The City in the Seashells

The tide of my feelings was receding. The sand was still moist from the touch of your waves. The sea shells of your memories were scattered haphazardly and I had decided to let them be instead of picking and collecting them like I used to. There were nights when my dreams carried my soul to the shore of your waves where I sat lone on the big dark-grey bumped rock of your love while my whites were soaked in the green moss of my disappointment in you. The sky was dark but cloudless and clear. I knew now that you would never come by. The glacial winds played a mockery at me as they settled on my bare shoulders, teasing me with slow penetrating stabs of jibes. There were no wounds but there was pain and the scars that their dagger inflicted upon me ran deep into my soul.

The waves were calm at the surface but I could sense the wild under current that I knew would, one day, submerge the city of my existence. The moon was flat and pale yellow like the sullen pages of an old untouched book that had gathered layers of dust overnight. The air carried a familiar smell of melancholy and I breathed it in and out without any prejudices as I had come to recognize it way too well now. The winds blew my flower imprinted white dress hence and forth like a dog tethering at it's owner and my mirrored sling bag that hung loose from my bare shoulder jingled, playing a clunter in the glory of it's contents. I watched them toss my desires as I saw my hopes fall hither tither but this time, I didn't run to gather them.

I continued to stay while I gazed at the north star shining bright beside the dreamy moon as the moonlight swam in a backstroke on the waves with an obvious but lazy kind of ease. The shore was vast, abandoned and lifeless. The sand was bruised with the footprints of the many forlorn lovers whose verselets once wreathed the sea in inscriptions like an emerald diadem but now only resounded completely in the memory of generations of sea winds as love lores. I could hear the song of the sea girls as it chorused at a distance. It was the kind of song whose rhythm could plunder a heart and when the tune stopped, everything would be quiet. 

I walked seawards towards the voices until I was soaked waist deep into the stillness of the moment. My feet dug into the red and brown reeds and dissolved into the sand like quicksilver. I conceded to the ebb and flow of the tides to submerge my existence into yours for the one last time. One by one, I pulled out the ivory colored sea shells I had preserved overtime from my mirrored sling bag. I touched them delicately to feel the smooth ripples of your design and the jagged rough edges. Each one of them had your name carved on it and so each one of them was oh so close to my heart and precious beyond words or value. Ever so slightly, I let them slip into the pallid hoops of waters that would float them to where they truly belonged - into the abysmal sea bed of my heart; where I had parked the bottles of my unsent confessions; where the sea girls penned and weaved their songs; where the remains of the wrecked vessels lay.

Fading

You are fading. Fast evaporating like spirit. And while I know it's for the greater good, a part of me still doesn't want to let go. The part that hopes and believes that good things come to good people. The part that has faith. The part that never learns from the past. The part that waits impatiently in the corner and jumps up at every little noise hoping it's you. 

Reading

It flies me to someone else's world. Someone strange and unfamiliar; to someone's else's joys and woes. And so I read till it takes me away from my reality. Till it takes me away from you. 

Not So Far Away

The moon is shining at my window tonight

And I know it's shining at yours too because you aren't that far away.

I gaze bedazzled at the celestial while it's fashion replaces your reflection;

Caught in my eyes, the last time I saw your face.

I see you walk out as the moonlight steps inside me to stroke my soul in comfort

I had only found in the love of a stranger astray.

And everytime I blink, a little bit of that comfort escapes me, pinch by pinch, drop by drop;

Slithering cautiously till it elopes out of the window, leaving me estranged.

Oh! Lover of the yesteryear! Behold your lovely self out of your window,

So the comfort in that silver moonlight that has touched my heart 

Shall find it's way to your heart too. 

If not tonight, nonetheless someday.

A Poem I Wish I had Written

I Do Not Love You by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
In secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers ;
Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
Risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straight forwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way.

That this: where "I" doesnot exist, nor "you",
So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The Wanderer

You stroll into my thoughts and dreams once and again; frizzled and frolic like it were your spot where you wandered to absentmindedly every now and then. It's unfair how much I miss you when you don't even think of me at all. 

