House Rules

Last month, my house was on fire.

No short circuits.

No faulty wiring.

No electrical mishappenings.

My house was on fire because my words

had punctured through

the flimsy skin

of a neighbour's magnanimous narcissism.

The sort of neighbour

who sold self-love

like it was antiseptic,

and accountability

like it was an infectious disease.

Most of the neighbours

pretended to be asleep.

While some,

with their doors bolted shut,

discussed how inevitable this all was,

and how the realisation

was merely a matter of time.

A few telephoned the arsonist.

Congratulated them

on their latest victory.

Told them

they had waited years for such a day,

and now that it had finally arrived,

they would celebrate it

over an evening of whiskey

and a lifetime of relief.

Two of the neighbours

jumped aboard my lifeboat.

Spoke of brotherhood.

Of grief.

Of despair.

Of anger.

Promised they would do

the right thing

regardless of consequence.

After all,

spines are what make vertebrates

stand upright,

and they were very proud vertebrates.

The firefighters came.

The police came.

The smoke left fingerprints

on every house in the lane.

Yet not a single door opened.

Not out of concern.

Not out of courtesy.

Funny how quickly

basic decency becomes

a strategic liability

when the fire belongs

to someone else.

You see, courtesies aren't warfare mannerisms.

The self-anointed brothers

visited every evening

for a week.

They unpacked sympathy slowly,

between gossip and speculation,

like men comparing vegetables

in a marketplace.

They spoke for hours.

About grief.

About justice.

About loyalty.

About consequences.

Grief,

I discovered,

becomes communal property

the moment it belongs

to somebody else.

On the eighth day,

they remembered

their houses were untouched.

And suddenly,

household priorities returned.

The one who had a spine

sold it.

Along with my stories.

For roughly the price

of a month's groceries.

The one who never had a spine

lost his appetite for justice.

Being a good neighbour

to the arsonist,

it turned out,

was far more nutritious.

Time passed.

Ash settled.

People resumed

their ordinary hypocrisies.

The neighbourhood

went back to discussing 

weather, property values, 

and conversations about morality,

at a safe distance from consequence.

Today,

the arsonist was finally arrested.

The neighbourhood watched 

through closed curtains.

The man who sold his spine

is still selling stories

for bread and butter.

The one who never had one

is still hoping

to be remembered

as a good neighbour.

As for me,

the house survived.

Poorly.

Incorrectly.

But sufficiently.

Funny thing about fires.

They never really teach you

who your enemies are.

Enemies are predictable.

Fires teach you

who was already standing

at a safe distance

waiting for the smoke.

The house has since been rebuilt.

The door now has a sign that reads:

"Nuisances and neighbours are not welcome."

Experience has taught me

the difference

is mostly grammatical.

Something's Dead Here

Where do the ghosts of dead dreams go to?

Do they wander 

through the eerie silences 

of the claustrophobic rooms 

they were slowly drained of life in,

or are they buried 

beneath the skin 

of the soil of denial?

I was once a dream too, 

or so I thought.

Weren't all conceptions once dreams?

Don't all dreams begin at conception?

Are dreams not alive until they grow limbs?

Are nightmares not real until they can suckle at a mother's tenderness?

Are breathing cells not living enough to count as proof of life?

Between nothing and everything,

at what exact point does something become something?

Perhaps the question survives

because every dead something

hopes it died closer to everything than to nothing.

My death was never documented.

Dead somethings rarely bleed enough to inconvenience the living.

Because something is always closer to nothing than it is to everything.

Dreams are easy to abandon.

Dreams are easy to abandon once you discover you cannot afford them.

Dead mothers do not get to write memoirs of motherhood.

And for motherhood to survive, childhoods often die quietly in corners.

A dream at the cost of another is called negotiation.

A life at the cost of another is selective homicide.

But then,

something is always closer to nothing than it is to everything.

And just like that,

I was vacuumed clean.

Like dust mistaken for absence.

Where do the ghosts of dead somethings go to?

Sweet Dreams, Ladybug (Alternative Ending)

Don’t wait up on me, ladybug.

I wish I could have done it differently,

I wish we had more time.

