A Sleepless Sonnet

As the wind acted messenger to mogra-scented messages,
The owls hooted their muted melody: moody, mellow,
The stars winked amongst themselves, possessive some furtive knowledge,
While the poornima moon’s warm smile turns the heavens yellow.

Like watch guards, black bats circle around,
As if to keep an eye on the gleaming crystals scattered in the sky.
In the distance, a black cat lets out mewling protests,
Indignant at being painted an evil omen, a piteous cry.

The fan whirs on with indifferent rigour,
A lorry on the highway tootles its sing-song horn.
The clock ticks and tocks its merciless rhythm.
Tantalisingly counting down the seconds left to dawn.

And throughout this saga, I toss and turn at every bend.
Hello again insomnia, my old friend.

A Measured Existence

Lub-dub, tick-tock,
Tick-lub, dub-tock.
Like merciless machinery,
A well-oiled routine day-in, day-out.
Lub-tick, tock-dub.

Breathe quickly now,
Before the sunset melting into sanguine oblivion
Takes your breath away.
Like golden caramel melting on the tongue.
Lub-dub, tick-tock.

Breathe quickly now,
As the spring breeze fills your lungs
Leaving you gasping for more.
Wind-swept hair dancing in sparkling lake eyes.
Lub-dub, tick-tock.

Breathe quickly now,
Before the moonlit nightfall
Blinds you with stardust in your eyes.
Constellations winking in mischief, guarding celestial secrets.

Lub-dub, tick-tock.
As you scramble on this voyage across time,
Sails spread, bones all brittle,
Before the earth lays claim to your soul,
Why not yearn to live a little?

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING [redacted]

I have always been a hug person.
When someone holds you tight enough,
It feels safe enough to finally let go.
On downcast days, when the skies seem too heavy to hold up,
And your tender shoulders seem far too frail to cope,
When rain threatens to burst forth from your own cloudy eyes,
And the sun is too bleak to summon rainbows,
Fall into my embrace,
And cry.
The ugly kind, with puffy eyes and quivering lips.
And when you’ve run out of tears for a while,
Come to my arms to find your [redacted]

I was always very clumsy as a child.
And every time I fell,
It felt like an omen which said,
Don’t try to fly, you’re better off on the ground.
The next time you find yourself down and out,
And you’re just too tired to get up again,
When the stars seem unfathomable,
And the moon just a cruel taunt,
I will crouch down right beside you.
As I wash your bruises with my tears,
I will remind you that the ground is where all the hidden treasures lie,
And that you’re just another diamond in the rough, waiting to be mined.
And when you’re tired of being on the land,
Call out to me, and I’ll give you my [redacted]

I went on a hike once, and I hated it.
Steep slopes are always cruel on my one weak ankle.
And they make me despise my defective foot,
Forgetting, that it is the same foot,
That has bravely seen me through every rooftop dance party.
The next time you feel you’ve fallen out of grace,
I’ll show you my ankle,
Swollen with pride at chasing unreachable destinations.
When you feel vulnerable,
Delicate as a painted china doll,
And your dreams all feel hollow,
Because they are rooted in fairy tales,
And you cannot see the magic in yourself,
Peer into my eyes.
When you can no longer believe,
When your dreams seem little more than their wraith,
Count on me, for I will be there to have [redacted]

You see, life happens in the pauses,
The things left unsaid.

The sharp words that we don’t spit out,
Even as they sting the tongue,
And you can taste the metallic twinge of blood.
It is much sweeter than the guilt,
After a bitter falling-out.
The words, pushing to make it to the tongue,
Which are choked back, quashed in the throat,
Their only escape is through the eyes gleaming with emotions,
Till the pillows start tasting of salt on lonely nights.
There are things that need to be said,
And some that really, really don’t.
And we spend a lifetime deciding which is which.
Running to shout what hasn’t been said,
And regretting what already has.
If we could unwrite a play already enacted,
Life would be so much more simple,
If only certain words could be [redacted].

