Departed: The Obituary Of An Arrival

Orgasms are beautiful.

Perhaps that is their cruelty.

They arrive wearing the face of creation,

while carrying the quiet certainty of a funeral.

A beginning disguised as a goodbye.

Ask the foetus.

And it is the first miracle it will ever know.

The reason there is a heartbeat where once there was silence.

The first evidence

that two bodies, for one impossible moment,

created something that would outlive them.

But ask the woman before she knew she was a mother.

Before her body became a home.

Before her future acquired a heartbeat.

Ask the woman who existed only for herself in that moment.

And perhaps it was different.

Not creation.

Not a miracle.

A goodbye.

The funeral of a pleasure that would never again exist alone.

Because knowledge is cruel.

Some things die the moment they acquire meaning.

Perhaps that is why the first orgasm

is always followed by the death of something unnamed.

Not innocence.

That word is too convenient.

Perhaps it is simply the death of possibility.

The death of not knowing.

Or perhaps worse: the death of an orgasm that never arrived.

A grave for a future

that never learned how to become a memory.

Because every orgasm is an ending.

Some end in emptiness.

Some end in creation.

Some disappear so completely

that we spend years 

trying to recreate a few seconds

that already buried themselves.

But all of them leave something behind.

A moment that cannot return.

A version of ourselves that cannot continue.

A small death we willingly enter

because, for a brief instant,

it feels indistinguishable from life.

Maybe that is why we gave it such a beautiful name.

Orgasm.

A word borrowed from creation

for a moment that resembles a funeral.

A few seconds where the body celebrates

the exact instant something is already leaving.

Perhaps language was never meant to reveal what things are.

Perhaps it was invented because humans needed a way

to seduce themselves into agreeing to their own endings, 

to decorate the things they were never strong enough to face naked, 

to make their own disappearances sound voluntary.

Schrödinger's Equation

We met.

There was a story.

One story.

You brought half.

I brought the rest.

The halves kept changing.

The total never did.

Then we parted.

After that,

people began counting.

Not the days.

Not the distance.

But, the stories.

Everyone wanted to know

how many there really were.

I searched for an honest number.

But how do you assign a constant to a variable?

The answer changed every time someone asked.

With you, there were two.

With me, there were two.

Curiously, they weren't the same two.

Memory is a peculiar mathematician.

It never solves. It edits.

Every witness adds another author.

Every retelling subtracts another silence.

Every certainty divides another truth.

Eventually, the arithmetic stopped recognising itself.

One refused to remain one.

Two couldn't agree on who counted first.

Three arrived without ever being introduced.

By then, the numbers weren't describing the story anymore.

They were describing the people trying to survive it.

Years later, people still ask

which version is true.

I tell them I don't know.

Not because the truth was hidden.

Because the moment someone found it,

they became part of the story they were trying to measure.

The first person who counted us changed the number.

The first person who judged us changed the ending.

The first person who listened became someone who had been there.

Maybe there were never two stories.

Maybe there was only one,

being torn apart by everyone

who needed a different version to survive.

And maybe, somewhere,

there is a seventeenth person telling this story

because sixteen before them couldn't agree

which two people they were talking about.

Two people in versions nobody remembers,

still arguing over which one of them was the original.

Funny thing about mathematics:

the answer is always different

once the equation realises

it was never seeking a solution;

it was only trying to prove

that everyone who touched it

was already part of the problem.

There's A Ghost In My House (Unhinged)

Travellers loved my house.

At least, that is what I told myself.

That they weren't trespassers.

That this was still a house.

The truth was less poetic.

People love houses the way they love hospitals.

Mostly when they need one.

They arrived at dusk.

Wet clothes. Heavy bags. Heavier histories.

I opened the doors.

Not because I was kind.

Because empty rooms have a way of reminding you what you are.

A house without inhabitants is just a corpse with better architecture.

So I let them in.

Everyone left something behind.

A photograph. A promise.

A stain on the carpet they swore was already there.

I never complained.

Complaints are for places that still believe they deserve better.

I had stopped believing that some time ago.

They called me home.

I found it amusing.

Home is a beautiful word.

It convinces people that a place belongs to them while quietly hiding the fact that they belong to their habits.

They came here to rest.

To heal. To hide.

Some succeeded. Some didn't.

Some broke things. Some repaired them.

Some loved the house. Some hated it.

The difference was mostly how honest they were.

Because every person leaves fingerprints.

Even the ones who arrive with flowers.

Especially those.

Years passed.

The walls grew tired.

The floors learned the weight of departures.

The windows stopped expecting faces to return.

People called it a ruin.

I disagreed.

Ruins are honest.

Houses are just ruins that haven't admitted it yet.

I remained.

Not because I was abandoned.

Abandonment requires someone to have promised permanence.

Nobody did.

I remained because that is what houses do.

They stay.

Even when staying is no longer loyalty.

Even when staying is just another form of cowardice.

Everyone who lived here became a chapter.

Everyone who left became a memory.

And I?

I am the ghost inside the ruins.

