Questions as you/I crane your/my neck:
Were we always able to touch a cloud? How did we figure out how to sit on one and jump to another? How did we learn that we can make the things we do not have, i.e. wings (NB: what else can we make)? Continue reading “City, the Morning After 01”
August 17, 2017.
I woke up this morning thinking about Munirka and its dingy alleys and the time I got lost and an entire family (grandfather, both parents, and a school of children) gave me directions entirely in head-shakes and laughter. In my dream last night, I could not find a way out of the maze and ran instead in circles. I should have reminded myself in the dream that you cannot escape a maze until you slow down and give into it, until you trust the faces on your path, until you make a pact with the turning walls. After all, in real-life Munirka, I always did (who needs Hindi when there is laughter, when there are children who can lead you home in a game and women who can lead you home with their hair?). But in real-life, there were other places I was less successful making connections to. Continue reading “The Way Home”
Silence or death. What if only those two choices remained in the world? She had finished the second page of her story when she- or rather, her character arrived at that question. She barely understood that concept, that condition in which one is really less than one. She always had more: the ability to think, just like the majority of the world. And with that, she had no trouble talking, writing and relating. Thoughts have to be stated, she thought, otherwise, what would be their point? It’s not really about freedom of speech, it’s simply freedom of Life.
I wish You had kept her happiness and not just the shape of her smile, that excitement and not just the tinted colors, and that rainbow in its wholeness, and that sorrow, that joy, that anger, that pain, that optimism.. I wish You, my lens, would keep something more than mere shreds of a world much too big for today and much too small to hold tomorrow.
.
What ever happens to twitters after one dies?
Can one still tweet from heaven?
Would God allow that much?
The last tweet remains frozen in time,
“I’m on my way there.”
She was on her way, it’s true,
but it simply wasn’t there.
.
I wish You had kept the way she talked and the reason for the sparkle in her eyes. I wish You could retain that warmth, in every one of her hugs. I wish You had treasured that feeling in our stomachs as we screamed our way down that roller coaster. And the taste of that Dippin’ Dots from that stall below the tracks.
.
Would facebooks be stored in time?
Or would They go through and say,
“She’s dead, let’s
close
her account.”
How about her phone number?
And the blog she once had?
.
I wish You could feel and take pictures of her person and not just her face. I wish I could touch this screen and hear her voice. That laugh and brilliant disposition- couldn’t You keep those too? But You didn’t and will not. You will never understand. This makes no difference to You, whether the smile is real or fake, whether the subject is dead or alive, whether that’s excitement or fear. You only trap saturated colors on salted plastics, layered in compounds but never in emotions. Merely shreds.
But I- I want the world.
.
A saved voicemail,
“Call me when you get this.
I need to ask you a question.
i Miss you!”
I said yes to her question but
it doesn’t know.
it simply doesn’t Understand.
How long will it be saved?
.
“A voice with bells- you’ll get the solo,”
I told her that first.
The video shows her singing,
but it doesn’t know that I pushed her
onto the stage.
How long will it remain in a black case?
How long will life remain rolled-up?
Round, round, round it goes. Where it stops,
nobody Knows.
“Failure is not in my dictionary,” I began in a defiant tone, “because I am a flyer of kites. In my hands, I hold the strings to hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of kites. In all different colors. They dance around in the sky, soaring higher and higher without limits.
Sometimes though, the wind blows too hard, the kite goes the wrong way or perhaps someone cuts the string. That’s what you call ‘failure’. And this kite falls down, slowly. Slowly, ever so slowly, it falls from the sky and comes to rest on a lone tree. More of these ‘failures’ follow. More kites. Blue. Yellow. Orange. Purple. Shiny. Plain. Glittery. Bright. Pale. Continue reading “Flying kites”
My father is sleeping
on the bare wooden floor.
He hasn’t woken up though
we have visitors today.
Lots of them sit around my father;
their backs to the open door.
Why, I thought, did my father go to sleep
on this bare wooden floor
as his bed lies inside,
waiting for him?
Then I realized the shocking truth
and my eyes filled with tears.
I wailed and ran to a corner,
trying not to cry.
ariyathe. 