truthsawyer.

Not a philosopher.

Not a poet.

A professional blasphemer

with a bone saw where my faith should’ve been.

I don't beseech truth. 

I dissect them.

I don’t seek answers.

I amputate them.

I ask questions

until your God stutters,

your ideology sweats,

and your inherited wisdom

starts looking like the incest it always was.

Because belief —

is the most overhyped narcotic in circulation.

You snort it as prayer,

you shoot it up through rituals,

and call it legacy

just because your ancestors

didn’t know how to think without supervision.

I’ve seen too many people

wearing conviction like cologne —

hoping the stench hides the rot.

But I don’t wear perfume.

I drag the corpse of every lie

into the middle of your living room,

slap on a spotlight,

and ask:

Does this smell like God to you?

I interrogate everything.

Faith,

because it’s lazy.

Hope,

because it’s addictive.

Love,

because it wears too much makeup.

Patriotism,

because it demands blood

but never bleeds itself.

I’ve carved into nationalism

until I found genocide.

I’ve scraped away gender

and found capitalism playing dress-up.

I’ve dissected family

and found the fossil of guilt

next to a dagger named “duty.”

They say,

“There’s beauty in belief.”

I say,

“There’s fungus in it too.”

And it spreads.

Between generations.

Between scriptures.

Between your legs

and your laws.

And still,

they call me unhinged

because I won’t chant the hymns,

won’t kneel to convenience,

won’t fake a moral erection

just to feel righteous in a room full of sheep.

But I’m not unhinged.

I just refused to be housebroken.

I’ve tasted truths

so sour,

they cracked my teeth.

But I chewed anyway.

Because somebody’s got to digest

the lies the world keeps plating as enlightenment.

I don’t speak truth.

I carve it.

With unwashed hands,

and a grin that offends gods.

Because I am not here

to convert you.

I’m here

to dismember the comfort you pray inside of.

So go on —

keep your gods, your flags, your ethics

pressed between pages and pulpits.

Light your incense.

Quote your prophets.

Stroke your traditions

until they climax into comfort.

And when you're done

pretending truth is tidy and kind,

I'll be waiting

at the altar of your denial

with a hacksaw and a question.

Because truth?

It doesn’t set you free.

It sets you on fire.

And I am the arsonist

who laughed

while lighting the match.

The Accent Is An Alibi

They left the land

but packed the caste,

tucked the guilt in suitcases

between turmeric and trauma,

and crossed oceans

to become palatable

to everyone but themselves.

First-generation Indian Americans —

identity contortionists

wearing two flags like reversible jackets,

waving the right one

depending on the room,

the spotlight,

the visa.

Too American to kneel,

too Indian to question.

They disown India

like it’s a stain they can’t scrub,

until it’s time for saffron backdrops

and arranged nostalgia.

Then they gloat desi

like they handcrafted the culture

they once fled from.

They dismiss Americans

like they didn’t spend

an entire childhood

training to sound like them —

tongues amputated at customs,

accent rehearsed

like a script

that couldn’t afford error.

They mock Indians

to prove they’ve evolved,

but can’t digest their own shadow

without Googling the recipe.

They quote Audre Lorde

to critique the West,

but weaponize Gandhi

to gaslight their parents.

They call trauma heritage,

call privilege hard work,

call mimicry multicultural.

They out-liberal the liberals,

out-sanskrit the sages,

yet flinch

when asked where they’re really from —

not because they don’t know,

but because they never stayed long enough

to belong.

They want India to remain a relic

so they can feel spiritual

without the dirt.

They want America to apologize

while cashing its checks.

They demand complexity

but offer cliché.

They claim intersectionality

while standing at every corner

but walking none.

Diaspora is not a dilemma —

it’s a curated identity cult

selling confusion

as currency.

And these are its priests —

preaching belonging

with borrowed gods,

chanting “home”

in accents they paid to perfect,

offended by mirrors,

terrified of roots.

They don’t bleed for either flag.

They cosplay both.

And call it survival

because truth was too expensive.

So no,

they don’t belong to America.

And they never truly left India.

They hover.

They echo.

They curate identity

like museums curate grief —

stolen, reframed,

lit just right

so no one asks

how much is real

and how much is performance.

Talk about legacy.

Talk about heritage.

Talk about cunts.

But make sure

you pronounce it correctly.

Because culture isn’t something

you put on like a shawl

when it’s cold enough to remember.

It’s the skin

you either grow in

or flay off.

And these?

They didn’t grow.

They peeled.

They posted.

And they called the wound

home.

Talk about homeless cunts of convenience. 

Dog Bless America

Americans are funny.

