Sakshi Narula

I am not going to make my grief small and palatable. My love wasn't small either.

We rub our shoulders, hold hands and just for a night forget how we loved and then unloved. How the last sonnet was written or how undead and young our hearts were once. The room has a sky as I lay in Bob’s big brass bed. There are white pages on the bedside begging for a poem the guitar in the corner begging for a song. He smells of fresh death and there is hot ash in his mouth but a bluebird escapes from mine every time I say his name and he says mine.

It's just us now

Sunlight pours into my room/The world's moved on/What of the torment of a poet/The irony of being misunderstood/While deeply understanding the human condition/What of the trees that can't move but dance/No gold,diamonds,silver spoons/No scrutiny, only music, only love

September is about contemplation. I'm curious like the protagonist in a Victorian novel. Why are sweet teas, romance and poetry out of style? Has life primed you to handle my madness? We were so close once that we burned. We're mirrors now and you've started looking like me.

You're on your knees in the doorway/Four seasons times eight as witness behind you/I stand inside a universe in the milky way/on a planet rotating around the sun/basting in red moonlight/half clothed/half drunk on wine/half drunk on love/The wind blows south/The wolves howl

I am crawling again, I have heard that's what you do when you find enough strength after a fall. After an explosion in the sky, you and I are stardust again. Tiny shiny particles floating in outer space, hard to tell which one's you and which one's me. A poet said to me once I have a gorgeous heart, I hope it burned the brightest. You my love are farther away from the truth and I am farther away from poetry.

And love, love is a call to surrender on an average Sunday. Love is the story of a sunflower and the sun. Some days you become the sunflower and I become the sun. On others, we trade places.

There are no chandeliers in God's halls. Just a million suns and beautiful oak trees. Wet grass and dandelions, sunflower and lavender fields. You haven't learned a thing if you had to die to see one. Was life so brutal, what killed your curiosity? Ever loved someone so much that you are unrecognizable now? If you waited for summer, this was it, if you waited for spring, this was it. If you did it right, love and prayer would've felt the same. If you did it right, you would have met yourself and I wouldn't have a name. Oh I wish you did it right, you would have arrived with silence and a song.

You wrap me and say stay warm, I walk on flames __color my soul orange & pretend to be light.

Let my mouth be the place where dreams come true and the loving starts.

I fear someday you will come to me with arms full of love when I am done loving you. I fear I will make you go through the same pain you've put me through.

Benediction, Oh Queen

I wished I could walk into your joy

I have seen her, she said she never made the rules. God drives a pink Cadillac, drinks negronis, wears a fedora and reads poetry.

My ears are iron clad, what I don't know can't hurt me