Mineral Silence

Live life with such abandon

that even its retelling

turns the storyteller's blood

into something

that no longer remembers warmth.

Something that settles,

slowly,

irreversibly,

into the weight

of mineral silence

while they are still breathing.

There are lives like that;

lives that refuse

to end

with the body.

Lives that escape

their blood work,

leaking instead

into breath that isn’t theirs anymore,

finding shelter

inside mouths

never prepared

for the taste of them.

Until memory

ceases to be recollection,

and becomes something 

that outlives explanation.

By the time

the story reaches

its ending,

the one telling it

has already forgotten

what breath

was ever trying

to keep alive.

Not as metaphor.

As consequence.

Not as fear.

As residue.

The soul,

if there is still

such a word

for what remains

after language

has finished borrowing it, 

does not leave.

It merely discovers

another way

to haunt.

Then write death

with equal depth.

Not as an ending.

Endings are merciful.

Write it

as something

that refuses

to finish dying.

Write it

so that before

the tale arrives

at its final sentence,

the listener

has already begun

to rearrange

their understanding

of survival.

So that grief

does not wait

for the last word,

but enters quietly,

halfway through the telling,

and by the end,

the story

is no longer

about the dead,

but about the living

trying,

and failing,

to remain

unchanged,

mistaking

outliving them

for breathing.

Witch Welfare

It’s cute

when make-believe revolutions learn choreography,

masquerading as papier-mâché conviction,

trading outrage for manifestos,

sickles drawn in rhetoric,

arson performed in syntax,

building enemies from straw

only to stage their dismantling

in borrowed bonfires.

Then insisting

on being called witches.

Witches

whose imagined bloodlines

stretch back

to the women

burnt and pillaged

long before witchcraft

became a metaphor

people learned to wear.

It’s cute,

because the witches they invoke

needed neither slogans

nor curated enemies.

They carried conviction

where others now carry performance.

They were not rehearsed.

They were consequences.

Hunted not for convenient defiance,

but for refusing the grammar of obedience.

Not applauded

for learning the choreography of dissent,

because dissent was never affordable to them.

They did not mistake

spectacle

for resistance.

And that is the slow tragedy

of borrowed martyrdom:

the further it drifts

from the fire,

the more it begins to resemble

something that never burned.

Something safe enough

to re-enact.

Something soft enough

to survive applause.

Something distant enough

to forget heat.

It’s cute,

because witches came

with spine

and with magic.

Their self-anointed descendants

have neither;

only costumes,

echoes,

and the luxury

of confusing theatre

for revolution.

And the most dangerous part

is not the performance itself,

but how easily

the audience begins

to forget

what fire was for.

Sourdough

Have you ever kneaded dough?

It feels like battered skin,

except dough never bruises.

No matter how hard the fist.

No matter how often it folds

into itself.

That's what breathing feels like.

Every inhale,

a thousand needles

checking whether flesh

still intends

to remain flesh.

The strange thing about wounds

is how much easier they are

when they bleed.

A cut knows what it is.

A scab leaves evidence.

Pain becomes real

the moment it stains something.

But how do you heal

from

what consumes everything

and leaves everything behind?

How do you dress a wound

that never breaks the skin?

They say

you should speak.

Talk to people.

Give it language.

Give it shape.

They say it helps.

As though naming a thing

is the same as surviving it.

How do you describe a black hole

without borrowing the language

of stars?

How do you explain a scream

that never becomes sound?

How do you put into words

what survived poetry?

Some wounds

arrive with blood.

Others arrive with silence.

Only one of them

gets believed.

The cruel thing about survival

is that people mistake it

for recovery.

They see you breathing

and call it healing, 

assume the drowning ended.

They see you standing, 

and call it redemption,

assume the collapse is over.

But survival is not the opposite of dying.

Sometimes

it is just dying

that learns to continue

with remarkable consistency.

The part no one tells you about survival 

is that

sometimes

the instinct to keep breathing 

is what keeps the wound alive too.

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.