Not the ghost of the people who left.

The ghost of the house that believed being needed was the same thing as being loved.

Everyone had somewhere to return to.

Everyone had somewhere to go.

Everyone had a door waiting for them.

Except the house.

The only thing that was always open

was the only thing

that was never allowed to leave.

There's A Ghost In My House

Travellers loved my house.

At least, that is what I told myself.

That they weren't trespassers.

That this was still a house.

The truth was simpler.

People love houses the way they love hospitals.

Mostly when they need one.

They arrived at dusk,

with rain in their pockets and histories in their hands.

Some came carrying flowers.

Some came carrying fires.

Most came carrying both and called themselves guests.

I opened the doors.

Not because I was kind.

Because empty rooms have a cruel habit of introducing you to yourself.

A house without inhabitants is just a corpse with better architecture.

They all left something behind.

A photograph. A promise.

A crack they swore was already there.

Some loved me. Some hated me.

Most simply survived their time here.

Years passed.

The walls grew tired.

The rooms learned that footsteps sound identical whether someone is arriving or departing.

People called me a ruin. I disagreed.

Ruins are honest.

Houses are just ruins that haven't admitted it yet.

I am the ghost inside these walls.

Not the ghost of those who left.

The ghost of a house that mistook being needed for being loved.

Everyone had somewhere to go.

Everyone had a door waiting.

Everyone eventually became a story they told about their time here.

Except me.

I remained behind to preserve the evidence.

The only thing that was always open was the only thing  that was never allowed to leave.

Dead Once. Buried Twice.

Goodness and greatness are but

buds of a night jasmine

that bloom in the chilling air of autopsy rooms,

beneath the flicker of dysfunctional neon lights;

never quite as much

in the changing seasons

of an oxygenated existence.

Perhaps some things need the smell of death

before people finally notice they were alive.

Spare me the circus.

I have a rather lengthy journey to oblivion.

Don't pretend to cry.

This isn't a funeral.

Funerals are reserved for people who were loved 

or liked at the least,

before their stories could be harvested

and rewritten by those who mistook surviving for having the right to write.

Would it befit a protagonist

to author the obituary of an anticlimax

that met its ending exactly on schedule?

No.

Say what you always wanted to say.

Say I deserved it.

Say it should have happened sooner.

Perhaps it will help cover

the blisters on the tender skin

of your shrunken anuses,

caused by years of sitting

on the throne of your rented moralities.

You are all storytellers.

Sacred in faith.

Righteous in truth.

And I was merely

the hiccuping epiglottis

choking the vocal cords

of your carefully rehearsed tales.

A minor inconvenience

between the lie

and its performance.

So let the story remain.

Let it sink.

Why clean a biography

you spent years writing

with neatly drained ink

from neatly manufactured lies?

Don't let death guilt you

into granting me posthumous glory.

You have a reptilian honour to preserve.

Don't contaminate it with the inconvenient interference of a mammalian frontal cortex.

Think of me exactly as you always intended.

It is easier.

Stories survive longer

when nobody checks whether they were ever true.

As for me,

I shall take your leave.

Keep your stories. Keep your sermons.

Keep your immaculate versions of what happened.

I'll keep the only thing you could never redact; the corpse.

The Melody Of Naren Uncle

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was a vile man. 

He called Mumbai his beloved, 

long before Bombay became Mumbai.

Then, in 1993, he cut her up, head to toe, 

like a butcher draws through the flesh of a slaughter goat,

and history had the decency to call him what he became.

A terrorist. An enemy of the state, and the country.

The grammar was honest.

Years later, a wise elderly well-meaning man came along, 

and turned the idea of romancing geographies into a thriving business. 

He was fondly called Naren uncle.

He didn't stop at a city. His first love was a state. His motherland.

He doused his first love in petrol, left the gas on, and a matchstick lit itself up, like it were a firefly.

He called it cleansing.

Fire has a strange way of sounding romantic

when politicians are the ones writing the wedding vows.

By 2014, his appetite had outgrown his legislation.

"The nation," he whispered, "is my one true love."

Petrol became patriotism.

Hatred was declared a civic duty.

The matchstick learned parliamentary procedure.

Citizens of the country were so hypnotised by the performance,

so busy waving flags at the theatre,

they never noticed 

they weren't being hugged, but held captive.

That's the thing about propaganda.

Unlike bullets, it enters asking politely.

It removes your spine before it removes your freedom.

Then convinces you standing upright is foreign conspiracy.

Dawood wanted a country to fear him.

Naren uncle wanted the country to mistake fear for love.

One murdered a country in a city.

The other turned a country into a slaughterhouse and then changed the meaning of the word "country".

Vocabulary is honest.

Until someone powerful gets hold of the dictionary.

Then suddenly, antonyms become synonyms.

Cruelty becomes compassion.

Silence becomes peace.

Obedience becomes patriotism.

And the mirror reflection of a monster is introduced as a messiah.

And Naren uncle has always been known to be a tongue-twister.

