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Thursday, December 23, 2021

Sun-fading Afternoons


Sun-fading afternoons

with the pink

plucking at images within.

 

Fading lives

disappearing in the diminishing azure

streaks of comfort

in what is still light.

 

Red had come the still-birthed war years!

Purple was the pain.

Crimson, the yearning

for the return of yellow beams

on tea-aroma-filled patios.

 

Peace found its dirty pink

in the haze of amnesia

and soothing rays of oblivion.

 

Time implanted on wet sands

ALL came back

the waves lulling in, siestas

like forgotten children's toys 

scattered on the shorelines.

 

Hours to arrive

in afternoon car rides

on semi-paved roads

rearview mirrors’ dust particles sending

blinding refractions of incessant rainbows

glaring back at the ambit of color

and trying hard to rise above it…

Thursday, January 07, 2021

I May Not Go Like You Did


Where did it hit you first? 

Your neck or your heart?


Were you as old as I am today...

in decades of confusion,

ages of nonconformity?

In pain?


I pleaded with god that night

although I did not believe in him...her

And then when you came home, 

I saw him with you. 


We had not touched base in a quarter of a century. 

We came close when I ventured into your non-celestial territory. 

The earth around your grave had lost its sanctity. 

Some even said it had turned into a 'terrorist hotspot'...maybe. 

My heart gave out, the coward it was. 


But then, who has time for sideline requests from me? 

Like when Leena passed and I was under the mercy of family agenda. 

So I could never kiss her kind face, a last time. 


I think I remember what happened first. 

Your neck almost broke. 

Paulina's Dolma was too acidic. 

I had secretly let her in on the pantry of spices; 

her creativity almost took your life. 


I remember holding your hand, in the ambulance, 

uttering the first tired words that came to my panicked brain:

"It will be OK."

It was for a while. 


We stopped talking 

as I started to try 

to carve-out a meaning for my existence. 

That too fell from me, in the midst of life's semantics.


I never paused to call out your name. 

I was scared. 

I love your name. Every night. 

When I read the Fatiha for your eyes. 


I think I know what will happen first, with me. 

It won't be my brain. 

It lacks sufficient energy to extinguish itself. 

My heart will somehow self-implode. 


_________________________________________

For my beloved father.