contemplation on time

  in the afternoons when the day sits still and frightening i think of our house, that existed like a flower or a brook that everything passes by  but still exists for those who pass coins in a pocket with no purpose but to sit  to allow life and wonder. rings of ash and smoke over the house like a crown  collecting fallen soldiers, laying in your arms after battle like a flame, love purifies as it destroys and spreads wild. we hold hands mumble words and watch.  you brought me back to a home carefully hidden from me, where i once was without you and writing poems, a house in the eye of the storm a clearing, a sweet kiss and bruise, my heart split into two and you were the whole. a city has so many houses without us inside, houses are also something more

I want to write of a bruise            a dark red sky on the neck  I love leaving my breath on your skin and               hanging on your ear my silence Blood curdles as I separate, secrets whisper their shame  in the lighter corners The days that never were become rain  and words are soldiers fallen after a long war You are winged, always finding a window  Over an absence on my skin you leave an offering darkened with love What we create in love is damage, what creates us Your neck still calls out to me a clearing between the trees I returned home and gave you a bruise  that tasted sweet, to fall asleep next to  

  Writing from a place of doubt and worry; I remember an exceptionally long bike ride with Shruthi. She was taking me to write an exam, and we passed most of Kochi behind us. Trees drooped into houses, creepers and climbers spread across abandoned walls with black mold cracks running like veins, houses were inhabited by foliage, and before we knew it, the sky was emboldened with giant grey clouds touching one another in their expansion. We saw them merge, creating a vast expanse of wet burden, as we drove up and out of road clearings. Although the downpour slowed us down, I found myself willing again and again for the forces to collapse, and they did. It rained all through the night. We stood on the steps to someone’s house waiting for it to pass. I realised once again, on this day that nature is not alien to urbanity, as often defined by the dichotomy of the modern human.  In my mind, beauty exists as a struggle between duality, and its transcendence. As objects fall, dilapid...