Books written for girls - II

thirteen days before
that evening

I wrote some lines
some winter melancholy
that leaked out
on the pages
of my journal

three christmases later
we have stretched ourselves
into the longest
winter
of our lives

one that's beaten
the warmth
I have faint
recollections of

sometimes
when we don't
remain us
and memories
of sounds and smells
become associated with
freckles and frowns
roads and restaurants
serving as reminders
of little milestones
down the road
you took

that's when it
all hits you

now I think separation is okay
you're no star to guide me anyway
you only wanted me to play a fool
play by your rule

london, you beauty

There will be some cities you live in which won't feel like home. Until it's time to say goodbye. You'll probably return, but only as a visitor. Someone with return tickets reserved, someone who has things to do and people to meet- all in a few days. Never again will you languish in the enormity of time that the city has to offer to you.

Perhaps you moved here with big dreams and a broken heart. Maybe you left your family and friends behind, your dog behind. Only to sleep on a single bed which is too springy for you, and a carpeted floor which doesn't have the usual sight of your dog sleeping on it. The first few months will obviously be spent grappling with the whirlwind of nervous excitement mingled with homesickness. You'll approach everything cautiously, trying to find your way around, learning names of roads, making mental notes of landmarks. You'll buy yourself a potted plant and name it Sally, only to make your apartment that you share with four other grown people - probably a decade older than you - feel more like home. (Don't be surprised if you find yourself talking to Sally on a particularly grey Tuesday afternoon, asking her if you made the right decision to move halfway across the world.)

You'll miss your food, your tongue, your cotton shirts - and your shoulders will protest loudly at the switch you made from your colourful tropical country to this one right by the Atlantic. You'll miss your television and your cinema, all of which was so inane that it all makes sense right now. You'll realize just how valuable the walls of your house were. They represented something that seems overwhelming - the solidity your father stands for, the certainty only your mother knows how. And the years they've spent in making sure you know you're loved.

But this story is not about them. It isn't about home. It's about that little place inside of you which has grown up that tiny bit - the part of you which has learnt how to console itself every time you miss the warmth of familiarity. It's the same one which brought you here in the first place, which stood by you as you battled the weeks where you cried yourself to sleep. But when you finally accepted the distance and found your place in the labyrinth of this chaos, it was the one which came out of you, assumed a life of its own and started to exist outside of you. And that's the one that's saying to you: you don't have the slightest clue just how much you're going to miss all of this hard work and loneliness.

trans-atlanticism

music in a quiet room
too loud
too much for the
fuzziness
in your head
to catch

water under the bridge
is never coming back

what remains though
and fast in place
are the scars
you receive
in love
and battles

they attempt to
fade into and
become one
with your skin
your skin.
rough and smooth
cool on a summer's afternoon
enveloping
on a noisy rainy night

across borders
and horizons
under our skies
and different ones

it's a bitter sweet
symphony
elaborate and how
varied, meandering
the empty lines
of my verse filled
with some musings
of his own