Uma Bokil

I ran into my old cuts and scars and bled some tears in their memory. I thought it so brave of myself to look back on them and tell myself that I survived. But I hadn’t, had I? I was just pulling at the scabs and ripping them open, staying in the same old musty place I used to think was home. So I fisted the grave-shaped pits with soil – a proper burial – and stitched them like you sew a body back up post-mortem. Now the old skin collects mould beneath the earth, and I? I have a body clean and barren enough for new scars to follow.

Wait, whispers the air—for the saltiness to dissipate and for the aroma of cherry love to waft through. The salt shall roll with the waves and become one with the sea, and the humid summer shall make the gloomy sky pour down a relief. Wait for all the good things, it tells me. Wait, just like I do.

Dipped my ink in forgiveness for a change and what came out of me thus was love—pure like a child’s laugh; unadulterated like blood from a cut; boisterous like a party, and wild like the entwined branches of a mammoth tree on the moor.

They call it singing when I’m raging my throat out; it’s almost like they find melody in my screams.

I am consumed by a buzz-between-my-bones deficiency of love and loving. Sprinkling my apology onto your cereal after a fight to make it extra sweet just so you like it. Wearing your shirt around my bosom like a tree cupping my barrenness. A whiff of your scent residing in every pore through which I breathe, and I connect the dots between my breaths that hum “Yours. Yours. Yours.” Steady. Calm. At home. And I wait, wait, wait for you to come barging and knocking in my life and knocking me over. Please do. I pray. Please do.

Don’t you say you had nothing to do with how your love shifted the way my cells began to breathe better. You breathed fire into my flame and burned with me without getting torched. You held me like a home holds a baby. You cradled my heavy breathing when I woke up after nightmares and you carried me in your eyes and by your side; shoulder to shoulder. It’s ironic that you’re my oxygen when you so clichedly take my breath away with every step you take towards me. But you make my blood rush even when you calm it. You’re a complete paradox in this whirlpool of love, romance and intimacy and it’s driving me so crazy I don’t know whether to go down on my knees crying or do that and ask you to spend your life with me in the middle of sobs. You’ve had me insane ever since you walked into my life, yet for the very first time, I feel like I have finally stopped feeling crazy. Where the hell have you been?

Today, my heart goes out to poets. For the way they just get it. For the way they carve words directly onto our souls whether or not they get medals for it. They should get medals for it. I am in awe of the way poets feel: a bit messy from the spill of hurt blood on their shirts and the remnants of love around their lips like they hogged on wine, yet continuing to do the absolutely courageous thing and breathing; loving; feeling the next day. Warriors with scars on their souls, I tell you. What must they be made of? Heartdust? Sunshine and storms? Lightning? Thunder? The ability to absorb grief like a sponge? Maybe all of it? Poets are creators. They birth what we cannot put nor fathom through words. Poets get it. Poets just get it.

So I bestowed upon myself the kindness I thought came from other streets; other cities; other hearts. It still might, but I stopped hovering in the dimly lit porch under the fly-picking sole yellow light and awaiting its arrival like a damsel for her groom. I walked back inside and wore the softest tshirt I could find. It had stains and holes of a story that was five years old, but I always kept it for the fabric. Hugged myself in the mirror and played some classics. Poured myself some red and got to cooking. I chose the best for the night. I chose kindness for myself after many a sleepless night. I wasn’t going to replace the love that we get from others with my own. That was the lesson I needed to learn all along. I needed my kindness, yes. So, I walked back inside, but I left the door open for any kindness that needed a shelter, too.

This time, I dare to flap my wings into the heat of the battle; to look into death’s eyes and roar a warcry; to beckon it with a fight in my fists; to lick the fear from its rays. This time, I am Icarus. And I am burning the sun.

So many storms that could’ve broken me yet it was you who did.

I feel pretty underwhelmed living in the dreary reality of the world. Poetry has not caused me to lose my sanity in so long. I miss the adrenaline of abstract imagery that speaks more volumes than I could muster confessing in my diary. It hasn’t sucked the air out of my lungs with its subtle, dark truths and hasn’t made my pulse race with fairytale hope in a while. It hasn’t made me daydream of a forever romance, it hasn’t made me gush like a river, it hasn’t made me weep oceans into my own pits. I sigh, bemused, at the numbness that makes my joints creak. Let me feel alive today, I wish upon every first ray of the sun. Let me feel my blood rush to my veins. Let me bleed in love and pain. Let me smile through a crackling, crumbling heart. Let me feel my scars stitch up with hope. Let me cup some sunlight and sea in my palms and wear the blue of the skies in my hair. Let me braid daisies into clouds and bury sparkling secrets that become sprouted verses long after I’m gone. I want to see the world green with poetry, but I’ve been pushed around too much in the polluted, brown, dusty life. I want to see the world green with poetry. I want to see the world saved by poetry.