They call themselves “the greatest country in the world” —

like it’s a personality trait

and not a result of loot, lies, and licensed bloodshed.

They thump their chests

on land they stole,

name their streets after freedom

while their roots reek of genocide.

It’s almost poetic —

except the poems are all written in someone else’s blood.

Their patriotism?

It’s misplaced fondness

for a land stranger than their delusions.

A country built on graves,

painted over with fireworks

and fast-food nationalism.

They celebrate the Fourth of July

without ever asking who they declared independence from —

or who they kept shackled afterwards.

They preach democracy

like door-to-door missionaries

selling salvation with side deals in arms and oil.

They keep peace

the way arsonists keep water —

only after the house is ash

and the cameras are rolling.

They fund wars

the way billionaires fund startups —

seed capital for chaos,

equity in blood.

They say,

“We’re here to liberate,”

while their boots crack spines.

They say,

“We’re the good guys,”

because they printed the comic books.

But the world has read between their panels.

The world has seen

what freedom looks like

when it’s dropped from planes.

They name their bombs “justice”

and their sanctions “diplomacy.”

They label resistance “terrorism,”

but never call Wall Street

the most successful act of economic terrorism in history.

They invade to protect,

kill to bring peace,

and drone strangers from 10,000 feet in the air

then call it strategy —

not slaughter.

Their heroes wear medals

coated in organized terror and propaganda.

Their villains?

Usually anyone with brown skin,

un-Americanized English,

or too much oil.

They build embassies like fortresses

and then wonder

why the world doesn’t send flowers.

This is a country

that can’t spell accountability

without autocorrect —

but has military bases

in countries whose names

they still mispronounce.

They shoot up schools

and still have the audacity

to lecture the world on stability.

Their freedom is a franchise.

Their liberty is logo-printed.

And their truth?

It changes with the press release.

But say one word —

one goddamn word —

about their flag,

and suddenly you're ungrateful,

a traitor,

anti-peace,

anti-American.

And the funniest part?

They gloat like their forefathers

fucked with platinum dicks

and diamond-studded pussies,

as if superiority was semen-deep

and the rest of us just missed the gene pool.

All of this,

while today,

the very systems that keep their empire running —

tech, finance, policy, medicine —

are quietly run by Indians and Jews.

Not the ones they call “Indians”

because daddy misread a compass,

but the ones they still struggle to pronounce

in boardrooms they now depend on.

Imagine worshipping a flag

while someone else balances your budget.

Imagine claiming moral authority

in a world where your minorities

are running your future,

and your majority is still trying

to pass high school history.

So no —

you’re not the greatest country in the world.

You’re just the best

at selling your bloodlust

as benevolence.

But empires rot from the inside —

and yours has started to smell.

Rain Doesn't Ask Who It Buried

Everyone talks about rain

like it’s a fucking lullaby —

as if water falling from a fractured sky

was ever a metaphor for healing.

It’s not.

It’s a warning.

It’s relapse in slow motion.

It’s every goddamn memory

crawling out from under the floorboards

because the flood flushed shame loose.

You hear petrichor.

I hear mold

on walls no one fixed

because some things — like fathers and governments —

prefer to rot in silence.

Rain was never poetry in my house.

It was wet socks.

Damp mattresses.

Leaky tin roofs where we placed buckets

not for drinking water

but to catch the trauma

before it reached our throats.

Some kids splashed in puddles.

I walked around them

like landmines filled with my own past.

The only thunder I knew

was the one that followed

drunken voices and slammed doors.

And lightning?

Just God reminding us

we were never off His kill list.

You write poems about chai and cuddles.

I remember peeling skin off my soles

after days of dampness

because umbrellas are luxuries

and childhood was a monsoon

with no drainage.

You romanticize rainfall

like it’s love returning.

But for some of us,

the sky coming back

means the graves forgot to stay buried.

You say it smells like earth.

I say it smells like the childhood

I tried to suffocate

under layers of deodorized adulthood.

You say the rain is sacred.

I say it's a repeat offender

in a clean suit —

the kind that makes you think

“maybe this time,

it won’t hurt.”

But it always does.

It drips into the crevices of memory

like a stalker

who knows which days you stopped crying,

and comes back

to make sure you never forget

why you started.

It doesn’t heal.

It doesn’t soothe.

It floods everything you didn’t plan to feel.

Rain doesn’t whisper.

It doesn’t cradle.

It crashes through ceilings

and asks if you still remember

how your mother used to pretend

the leaks were part of the design.

Rain doesn’t inspire me.

It interrogates me.