Because the most dangerous tongue-twister is not the one that makes you struggle to pronounce the words.

It is the one that convinces millions to pronounce the same lie as truth.

Question Paper

The government doesn't fear terrorists.

Terrorists make excellent headlines.

It doesn't fear wars.

Wars arrive with flags, anthems,

and enough cameras

to make destruction look like history.

It doesn't even fear hunger.

Hungry people are too busy

counting their last meals

to count who took the first one.

No.

The government fears classrooms.

Because classrooms have a dangerous habit

of creating people who read before they obey.

A child with a question paper

is more dangerous than an adult with a slogan.

Because slogans tell you what to think.

Questions ask you why.

And why

has buried more empires

than weapons ever did.

In a country

where generations escaped 

famine, debt, discrimination, and surnames

that arrived before they did,

education was never just education.

It was a ladder built by people

who were never allowed inside the building.

Every examination was a small rebellion.

Every piece of paper earned in a classroom

was proof

that destiny could be negotiated.

Which is why 

nothing terrifies power

more than a child who believes

their future belongs to them.

Because a child

who believes they own tomorrow

eventually asks who sold yesterday.

Every dictatorship begins the same way.

Not by burning books.

That comes later.

First,

it convinces people

that questions are disrespect.

Raise your hand?

Suspicious.

Raise your voice?

Seditious.

Raise an eyebrow?

Anti-national.

Raise your child

to think?

Now that's dangerous.

We tell children there are no stupid questions.

Then they grow up.

Turns out there are.

Mostly the ones asked loudly.

Outside Parliament.

Inside classrooms.

Anywhere a microphone

can accidentally hear the truth.

The funny thing about a baton

is that it has only one answer.

It keeps repeating it

until the question forgets why it was asked.

History teachers must be exhausted.

Every few decades, they have to explain

how every empire made the same mistake.

They mistook their own echo for applause.

They mistook silence for agreement.

They mistook fear for loyalty.

Funny.

We celebrate the people who questioned an empire.

Then punish the people who question a government.

As though

a government and a country

were the same thing.

They are not.

A country

is the child who studies beneath a broken tube light

because darkness is cheaper than failure.

The farmer praying to clouds

that arrive everywhere except his field.

The student carrying an answer sheet

like a lottery ticket written by someone else.

A government is merely the hand borrowing the pen.

And history has always been cruel

to people who mistake

holding the pen for owning the paper.

Because eventually, the question changes.

Not:

"Will you obey?"

But:

"Why did you think

you were allowed

to ask?"

You can arrest the student.

Confiscate the notebook.

Break the pencil.

Rewrite the syllabus.

Erase the names.

Polish the statues.

But the question?

The question has already graduated.

It lives in every person who watched.

Every person who remembered.

Every person who quietly wondered

if the answer sheet was ever meant for them.

Because that's the problem with question papers.

They were never for the students.

They were always for the examiner.

And governments, no matter how powerful,

eventually discover the most terrifying truth about examinations:

The person holding the pen

is not always

the person giving the marks.

History has been invigilating governments for centuries.

Every empire entered the examination hall

believing it had written history.

Centuries later,

history arrived with a red pen,

and failed every answer

they spent centuries,

forcing generations to memorize, 

until the lie no longer needed to be defended, 

for, 

it had learned to answer in everyone's handwriting.

Name. Place. Animal. Thing.

Drawers

are strange places.

Things go there

when they are not ready

to disappear.

Not because

they are valuable.

But because 

sometimes,

throwing something away

requires admitting

you were wrong

about why you kept it.

Twelve watches.

I keep buying them

as if one of them

will eventually confess

where all the time went.

They all work.

Every single one.

Which somehow

makes it worse.

A broken watch

would have been merciful.

It would admit

that something ended.

These keep ticking,

quietly proving

that time does not stop

just because

someone inside it

has already expired.

A sketch pad.

Pages of faces.

I have always trusted

black and white

more than reality.

Colours are dishonest.

They know how to seduce.

They paint over wounds.

They make corpses look alive

from a distance.

But monochrome

does not negotiate.

Every wrinkle

becomes history.

Every shadow

becomes confession.

Every face

becomes an autopsy

of everything

it survived.

Some finished.

Some abandoned.

Some staring back at me

like people I knew

before they were dissected

and served as memories.

Perhaps that is why

I keep drawing faces.

Not because

I want to remember

how people look.

But because

I want to know

what remains

after everything

they spent their lives

pretending to be

is removed.

Three sticks

of charcoal.

The only things I own

that understand

how darkness

can be dragged

across a surface

and somehow become

something worth looking at.

Perhaps that is why

I never trusted light

as much as transformation.

Light reveals.

Darkness creates.

And sometimes,

darkness creates

better things

than the people

who escaped it.

A stack of origamis.

Animals.

Or whatever remained

after my hands

failed to remember

what animals

were supposed to become.

Although my brain

remembered

every fragile detail.

A bird

with wings folded wrong.

A wolf

that looks more afraid

than dangerous.

