#inspireamuse

Within these seemingly mediocre sunsets I get lost,

even in midst of people, away, far away,

from myself as well.

Despite all my efforts, or perhaps in spite of them,

the head hurts in agony, heart rages on in fury,

and the civil war never ends.

pulled out from the table

inside me.

It has been waiting for years.

Every morning

I straighten the house.

Every night

I leave the light on.

For whom,

I don’t know.

I only know

that some part of me

has never unpacked.

My body arrived.

My life arrived.

But something else

is still on its way.

So I wait.

In traffic.

In queues.

At red lights.

At 2 a.m.

At thirty.

At forty.

At whatever age comes next.

I wait

with the embarrassing faith

of someone who still believes

a knock at the door

can change everything.

The door stays closed.

The years keep entering.

And still,

before sleeping,

I clear a space

for a guest

who has never once

said they were coming.

Fingers pressed down on piano keys; unbridled emotions released a lingering longing.

The air was filled with vibrations of a song, foreign yet familiar.

Music was pattering eardrums like rain; always falling, never landing.

Sound reverberated from the walls like lost memories, found in the silence between notes.

There was an echo as if space was bending time itself, time that always bullied it.

It created an everlasting present, encapsulated in this musical composition.

And if, July leaves me—empty hearted, empty throated &

empty-handed, I pray it spares my bed, bellyful with

dreams of you. My pillow or my head—I cannot discern

who romanticizes you more. I sometimes wake with your

eyes: those days, I pay attention to everything. A common

dream—you scatter your words downwind, and I do my

best to collect and recreate the poem, but you always set

it ablaze at the end, and I awake. Maybe it’s a half-formed

metaphor for yearning, maybe it’s me trying to reconcile

you with the ‘you’ in my dreams (though little is different).

I dreamt you once planted jasmines in my heart & they

bloomed in minutes.

I dreamt you told me to drive four

hours north to scream in the densest forest I can get to,

and no matter what I said, it always echoed back

‘love love love love love’.

I dreamt of your hands, it was in the distance,

and ran towards them to be nestled in them.

I try & tell you that I dreamt about you,

i think about what it means to crave someone not out of hunger...but for the peace they bring to hold their heartbeat in your hands not because you fear losing it but because it’s the first sound that’s ever felt like

home