I wish you and me together could have been enough to survive the world, the times, the people.

I wish effort alone could have been enough currency for survival.

Do you still call out to me in the middle of the night?

Do you still stay half-starved because dinner alone never felt like dinner at all?

Do you still replay those sleepless nights of conversations

held together with my inappropriate humour,

like something you shouldn’t have laughed at but did anyway?

You said it was my paintings that stole your heart.

We both knew it was the jokes.

Paintings only got me through the door.

The jokes kept stealing the keys.

Like all those times I told you it was your out-of-place canine I stumbled on, 

but teeth were just an excuse to watch you smile;

that sheepish laugh you had, like you got caught existing too honestly.

Like all those times you moved across tiled floors like a clueless penguin on thin ice,

like all those times you scolded cups and mugs and bowls and dishes

like they were emotionally available enough to listen,

like all those times you spoke to cats and dogs and plants and concrete roads

in your mother tongue, with absolute faith they understood you better than people did.

If I could, I would do it all again.

Not differently. Just again.

There was too much left unfinished.

Too many sentences abandoned mid-breath.

The only regret I have is I left carrying the leftovers of regrets;

living with regrets isn't easy, but ladybug —

dying with them is hard.

The dreams we almost believed into existence,

the snow-capped mountains we once stood beneath,

you pretending altitude was negotiable,

your vertigo arguing with the idea of height itself,

the prawns I nearly got killed over,

your allergy acting like it had legal authority—

the son we almost had, the daughter we almost named,

they are gone now,

like fingerprints on borrowed glass.

Don’t wait up on me, ladybug.

You know I’ve always found closures overrated.

Besides,

we were never good at goodbyes. 

We were better at interruptions.

At conversations that wandered past midnight and forgot to come home.

At making plans neither of us could afford.

At arguing with maps.

At promising ourselves one more year.

One more story.

One more chance.

One more ridiculous story we'd laugh about later.

Maybe that's all a goodbye ever is:

a conversation that ran out of tomorrows before it ran out of things to say.

Sweet Dreams, Ladybug

Don’t wait up on me, ladybug.

I wish I could have done it differently,

I wish we had more time.

I wish you and me together could have been enough to survive the world, the times, the people.

I wish effort alone could have been enough currency for survival.

Do you still call out to me in the middle of the night?

Do you still stay half-starved because dinner alone never felt like dinner at all?

Do you still replay those sleepless nights of conversations

held together with my inappropriate humour,

like something you shouldn’t have laughed at but did anyway?

You said it was my paintings that stole your heart.

We both knew it was the jokes.

Paintings only got me through the door.

The jokes kept stealing the keys.

Like all those times I told you it was your out-of-place canine I stumbled on, 

but teeth were just an excuse to watch you smile;

that sheepish laugh you had, like you got caught existing too honestly.

Like all those times you moved across tiled floors like a clueless penguin on thin ice,

like all those times you scolded cups and mugs and bowls and dishes

like they were emotionally available enough to listen,

like all those times you spoke to cats and dogs and plants and concrete roads

in your mother tongue, with absolute faith they understood you better than people did.

If I could, I would do it all again.

Not differently. Just again.

There was too much left unfinished.

Too many sentences abandoned mid-breath.

The only regret I have is I left carrying the leftovers of regrets;

living with regrets isn't easy, but ladybug —

dying with them is hard.

The dreams we almost believed into existence,

the snow-capped mountains we once stood beneath,

you pretending altitude was negotiable,

your vertigo arguing with the idea of height itself,

the prawns I nearly got killed over,

your allergy acting like it had legal authority, 

the son we almost had, the daughter we almost named,

they are gone now,

like fingerprints on borrowed glass.

Don’t wait up on me, ladybug.

You know I’ve always found closures overrated.

Besides,

we were never good at goodbyes.

Look at me:

caught in transit; not between leaving and being left,

but between what was real

and what we kept rehearsing until it felt like it was.

Safe Word

You say my safe word is "fuck you,"

as though I should be embarrassed by it.

Not realizing

it's pests like you

I reserve my "fuck you" for,

the way sane people reserve rat poison

for infestations,

not houseguests.