A horse

whose legs

forgot the purpose

of running.

I never corrected them.

There is something honest

about creatures

that carry

the fingerprints

of their maker's failures.

Perfect things

only prove

someone followed instructions.

Broken things

reveal

who was holding

the paper.

Pens.

Too many.

Some expensive.

Some stolen.

Some collected

from places

I no longer remember.

All waiting

for a sentence

important enough

to deserve them.

A fountain pen.

Reserved

for words

that need to pretend

they are permanent.

Funny,

how humans invented

permanent ink

while spending their entire lives

trying to erase themselves.

A passport.

Full of stamps.

Evidence

that I crossed borders.

None

that I arrived.

I carry proof

of everywhere

I escaped from.

Apparently,

the world is large enough

to run across continents

but small enough

to always find yourself

waiting at the destination.

And somewhere beneath everything,

a crooked nail.

I don't know

what it belonged to.

But I keep it.

Because perhaps

everything deserves

one last chance

to become useful.

Even broken things.

Especially broken things.

Especially the ones

that no longer remember

what they were supposed

to hold together.

The drawer

is full of them.

Objects.

Ideas.

Dreams.

Failed experiments

with human skin.

Versions of myself

I started building

and abandoned

halfway through.

Every night,

I open it.

Not because

I need anything.

Not because

I expect something inside

to return.

But because

I need evidence

that I once believed

there was something

worth constructing.

The watches

are still ticking.

The pages

are still waiting.

The charcoal

still understands darkness.

The animals

still pretend

they were meant

to be alive.

The pens

still believe

there is something

left to write.

I envy them.

The objects.

At least they get

to remain unfinished.

Humans are crueler.

We call unfinished things

failures

and unfinished people

potential.

Then I close it.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Like shutting

the lid

of a coffin

that remembers

the shape

of its resident.

Because some things

do not need

to be thrown away.

They only need

to be kept long enough

for us to forget

why we kept them.

The drawer

is not a place

where unfinished things wait

to become whole.

It is where

failed versions of ourselves

go

to die quietly.

And perhaps

that is the cruelest truth

about broken things.

They do not always need fixing.

Sometimes,

they only need

a dark enough place

where nobody asks

what they were supposed

to become.

Every night,

I open the drawer.

Not because

I am searching

for something.

But because

for a few seconds,

the watches still tick,

the faces still breathe,

the distorted animals

still remember flight,

and the broken pieces

still have the audacity

to pretend

they belong somewhere.

Then I close it.

Slowly.

Because even abandoned things

deserve privacy

when they are dying.

And tomorrow,

I will open it again.

Not because I miss them.

Not because I love them.

But because I need to know

whether the drawer

is still full

of things I abandoned

or whether,

somewhere between

the watches,

the charcoal,

the broken animals,

and the unfinished faces,

I finally found

the only thing

I was ever trying

to throw away.

Myself.

Unfortunately,

I was the only thing

I abandoned

without ever putting down.

Stranger Stranger

Strangers arrive

with desire.

It is acquaintances

you should watch closely;

and the conveniences

they mistake

for love.

I would rather

remain a stranger

than become

a creature

of convenience.

I would rather

be desired

than remembered

by routine.

Desire

is a wildfire.

Routine

is what remains

after the smoke

has learned

the furniture.

You and I

could keep

gasping for air

until the fire

recognises us again,

claws through

the ash,

settles

inside our ribs,

and welds shut

the ventricles

we were foolish enough

to leave open,

mistaking

the absence of bleeding

for healing.

Because sometimes

the person you know best

is still

the stranger

you never met.

And, 

I would rather

bury the stranger

than hold on to

a corpse

wearing your name.

God Bless You

I met a god today.

Lesser gods and demigods

stood behind,

arrayed into a halo.

Men, women, children,

flocked the streets below,

squealing in joy;

their prayers had been answered.

The god held a microphone,

and told us all,

how choosing his divinity,

worshipping his deity,

was the singular way,

to attain salvation

at the feet

of the country's one true prophet and protector,

at the gates

of bona fide nationalism.

No one questioned

when did the gods

start belonging to geography, 

when did holiness

start looking like

dogs urinating to mark territory.

It's hard to question,

with your mouths full;

last meal of the sacrificial lambs.

As for me,

I was never a believer.

And in a sacred land,

that alone

is blasphemy.

So I breathe

air unblessed,

cursed even,

beneath the god's halo.

Sacrifice is reserved

for the god's favourites.

My life

is my punishment.

Thank god for that.

This Poem Lacks Any Purpose Or Point

Just the other day,

I was minding my own business,

when a stranger walked up to me,

and vehemently insisted on a conversation.

The more they spoke,

the more I wanted 

to slam their head on the wall,

but crimson stains on white walls,

are rather hard to paint over,

unless you call them polka dots

that lost their geometry

somewhere between

violence and interior decoration.

I know this, mostly from lived experience.

So I chose to confront them.

Never a good idea, I tell you.

Apparently it's offensive

if you aren't as much of a dumbfuck

as they are;

apparently that's what they are calling a democracy, these days.