Writer’s Block

I don’t want to write today.
I feel too timid to face ghosts from the past again,
Stirring slowly, visions of what was, what has been.
Not pious enough to revisit earnest morning prayers,
Nor impure enough to look back at sin.

I don’t want to write today.
The future is too cloudy for me to peer into,
I risk barreling straight into thunderstorms.
A crushing braid of ‘what might be’, ‘what could be’,
As prophecies seem to twist into terrifying forms.

I don’t want to write today.
I can’t summon the strength to battle my demons.
They run amok within my soul,
Waging war on the visceral front.
I struggle today just to stay whole.

I don’t want to write today.
The skies seem oddly bereft of stardust.
The clouds aren’t conjuring up celestial fairytales.
They drag their feet tiredly across the horizon,
A ghost ship with no wind on it sails.

I don’t want to write today.
I don’t want to be inspired.
I don’t want to dissect the dark.
I don’t want to chase the light.
The poet within sleeps tonight.

Synesthesia

Sleeves rolled up and hair tied back.
I have decided to paint my room today.
A prism of hues, a festival of colour,
I want to put the rainbow to shame today.

I strip and scrape the walls of old coats of colour,
And smoothen out its sharp, salt-sprinkled core.

The ocre that I will slap on next would be crisp,
Like the autumn leaves that kindergarteners crunch underfoot,
When going back to school for fall.

The tiles will be a soft, icy blue,
Cool as a sprig of fresh mint.
So the next time my baby cousin yells, “The floor is lava,”
I would place her tiny soles on my feet,
And dance away on the snowy floor,
To the pigeons’ unceremoniously cacophanic coos.

The ceiling would be a bitter black, pitch dark.
Until it is dusted with silver stars.
Sweet as the chandi coated kaju barfi Bhaiya feeds me on every rakhi day.
So that even when the heavens seem cloudy,
And the moonless night gets too dreary,
I get to sleep under stardust and magic above my head. .
My study-table would be a pale, umami green.
Like the disgusting wasabi my friends subjected me to,
The first time we tried vegan sushi, because I don’t eat meat.
It will make my mouth burn and eyes water,
As I sit with my notes knowing that even the yucky things,
Have happy memories to savour them with.

They say that small spaces look bigger when coloured light.
And so my closet would be starchy pink,
Like Haribo’s baby marshmallows.
So that I never run out of space,
To stack all my memories, neatly folded in between clothes.
The fear of rejection tucked into the breast pocket,
Of the blazer I wore to my first interview.
The elation when I finally turned eighteen,
Sewn into the sequins on my old birthday dress.
The A+’s and F-‘s of school,
Immortalized on the white class 12 kurta,
Scribbled with red and green promises to keep in touch.
I would paint my closet pink,
And never run out of space again.

My room will be all the colours of tutti-frooti pop rock,
A fizzy, crackling explosion on the tongue.
The bitter, the sweet and everything in between,
And when I’m done,
My room will be the most delectable thing you’ve ever seen.

The Mask

The mask, they say, is an agent of deceit,
A facade, a pretense,
A shady past, a dark secret,
The mask is always a device of defence.
*
The mask is a masquerade carnival,
Luxurious, indulgent to a whim.
Like velvet strawberries dipped in rich, silk chocolate,
Painted faces, obscured, bejewelled, dancing in the dim.

The mask is the Phantom, prowling at the opera,
Birthed of hatred, fed off fright,
Did die one day in the name of love,
As the song of life serenaded his grave at night.

The mask is a cosplayer,
Escaping the humdrum clutches of rational thought,
Fighting to give fantasy a chance,
Bringing back magic, that reality hath forgot.

The mask is a plague doctor,
Sinister, dancing daily in the arms of death,
Dark as a moonless night,
With no stars to shimmer at despair’s final breath.

The mask is a war-time accessory.
Gas masks latched on faces like unrelenting leech.
Not ally, nor foe, merely a grim reminder,
Peace is always possible, and always out of reach.
*
But there is no partiality to a mask.
Sculpted to fit every visage,
Beauty doesn’t seduce it, unafraid of the beastly.
Casting away the burden of being something impressive everyday,
The mask simply lets you be.