And you —

you who write love poems

about monsoon kisses

and chai-fueled nostalgia —

you’ve clearly never had to boil water

because the rain drowned your stove.

You’ve never watched a sibling cough blood

while the damp settled in their lungs

and your house pretended it was still a home.

You don’t write poems like this

when rain is background noise.

You write poems like this

when rain becomes the god

you were told to worship

because no one told you

it was the same god

that watched you drown.

So don’t talk to me about rain

unless it’s under a leaking ceiling

with no light, no electricity,

no escape.

Don’t write me metaphors

about aching skies

unless your pain

ever dripped from a place

you were too poor to fix.

Rain isn’t soft.

Rain is ancestral grief.

Rain is a truth serum

for the lies you learned to call memory.

Rain doesn’t ask who it buried.

It just returns every year

to dig them back up

in case you forgot

what it means

to never be dry again.

Between Two Psychopaths

If you're immoral by human standards,

you might just be innocent.

Because human morality

is the kind that lights fires

and worships the ash.

It builds shrines out of corpses,

calls it sacrifice,

and wonders why the world still bleeds.

This is a species that defines virtue

only after it's convenient —

never before.

It writes its commandments in blood,

then edits them in peace treaties.

It eats life,

calls it culture.

It erases life,

calls it progress.

It sells life,

calls it order.

And when something fights back,

they call it danger.

You tear open a forest

to feel powerful.

A creature bites back —

and suddenly you're a martyr.

You call it instinct

when you kill.

Call it madness

when anything else dares.

You invented language

not to connect —

but to manipulate.

You built morality

not to live by —

but to rule with.

Your ethics are just walls

with prettier names.

Your justice is just revenge

made ceremonial.

And your memory?

It forgets what doesn’t flatter.

You name wolves evil

to make yourself the shepherd.

You name serpents vile

so you never question your trespass.

You praise peace

only when silence serves you.

You say killing is wrong,

but worship warriors.

You say lies are sin,

but crown liars with garlands.

You say humility is sacred—

but only expect it

from the broken.

You want morality

that doesn't challenge you.

You want mercy

you wouldn’t extend.

You want to be god —

but never questioned like one.

You name instinct uncivilized,

but coat your bloodlust

in legislation and ceremony.

You call yourself human

like it’s proof of something.

And then —

you cage the psychopath.

Not because they are unnatural.

But because they are too natural.

Because they do what you do

without apology,

without scripture,

without a flag.

You jail the psychopath

because they hold up a mirror

that doesn’t flatter.

Because their hunger isn’t holy,

and their violence isn’t branded.

You call them monsters

for being what you buried.

Not outside you —

but inside.

Psychopathy, to you,

is only evil when it’s not yours.

When it's unlicensed.

When it doesn't serve your scripts.

Your species is terrified

of the version of itself

that doesn't lie about its teeth.

So every time a human

calls another immoral,

I pause.

Because between two psychopaths,

I choose the one

who doesn’t dress their hunger

as holiness.

I choose the one

who doesn't pretend

their teeth are philosophy.

Between the claw and the crown,

give me the one

that bites honestly.

Because when morality

is just a throne

built from bones you refuse to count —

then justice is just the last psychopath

who lived long enough

to call themselves right.

Obedience Is A Bestseller

Celebrating mediocrity

is capitalism’s favorite trick —

reward the obedient,

discard the original,

and call the ruins

a legacy.

Mediocrity is easy.

It obeys.

It adapts.

It smiles on cue

and bleeds just enough

to look profound

but never enough

to stain the walls.

It never threatens.

It thanks you

for the stage,

for the crumbs,

for the muzzle.

Integrity doesn’t fit in that frame.

It doesn’t sit still.

It doesn’t edit itself

to survive polite company.

It doesn’t audition

for relevance.

You grow a spine,

you lose the stage.

Because those with backbones

don’t bend —

and the world has no script

for the unbendable.

Power prefers the pliable:

those who echo safely,

cry beautifully,

and ask for nothing

that shakes the ceiling.

But the ones who rupture rooms,

the ones who shift fault lines

at the length of a sentence,

those who won't trade truth

for medals and trophies —

they’re not made for canon.

Canon embalms.

It freezes.

It polishes you

until no one remembers

why you were dangerous.

It teaches your name

without your fire.

It quotes you

only after your voice

can no longer interrupt.

Every original

was once a dark horse.

Every unhinged voice

became a legend

only once they were dead —

because the dead

don’t resist,

the dead don’t ask,

the dead bend

and then decompose,

making money

for the empire

and praise

for the curators

who posthumously “discovered”

the hidden gem

but spent a lifetime

ignoring.