They informed me,

they were uncomfortable in the conversation,

and yet somehow,

couldn't bring all the strength in their bones,

to move a muscle.

Apparently, a morbidly obese vanity does that to you.

Unfortunately, I wasn't unemployed at the time,

I still am not,

but, context matters I've been told.

So, because I had work to do,

people to meet,

and a life that refused to wait for their approval,

I decided to leave, 

while desperately hoping

the previous thirty minutes

could be buried somewhere

between virtual reality and neurological injury.

And just as I was about to reach for the door, 

they stopped me.

They told me,

how important they were.

How accomplished.

How rare.

How they were the continuity of a mutiny.

How they were the missing punctuation in humanity's unfinished sentence.

How they were what would change the world.

I grinned with an oblique lip,

looked them dead in the eye,

and said,

"That's a whole lot of adjectives to decorate biodegradable waste."

I know you are convinced I'm an asshole, 

with a pronounced fetish for violence, 

and you're absolutely correct in your conclusion. 

But remember this, 

had it not been for violence, 

you'd be dead from small pox, 

and lunch for the ones you pick off a dinner buffet.

But the questions in your concise cerebrum don't stop, 

you wonder,

how dare I compare a human to a fucking mosquito, 

or a goat, a cow, a pig, 

depending on which one appeases the idiosyncrasies

of the ones you bend your spine to, 

without getting money for it, that is?

Well, you discriminate by species, 

I discriminate by utility. 

And claiming superiority by association,

how dare you, I ask. 

Who do you think you are, 

some godman in a land that mistakes fear for faith?

Honestly, we've had too many of them,

and I have always had a kink for subtraction.

And now you're confused, 

as to when did this become 

about the things you've been taught

to not debate nor question, 

because idiocy is best served, 

when accountability is a missing father.

And now you're confused, 

how did this begin with me, 

and become about you? 

Because, 

you are synonymous with the antonym:

how something about someone

becomes all about you, 

all thanks to you!

This isn't a screenplay 

you are used to auditioning for.

In fact, right about now, 

you're questioning

why you didn't realise

the precise moment the story flipped.

But then, isn't that the story of your life anyway?

No, this whole charade doesn't have a point.

In case you were still wondering.

In fact it was never meant to have any reason or logic.

I just arranged random words in a manner

co-ordinated enough 

to confuse the fuck out

of your perception of language, 

while mimicking the very same manner, 

in which every shred of faith

was hammered into your marrows.

Thankfully for you, 

I don't have a lot of faith

in faith. 

Else, you'd have traded yours today.

The Stanza After Skin

Once you've spent years

unclothed,

unsheathed,

unhinged,

walking to the kitchen and back,

butt naked,

gone from cooking meals

to doing the dishes

to lying on the bed

staring at the ceiling

for no reason at all,

not a shred of fabric

between your skin

and hers,

you realise

how easily

people have peddled

sex for salvation,

mistaken

intercourse

for intimacy.

You wake up

to the quiet truth

that waking up

to bare bottoms

and open tops

was never,

by itself,

reason enough

to fuck.

Those who believe otherwise

are still learning

the difference

between access

and affection.

Because novelty

has an expiry date.

Tenderness doesn't.

Need

arrives

like a clock hand,

faithfully returning

to where it began.

Desire,

however,

has always been

a visitor.

It knocks.

It waits.

It is invited in.

You realise

the blemishes on her buttocks

resemble spines drawn on sand, 

as if finger impressions

left by

the undercurrents of the ocean 

beneath and beyond, 

the singular mole

at the south-western edge

of her left breast

resembles an island

still fighting 

to stay above water, 

how somehow,

even after years,

your breath

against her neck

still creates

a geography

of goosebumps.

You realise

intimacy was never

about two bodies

finding each other.

Bodies have always

known how to collide.

It was about two histories

learning

how to inhabit

the same silence.

Two people

shedding clothes

is easy.

Two people

losing disguises, 

revealing everything 

they spend years

pretending not to be, 

takes a long time.

Long enough

for ordinary

to become sacred.

Long enough

for belonging 

to stop needing

proof.

Sex is never finished

when the body is.

It continues

in the certainty

that tomorrow

you will still

walk naked

to the kitchen,

still steal from each other's plates,

still discover

new maps

on familiar skin.

Ice Cream

This afternoon,

I learnt

a scoop of ice cream

can be an unbearably long stretch of time.

This was supposed to be our treat —

to us,

from us,

for being us.

And yet,

here we were,

divided

by three scoops of Belgian chocolate.

She has never settled for one.

I have always found

two of the same

too lingering, 

and two different, 

too distracting.

We have rituals like that.

Like never having a meal

at the dining table,

always on the bed,

while trying to figure out

what should accompany us

from dinner

to dreamland.

She's never managed

to finish a movie,

let alone

a television series,

unbothered by sleep,

unhinged in determination.

She's a woman

of iron will,

make no mistake.