Still Here

I am still here. Waiting in the dark. The only light guiding me, the amber cindered flicker of your cigar. And the smoke drifting away to mix in the air that you would breathe someday; forming perfectly incomplete circles that I wish to escape from but can't.

The dust of my ashes settling into the atmosphere forming a drunken haze under the blanket of stars that you and I share. And while I wait for you, your thoughts splashing the puddle of my memory forming reflections on the greased palette of my mind. My eyes heavy from the sleepless hollows and my lashes batting in drumrolls evading any hint of peace to seep through while I drift away into an uncomfortable slumber of mixed emotions and desires I could only wish you would honor someday.

I miss you.

The Parallel Universe

It's so much more easier to to talk to you when you are not around. The make belief you is more comforting than your real presence, I suppose. The conversations I have had with you in my head, I would like to see them transpire into the transcendental world - the parallel universe in which we rejoice the requiem of fancy oh so requited and unsolicited together.

I would rather be there. In the electric blue cosmic light where the void between my voice and breath identifies with the one between my thoughts and words; where I can find my song and not be afraid to float it to your ears. With time perhaps but someday nonetheless.

Unsolicited Refrains

I wait threadbare; my bed unmade from the wrinkles we painted on it that crimson night. The purple yarn of my pillow still indulgent in serenades of the forbidden. The arid smell of your flesh rolled into the pockets of my pillow cases we raked our conversations on. The loose talks and the dirty ones. Your deliberations teasing my earlobes and steering my sins. Your fingers tracing the wind trails across my hair and the length of my neck still drenched in the sweet nothings of the subtle whispers of your breath.

I wait rumpled; the feathers of your voice ruffled and tucked into my bed sheet precariously and my blanket still warm from the dormant fires that succumbed to the sensual caressing. Your gaze caught in the reds and browns of my mahogany mirror where I watch your reflection undress me; thread by thread. Comforting my bare shoulders and flattering me in adoration while it gapes at me like I am a collector’s item.

I wait reticent; the air still brimming with the casual smell of your cigarette hurled into tangled remains of your scent. The ashtray unkempt, untouched, unscarred. The stubbed remains still resounding with the unnoticed tremble in the touch of your fingers and the quiver of your lips; of that of a tethered after thought.

And so I wait unsolicited because that night you had reduced me to the same. You had leaned into me so close within those taut constraints that my particles trembled with the misconstrued symphony that your fingers played on me. My soul quivered in the darkness of my closed eyes when your lips were about to kiss mine but only almost there; your breath delicately stroking mine but not quite there yet. You left me gaping for air while my greed chiseled in the flames of untamed passion and destroyed me while I waltzed into the ashes of your stardust.

A Thousand Years Later

It had been a thousand years since I had seen you last. In a deliberate attempt to feed my memory, I conjured an excuse to pass you by today. It was a casual encounter that a passerby has with an architectural marvel while his vehicle speeds him away at a hundred twenty kilometers; beholding the greed of absorbing every ounce of detail of the art in a mere fraction of a second.

Likewise, I passed you by today- hesitant to meet your eyes and spoilt for the choice of seeping in your design, your fashion or the emotions shuffling across your eyes and smile. Amidst the chaos that was plundering my heart, I saw enough of nothing. Not even the color of your shirt. It was a glimpse so short that it's memory lost it's way to my heart as if it went into a self destruct mode before I could touch it.

But it happened again. Your voice fluttered it's wings onto my ears and before I knew, my body had turned to follow it, as if my body had a mind of it's own. I saw a flash of your beautiful silhouette and time froze into a velvet capsule, my heart beating in a scattered frenzy that could outrun a jetplane; my gut knotted around my tender neck and my breath caught in a bubble wrap waiting to pop; my cheeks flustered with darting radiations of a nuclear fission that could burn down the entire universe if I dared look at you once again.

And once more, the mind of it's own pushed me to hide behind the wooden desk like a timid gazelle ducking to camouflage itself at the sight of it's predator; like a scared teenage girl so shy she could run for her life if her lover crossed the next by lane. My body limp with the fear of unknown and my thoughts numb from your tepid demeanor, but it couldn't care less about the crowd that gathered around me. As I raised my disheveled mind half hoping you were still there, I watched you vaporize into your obvious territory.