You hear "fuck you"

and mistake it for participation.

Which is adorable.

Because parasites have always confused survival

with relevance.

You flatter yourself

into believing you're troublesome enough

to occupy real estate in my thoughts.

You mistake irritation

for significance.

You mistake acknowledgment

for respect.

You mistake being noticed

for mattering.

A mosquito can interrupt sleep.

That doesn't make it memorable.

The problem with vermin

has never been appetite.

It is imagination.

Stay long enough

inside someone else's walls,

and eventually

you begin believing

the house was built around you.

It wasn't.

You arrived later.

Hungry.

Uninvited.

And immediately mistook consumption

for contribution.

That is the tragedy of pests.

Not that they feed.

That they mistake feeding

for purpose.

My beard bothers you.

Which is strange.

It has survived longer

than most of your convictions.

It grows in one direction,

year after year,

without rephrasing itself every season

to match whichever outrage

is currently paying dividends.

You complain the music is too loud.

It isn't.

It's the lyrics.

Volume never frightened you.

Meaning did.

Because noise can be ignored.

Recognition cannot.

You wanted to be seen.

You wanted to be heard.

You wanted to be important.

And yet somehow,

despite all the shouting,

all the posturing,

all the elaborate theatre of indignation,

you accumulated

the way dust accumulates:

everywhere,

gradually,

and only becoming visible

when sunlight enters the room.

That is why my "fuck you"

offends you so deeply.

Not because it is cruel.

Because it is economical.

It denies you

the one thing

you have spent your entire life demanding:

importance.

So yes,

for your sake,

let's agree

my safe word is "fuck you."

What is yours?

No —

don't answer.

I already know.

Victimhood.

The difference is,

mine ends conversations.

Yours starts them.

Mine is a boundary.

Yours is a business model.

One asks to be left alone.

The other cannot survive

without an audience.

And that,

more than anything,

is why one of us sleeps

and the other 

keeps crashing into ill-lit candles.

As for safe words,

I don't need one.

Safe words imply mercy.

Mercy implies negotiation.

Consequences do not negotiate.

They arrive: 

no disclaimers, no statutory warnings.

And I am the consequence.

Welcome To The Sisterhood (Unabridged)

I’m a small-town girl from a big damn city.

My mother sells overpriced, undercooked food for breakfast

to people who sell the poor, skin and bone,

over whiskey on imported dinner tables.

People like my father.

My grandmother, born when the 20th century was still learning to speak alphabets,

could never voice her opinions.

So I, her befitting 21st-century granddaughter,

peddle her struggles as mine,

because what good is pedigree

if you can’t inherit convenience?

Convenience is currency for the entitled.

And what good is entitlement

if you can’t package imagined sob stories

and sell them at twice the price?

But dare you call my bluff,

dare you question my bias dressed as fact,

dare you disagree with anything

I have already anointed as the only acceptable truth,

you’re a fucking monster.

I come from a state the country considers irrelevant,

so I learned early how not to be.

How to make my existence as visible as daily news.

I learned to camouflage as seasonal fruit;

different seasons, different selves, 

because trading spines for reptilian malleability is the only language

that passes for significance, in capitalist economies.

And when you don’t come from generational wealth,

and the only way to monetise your paper-rich education

is to preach disguised as teaching,

because that is all survival allows,

you learn something else.

You learn to intimidate what intimidates you.

And so I did.

And strangely, it works.

So I repeated it.

Like addicts repeat chemicals.

But dare you see through it, 

dare you look past borrowed culture,

plagiarised intellect,

inflated certainty stitched together from necessity, 

you become the abomination.

I tell people I am a doctor,

because truth alone does not carry prestige.

What good is a doctor who does not save lives;

only grinds herbs and plants into meaning,

calling approximation healing

because language forgives uncertainty?

I tell myself I am a poet,

and repeat it often enough

for repetition to resemble identity.

Because subtleties die easily

in the noise of mediocrity pretending to be volume.

And I have learned this much:

when you cannot convince them,

confuse them.

But do not mistake confusion for credibility.

The moment you hold up a mirror,

you stop being a storyteller

and become a fabrication under observation.

