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It hurts–

exactly where you created

my breath to go out and in.

Lord, it hurts. I thought it wouldn't

When he comes back

to make me count my sins.

But all I've ever done is forgive.

He reaches by nine.

He has a flower vase in case,

loves comes knocking at his door.

He is tucked under his blanket.

Reaches for honeyed eyes,

and roseberry lips.

The good man seldom goes out on such quest.

The better one came home last night

his fingers had revolted against the bad one.

He neither has dreams to chase her velvet hair

nor the warmth beneath her sweater.

But he grabbed the first arm getting at her.

He isn't affected by her collyrium

or how freshly washed her skin looks.

All he sees is a daughter yet to be born.

A love yet to bloom.

The bad one releases his ego at midnight

a thin layered smoke covering the atmosphere.

He thinks he has power.

The smoke empties

Now, every headline knows his name.

I look at my father and see everything I have inherited. His face, the crooked nose people speak of, even the height and the frame. Sometimes I wonder if someone like Archimedes would have looked at fathers and daughters like us and thought of forming an entire lineage out of resemblance and reason. I was born to an actuary, and though I stand only halfway there, the road ahead already feels familiar.

From my father, I will learn logic, perhaps even failure. From my sister, I learn what misery looks like. But rising from the dead is something we have all done in our own ways. For us, a dead end has never meant an end, it has always been a quiet redirection, a path waiting just behind us.

They say, bless the daughters who look up to their fathers. But I say, bless the mothers who learn to live with the men inside their daughters

And I wonder, when wounds are cut open, who is it that stitches them back together? It is always a woman. Always her.

I was born to an actuary, while she was born to an omnilegent.

& asks her to hug his fears.

Every bottle he empties is another bottle of her stored agony.

He drinks it and promises her a bowl of cherries.

She holds his fingertips,

he notices the cuts she has got.

The toper boy doesn't scream

doesn't feel hopeless like her.

He promises the right thing

& forgets by 10 pm.

The pollyanna girl smiles yet again

almost like stepping into the quicksand,

she can't get out of.

He hands out his insincerity to her

like a golden vow.

She holds it close to her bosom

almost believing,

no amount of wind can tear it away.

The toper boy comes home

to a house of bricks and burnt cigars.

The pollyanna girl is gone.

Her house smelled like crushed citrus and

sun-warmed jasmine

She couldn't stay, while the ashes mocked the mopped floors.

People suddenly start caring, start paying more attention

regretful that they missed the signs, regretful that they didn't ask that one extra question, or notice the silence sooner.

All of a sudden, you’re told you matter, that your life is worth something, that you’re bigger than your problems.

Regret is perhaps the worst thing known to mankind. Because now that someone is gone, words spill too late.

Now, we're told we can be anything we want, that we should hold on but no one said it when it mattered most. And then, a strange, quiet silence follows. Not just the absence of sound, but the heavy stillness that comes after someone’s gone, and you know, really know, they’re never coming back.

I remember watching him walk between the rows and columns that divided two genders, a soft smile on his face. You couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Maybe we had our chances. Maybe those closest to him could have saved him. Or maybe a person drowning in the sea can seldom be saved. Maybe he wanted to drown, and never be found.

I have tasted the ocean too, and the salt never left my mouth. I know what it feels like to drown silently, invisibly, with no one to pull you out from that endless, vast surface. You just keep sinking... farther and farther, until you become part of the quiet.

Now I sit on a bench, eating my sandwich, with a numbness in my heart or maybe it’s just emptiness. It could have been me once. I was there too, but destiny had other plans. You look at the faces around you, and suddenly you can’t tell which one will disappear first. At any moment, it could be you. Or someone sitting right next to you, eating their sandwich, just like you. The uncertainty kills you.

No one really knows your story until it becomes a headline. Until it finally hits people that, Oh… they were here. We crossed paths. And now, we’ll never see them again.

looking for a way to say I love you.

But how do I bring a candle to a room full of sun?

How do I give a single minute to someone who owns time?

I thought of a song, but you are the music.

I thought of a poem, but you are the story.

So I came to you with nothing in my hands.

I have only my breath, and my heart,

and this one quiet promise

Wherever you go, I am already there.