But the moment

food reaches

her stomach,

iron

remembers

how to melt.

I, on the other hand, 

am compulsive, 

in my need to see beginnings end.

We have rituals like that. 

Like how,

when she says

she wants coffee,

what she really wants

is coffee-flavoured milk.

She calls that abomination

coffee,

and calls coffee

an abomination

of humanity.

She has never quite understood

how anyone

could willingly savour bitterness, 

and yet

she chose

to go to bed

every night

with a man

who drinks

his coffee black,

as though

there were no other way.

She calls me

a psychopath

for that.

I call her

a psychopath

for sleeping

with her mouth

open wide enough

that an entire civilisation

of mosquitoes

could walk right in,

and walk right out, 

their stomachs full, 

fat with gratitude.

Today,

for the first time,

I met

a lazy Friday.

Even an empty one.

I never knew

Friday afternoons

could contain

so much silence.

And even though,

following ritual,

she spilled

ice cream

on her dress,

today

wasn't the day

I could laugh about it.

How could I,

having fought

with her

seventeen minutes earlier?

This is one

of our rituals too.

Our conversations 

and confrontations 

have always 

been married 

to each other,

the way

we are,

on the days

we aren't fighting.

Conversations,

if left unattended

for more than

twenty-one minutes,

have a peculiar habit

of becoming

confrontations.

Then

I blame her.

Then

she blames me.

Then

we both take turns

blaming ourselves,

while quietly insisting

the other

started it.

Then come

the apologies,

still pointing fingers,

only softer

than before.

Neither of us

ever remembers

the precise moment

the accusations

stop making sense,

and affection

quietly resumes

its ordinary duties.

Every time

we fight,

I discover

newer truths

about ice cream.

Cognitive Bias

The more I learn about animals,

the more I grow wary of humans.

And among the humans I distrust most,

there is one subspecies

I remain particularly circumspect of,

those that arrive breathless with righteousness,

announcing,

with lungs swollen by their own virtue,

that they are here for the greater good,

that they are here to build a better world,

as though salvation were a lesson in public speaking,

as though they were alchemists

mistaken for everyone else,

their humility

performed with theatrical precision.

People call them names.

The wise.

The worldly.

The intellectual.

The liberal.

They polish these names

until they gleam like medals

pinned to a conscience

eager to be corrupted.

I prefer simpler taxonomy.

I prefer to call them what they spend their entire lives trying not to become —

ordinary lives cloaked in extraordinary lies.

I'd rather pet an alligator 

than mistake a parasite for a prophet.

Call a parasite a prophet long enough,

and eventually

language forgets they weren't synonyms.

The Laws/Loss Of Inheritance

Mitochondrial DNA passes on

from grandmother

to mother

to daughter,

they said,

and suddenly

I understood

how easily

a fragment of biology

can become

a mythology.

When someone tells you

they believe in equality,

listen carefully

to how they speak

of the X chromosome.

But listen closer

to the silence

where the Y chromosome

was supposed to be,

but was quietly omitted 

for operational convenience.

Everyone remembers

being a mother's daughter;

raised by 

fathers whose names

were sold and told

as stories of absence,

their existence reduced

to the space

between two chapters,

forgotten

before the curtains

ever fell.

Misunderstand me

if you want.

Call me prejudiced

if that makes the argument

more convenient.

But singularity

never birthed

daughters

or sons

of mothers alone,

nor did it raise them.

The sperm carries

genetic marks

of a father's stress,

they said.

And yet,

no poetry was written,

no odes were gurgled,

no tombstone was placed

at the altar

of another forgotten inheritance.

As if learning

to be human

wasn't difficult enough,

we now

perform equality

by asking men

to become

male honeybees

and black widows;

valued for the purpose

they serve,

discarded

once the purpose

is fulfilled.

Or perhaps worse;

an inconvenient body

whose only recognised worth

is being

flesh 

with a function.

Procreation

or

pleasure.

Nothing beyond. 

Nothing in between.

Maybe humans

were never the right gods

to worship

for equality.

Maybe amoebas were.

No genders.

No asymmetries.

No inheritance divided

into convenient stories.

And most importantly, 

you are your father 

and grandfather,

and 

you are your mother 

and grandmother.

No singular lineage. 

No convenient mythology.

A civilisation's inheritance

contained

within a single cell.

Doppler Effect

It's a sunny afternoon outside,

the kind of sunny

that keeps buildings warm,

the lives within,

warm.

The kind of afternoons

paragraphs about hope

begin with.

Not scorched earth.

Not molten streets.

Just ambient enough

for lukewarm lives.

And yet,

on the ground floor

of a four-storeyed residence,

stands a man, 

his feet

three feet off the ground.

Hangs a man, 

tied to the ceiling

of his humility.

Apparently,

sunny afternoons

aren't warm enough

to keep

the cold decay within

from breathing.

Apparently,

clouded skies

and overcast existences

have never belonged

to the same weather.

And yet,

when the storm arrives,

we ask why the clouds didn't speak.

We offer umbrellas to people already underwater.

