Ash

my means keep changing

and identity becomes a fluid thing

lover of arts of sorts

most days

I cannot be called an artist

for what i create

is for no eyes nor taste

only a careless translation; a word vomit

all in hopes of putting down

I miss early summers

mostly i miss my grandparents

laughing at my quirks

that weren’t habits, bad

time passed, so have they

I don’t have four old pair of hands

to tell me life ages wonderfully

my face frozen in time

is this how I looked to you?

in the cold November nights

when we sat by the basketball ground

and you asked me

what do you think about Ash?

I couldn’t tell you

about the fleeting thoughts

of ephemeral grief and love

that were larger than my hands

larger than the love I had for you

what do you think about Ash?

my friend asks while she freezes me in time

my skin warms of the sun that faces us

my eyes wander to the air that’s charged with us

my thoughts run all over the words of the song that’s playing for us

its haunting, this love this temporary permanence of life and moments

the soft passing of time

the harshness of memories

its all caught up within me

over shared grief

on a mount green

as we stand against the water

we’re all touched

by the same drops

of death and distraction

conversations and laughter

and so much love after

that we sit

with our faces

hands restless

to hold this love again

mindlessly upstream

my hands revolt

split in screens to hold

we lay wide awake

bleeding every face

grief has ever worn

on to our next slideshow

three breaths

three weeks of shield

walls have been raised

over our distaste

tonight invites mania

over a cup of chardonnay

book is left to be read

when every loud sound wakes me up

with fear

this is no home on days

when sympathy is asked in the lieu of

combined ache

this is no home on days

when there’s a wall, no one dares

to climb

on such days

this is a home

some days

grief lives with me

and I forget

I ever lived without it

all my memories clouds with

loss

of hands that held me close

once, long ago

on such nights I pray

to writers, women, and lovers

for grieving with words

that I cannot begin to comprehend

for I have forgotten

chapters of yore play in the theatre tonight

and twenty three don’t frighten my sight

there’s satisfaction on a twelve year old’s face

to have a seat at the dining table, regardless and always

fifteen smiles down at deep friendships

and soulmates made on ephemeral nights

she holds my hand and whispers you’re fine.

eighteen’ eyes light up at the femininity

so sure of this brave vulnerability

but nineteen holds hands unsure of waves

of longing and ends, so I squeeze it brief

she’ll find relief in goodbyes

to twenty one, I gratefully yield

for sticking around

while drowning in shame and grief

I tell her this pain will fade

we’ll find strength in our primal and naked self

twenty two has found peace

meditation, herbs, and paradigm

over desperate dreams and there’s

to assemble all the unsaid words

that floats in these waves of blue

rotting my being slowly

painting my bedroom walls

a canvas, my hands

anything my eyes reach

I paint it in oceanic scene

each day, my bedroom fills up

of all the excessive water

and sadness, but i’m not

sad, unsad, this hunger

feels too empty to label me lonely

I simply cannot explain

but there’s this artist I discovered

bonds well tonight

I see reds and hearts

weaving stories over gallery art

swimming pools and smokescreen

books of eighteenth century

and arches straight from my dreams

the movie is playing in a foreign language

music and chardonnay, few light years away

a show of sky

and all we want is to stay

under this blue projected screen

we eat cuisine from the opposite end of the map

and daydream in city palaces

I might not leave tonight

we might just extend on the drinks

and there’s pictures of our ecstatic faces

which holds these memories, right as we make it

and all we want is to stay and replay.

my words could never

belong to the stars

or the sun

rare is a word

that could never be used

for my poems

even so I suffice my ache

I am no Rumi, no Plath

my words won’t hold revelations

they are dreams and garlands

and an unfamiliar blue

what I am is another

woman cursed with knowing

of how it feels

touching a faraway friend

in this moonlit eve

for she waits for it

so I pretend

to be a poet

right by my feet

yet I am aware

of how delightful it is

to be living

I haven’t moved an inch

from my bedside

yet I am always rowing

in my dreams

finding comfort in the bits

life is passing

I should get moving

but tonight

I am in love with

In the café group of strangers

sung the songs of old

and the room is smiling

The mountains are kind

rain is drenching

the girls on the balcony

Dim-candle lights

and whispers of murmurs sits

two friends and I

Words are filling

two strangers are falling

on their first date

Coffee is warm

smell of hazelnut sweetens

the pages of my unread book

Strangely intimate

the gathering is captured by

an artist’s hand

In the café from the past faraway

a memory is found

in the poem from mid eighties

anthologies of memory

hangs in the day as I go through

the abysmal mundane

at night, I read a single page

and leave it in the corner

of my mattress

to just keep it longer than usual

it devours me in its single page

and the rest is left to dreams of the day

until the next day

until the next day

it picks up right after

where daydreams turned to yearning

fiction of stories I live

just longer than usual

it has almost reached its end of this circus

and no this is not a metaphor

or a prose of love

it’s a eulogized representation of

a book that has reached its end stage

one that I knew I loved

remnants of my heart are scattered

in the bones of beings that are lost afar

it remains in the spoon of a man

who ate with two

it flows in the music of a sister

who chose another

it lives in the footnotes of the memoirs

of the boy who loved too openly

and the girl who left so dearly

‘we are what we love’

and I have loved, too less too much

but the remnants of my heart lives in the people

who have touched me