I am not defined by profession.

No one is, 

until they have to justify themselves.

My teeth are stained in phallic hatred, 

my gums reek of blood and testosterone, 

from all the penises I've have rid men of, 

my voice sharpened into argument

because softness never paid rent.

I find problems everywhere;

from my father's dentures to my mother's sarees.

I name them, shape them, expand them, 

until even coincidence feels like conspiracy.

And I call that clarity.

I call it truth.

I call it survival refined into ideology.

But dare you call it what it is:

a carefully maintained illusion of authority, 

and I will make sure I dismantle you

before you dismantle the story.

We are four sisters.

Of the many.

Of a sisterhood.

A sisterhood that swears to erase every place it enters

of men —

because men do not make good sisters,

and anything that does not make a good sister

is not inclusive, and must be misogyny.

A sisterhood that swears to reduce men to ash,

because we descend from the witches your patriarchy couldn’t burn.

Our grandmothers’ suffering is our inheritance,

and your grandfathers’ sins, your lineage.

So what if a century has passed?

So what if you had no hand in it?

We will burn the whole herd of you down anyway, 

and from its ashes, we will build bricks.

Bricks for a sisterhood that sees nothing,

hears nothing,

says nothing, 

except what it believes to be true today.

And dare you call it a facade, this revolution of ours, 

we will rebirth you just so we can burn you again.

And when law enforcement finally arrives,

running awfully late, because old habits die hard, 

we will call it proof of oppression.

And ourselves, 

the martyrs of a forgotten history, 

the lesser witches who were dead in skin but kept breathing in soul.

Welcome to sisterhood, Adolf.

Welcome To The Sisterhood

I’m a small-town girl from a big damn city.

My mother sells overpriced, undercooked food for breakfast

to people who sell the poor, skin and bone,

over whiskey on imported dinner tables.

People like my father.

My grandmother who was born when the 20th century was still learning to speak alphabets,

could never voice her opinions.

So I, her befitting 21st-century granddaughter,

peddle her struggles as mine,

because what good is pedigree

if you can’t inherit convenience?

Convenience is currency for the entitled.

And what good is entitlement

if you can’t package imagined sob stories

and sell them at twice the price?

But dare you call my bluff, 

dare you question my bias dressed as fact, 

dare you disagree with anything

I have already anointed as the only acceptable truth, 

you’re a fucking monster.

I come from a state the country considers irrelevant,

so I learned early how not to be.

How to make my existence as visible as daily news.

I learned to camouflage as seasonal fruit;

different seasons, different selves, 

because trading spines for reptilian malleability is the only language

that passes for significance, in capitalist economies.

And when you don’t come from generational wealth,

and the only way to monetize your paper-rich education

is to preach disguised as teaching, 

because that is all turncoats can afford, 

you learn something else.

You learn to intimidate what intimidates you.

And so, I did.

And strangely, it works.

So I repeated it.

Like addicts repeat chemicals.

But dare you see through it, 

dare you look past the borrowed culture,

the plagiarized intellect,

the inflated certainty stitched together from survival, 

you become the abomination.

We are two sisters.

Two of the many.

Of a sisterhood.

A sisterhood that swears to erase every place it enters

of men —

because men do not make good sisters,

and anything that does not make a good sister

is not inclusive, and must be misogyny.

A sisterhood that swears to reduce men to ash,

because we descend from the witches your patriarchy couldn’t burn.

Our grandmothers’ suffering is our inheritance,

and your grandfathers’ sins, your lineage.

So what if a century has passed?

So what if you had no hand in it?

We will burn the whole herd of you down anyway, 

and from its ashes, we will build bricks.

Bricks for a sisterhood that sees nothing,

hears nothing,

says nothing, 

except what it believes to be true today.

And dare you call it a facade, this revolution of ours, 

we will rebirth you just so we can burn you again.

And when law enforcement finally arrives,

running awfully late, because old habits die hard, 

we will call it proof of oppression.

And ourselves, 

the martyrs of a forgotten history, 

the lesser witches who were dead in skin but kept breathing in soul.

Welcome to sisterhood, Adolf.