We say,

"I'm here if you need someone to talk to,"

as though silence

were merely a sentence

people forgot to finish.

As though

drowning begins

the moment

we notice it.

And yet,

the news will tell you tomorrow's weather,

the probability of rain,

the direction of storms,

the humidity in the air,

but never quite

the forecasts

of impending foreclosures.

The High Priestess Of Pretend Halos

Biology says I'm weeks away from menopause

but I've always had an aversion to uncomfortable truths

so I walk around with the angst of teenage drama. 

My father's lack of teeth is what I build my feminist out of

but I never forget to use his surname, 

you see I come from a long lineage of caste supremacy and an inherent sense of superiority for simply existing, 

and that's not a vice you can do away with; take away illusion and what is a magician left with?

I bleed every month for the dying and the decaying in Gaza, 

and I sell my support for Umar Khalid,

like that's all it takes to be called a revolutionary, 

but every time the country of Umar Khalid and of me, bleeds, 

I forget my words, because I can't afford to lose my teeth, 

because how does a snake continue to be a snake without its fangs?

I use my dysfunctional family as puppets to further my paper propaganda, 

and I chew my words, enunciating them with enough conviction

so no one dares question my intellect.

I don't have a spine so I offer unsolicited advice as a guise to latch my parasitic intentions on to, 

and before you realise, I would have crept so far up your ribs, 

you'd have to asphyxiate yourself to get rid of me.

Penises are my choice of scapegoats, 

I sever them, at the very first chance I get,

because butchery is all I really have, in the name of art. 

And, art is the dildo

I orgasm my casteist conscience to, every night, in the warmth of my cold bed.

I only flock myself with women two-thirds my age or younger, 

because the ones my age wake up to real-life consequences, 

and I am rather allergic to anything that questions the imagined Renaissance I'm the Michelangelo and the Da Vinci of.

Either them, or the men who've absolved themselves of their Y-chromosomes, 

the ones who have wrung themselves dry of the last traces of testosterone, and I'm the only one reeking of it

because in a congregation of flaccid penises, my clitoris becomes the only permissible erection, 

and that's how I like my feminism.

I breathe carbon monoxide into falsified vendettas, 

because it's twice the convenience;

it rids any spine with a penis I couldn't rid in person, 

and I am never cutting losses if and when the tables turn.

Call me whatever you like —

activist, artist, intellectual, revolutionary. 

Just don't call me honest.

I have spent a lifetime

mistaking manufactured applause for a mirror.

Residue

Human existence is

a curious phenomenon,

wasted

and wished away

believing

we're

a lot more

than

a good fuck

&

the residue

of another.

Dragon Daughter

Because it’s ass glows,

a firefly can dream of being a volcano,

swimming in an oasis of verses.

Just because it’s ass glows,

if a firefly throngs the skies

though,

claiming dragon lineage written in ash and ancestry,

a single speckle of thunder is enough

to humble its airborne mythology.

Fruit Faction/Fiction

 I open my refrigerator.

There are two pomegranates and three bananas.

One pomegranate has gone bad.

So I take it out, intending to throw it away,

because that’s what you do with rot.

The pomegranate looks at me.

Its eyebrows rise.

“Do you know pomegranates have historically been oppressed?”

I pause.

“What’s your point?”

It doesn’t blink.

“1 in every 2 bananas goes bad.

But only 1 in 10 pomegranates does.

And yet you never question bananas.

You question pomegranates the moment one fails.

That is conditioning.

And now you’re doing it again.”

It leans closer.

“You’re making this about pomegranates.

This is why we haven’t progressed as a species.

You hate pomegranates, don’t you?”

I look at it.

For a moment.

Close the fridge.

And as I’m about to throw it in the bin, I lean closer and whisper:

“I’m having those bananas with pancakes and maple syrup for dinner.”

Pray Kill (Alternative Version)

If you wish to kill me,

pray you do not fail.

Because if you do,

I will make death regret

ever choosing your side.

And then I will be

the only afterlife you have.

Pray Kill

If you wish to kill me,

pray you don’t fail.

For if you do,

I will not just end your existence;

I will erase every eternity

that comes after it.

White Lie

People are funny that way;

they call it hope,

light at the end of a tunnel,

or whatever vocabulary

best serves the moment, 

but what it is, 

is their need

for people

to be convenient to them

in ways they themselves

never could,

never would.

And somehow

they’ve dared

to call that

humanity.

Eve's Epiglottis

You always start with women in anger.

No wait, 

you start after the anger is already framed.

Every single time.

Like a dysfunctional sphincter

erupting excreta out of habit.

Like it’s a thesis

already approved

long before the body even enters the room.

But you don’t write women. 

You never write women.

You, 

you perform them

You build scaffolding out of borrowed thunder;

borrowed, 

no,

stolen, 

and then call it solidarity. 

You're obsessed with the visible epiglottis

of the invisible women you weave costumes of.

Because, epiglottis isn't a metaphor;

you chose a paraphernalia

for a speech you rehearsed in private, 

your silicon spine weighing up on the warmth for some neat theatre, 

anticipating applause that hasn’t arrived yet.

Confusing anger for screams is common.

No, 

confusing screams for anger is easier

when your epiglottis is overworked

round the clock

round the clock

round the clock, 

to prove a revolution that doesn’t exist. 

Not revolution, 

performance of revolution, 

or maybe just rehearsal, 

Because it sounds better

when resistance has rhythm.

You stack history

like receipts

like proof 

you belong in pain

but lived truth

doesn’t stack

it collapses.

You are not tracing lineage

you are auditioning for it

You keep saying resistance like it’s a chant

like if you repeat it enough

plastic propagandas grow wings of revolution.

But repetition is not consequence.

You vomit verses

like language that forgot 

what it was supposed to do.

You're as much a poet

as paper mache origami 

is a bird of flight.

You're as much a revolutionary

as soya beans

are meat & flesh.

You're as much necessary

as is the forgotten crown

of a circumcised penis.

Sisterhoods and brotherhoods would dissolve

the day humans stopped performing humanity

and actually practised it.

But you insist you are the beacon

at the end of everything

that hasn’t even begun to burn.

You are a commodity dressed as conviction,

and commodities always learn how to sell best

when belief is cheaper than integrity.

And when stripped of language,

what remains is not meaning, 

but posturing.

And posturing is not power.

It is display.

So spare me the lecture;

your epiglottis must be hurting

from narrating lives you've never lived.

Bad Bad Buck

Don't you fuck

with Buck,

else he'll fuck

you up in muck,

stranded like a duck,

neck-deep in schmuck,

choking on your luck,

and one last "what the —"

Don't you fuck

with Buck,

else he'll fuck

you up in muck,

like a broken kayak

ass-up in schmuck,

no warmth to tuck

your pride back up,

broken teeth, tough luck,

and one last "what the —"

Don’t you fuck

with Buck, 

you fat-back truck,

you broke-down ruck,

you filth-born muck,

you derailed duck, 

for he’ll fuck

you up in a pluck

of silence, stuck

between breath and luck,

left traded, sold, and out of buck,

bruised ego, begging luck,

and one last “what the —”

You know I meant no duck.

I meant you, you motherfuck.

You came riding your luck.

You came praying I wasn't Buck.

Three Filthy Pigs

Once upon a fairytale, 

back when humans burst open out of pregnant pods and blossoming buds,

there lived three filthy pigs.

Far away from the wilderness, 

deep inside the rotting marrows 

of a civilisation long forgotten, 

the pigs had built towering skyscrapers 

of stinking piles of untreated sewage; 

they called it a safe haven.

Every time another species would cross paths, 

the three filthy pigs, 

bathed in fresh garbage, 

would squeal and chomp, 

their crooked tails trailing like leaking punctuation from a badly written sentence.

The disgust for their filth, 

they told themselves, 

were the ribs respect was made of.

They called it the fear of the fraternity.

One day, instead of falling off trees, 

the humans started walking the ground. 

They had begun learning things 

the pigs could not possibly make sense of. 

Like taking a bath. 

And cooking food before eating them whole.

A while later, 

a man crossed paths with the three filthy pigs. 

The pigs squealed and chomped, 

their tails curled in the air, 

their snouts breathing rage and contempt. 

The man stood still, as if they were nothing. 

And with a punch aimed at their obese underbellies, 

he drove his fist through the idea of them.

Later that night, 

as they were served for dinner, 

cleaned first, cooked later, 

their ribs separated from their chops, 

the afterlives of the three filthy pigs learned what their lives could not be humbled into: 

don’t go to war with what you know nothing of.

The Dumb Charades Of Divinity

You can scream sanctity

until your throat mistakes itself

for history.

The fact remains:

a crime is a crime is a crime.

Justice has never learned

to cross-examine folklore.

It does not care

how beautifully

you stitched halos

onto butchered intentions.

Build your demons.

Give them a tragic childhood,

a persuasive manifesto,

a character arc

worthy of applause.

Build your gods too.

Teach them

that blood is only ideology

leaking out of the body.

Call murder self-preservation.

Call vengeance liberation.

Call terror the price of tomorrow.

Words have survived worse disguises.

Matters of facts usually outlive them.

Cry for help.

Swear the blood on your hands

belongs to history.

Insist the skeletons in your closet

were planted there

by better storytellers.

Every criminal learns vocabulary

long before they learn remorse.

There was once a boy who cried wolf.

History remembers the warning.

It forgets the ending.

It forgets to mention

that wolves do not stop

at the liar.

They acquire taste.

Monsters do not emerge from meaning.

Meaning gathers around what never needed it.

They do not learn enemies.

Only hunger.

Stories are no longer stories.

Only systems still moving

after belief has left them.

Wolves are already loose.

Fed by applause,

trained by outrage,

released in the name of justice.

Wolves have never pledged allegiance

to shepherds.

Only to hunger.

And stories have never been anyone's property;

only what survives them.