a little romance with life

unfamiliarity with my skin baffles me even today there is a bruise on my toe i just noticed it’s old and healing and dry wild hair sprouts from my belly button it’s long and dark and mad why does the mirror say i’m still the same? the pimples of childhood have somehow vanished there is only aftermath of scratches on my face time has made me thick skinned, some tell me you're fat, you're fat, you're fat, they say imfat-imfat-imfat-imfat-imfat-imfat is that why the photographs say i’ve changed? i once took a mirror to the bathroom an exercise no adult would like to hear i opened my legs and looked right at my vagina my labia, my clitoris, my pubic hair i stared and i stared and i stared why do i not find a woman there?

i couldn't help myself. here is my version of on turning ten by billy collins on turning twenty three the whole idea of it makes me think likes it’s just another day, it’s just another number something like a Monday, any regular day or a Tuesday in the college attending classes a Friday night in comfy pajamas an anxiety-filled Wednesday afternoon a Sunday evening that gets over too soon you tell me it is time to be looking forward, but how do I forget the infatuations that came at sixteen and the complex intersectionality introduced by twenty two. I can crawl back and remember every year at twelve I was an artist I could make faces with only a pencil by concentrating for four hours at a stretch. at seventeen I was a poet, at twenty one a feminist. and now I am mostly at the laptop watching videos and then an article and a reading. back then it never felt so much the people who walked by my house and the illusions of doing good as it does today, all the pretentious...

well aren't you lucky, you fools in love to be so naked in the middle of winter and yet be the warmest of us all

there is something about a duplex which says a house can be one and still be divided everything an effort to be able to reach out who’s story sits in the corner-most room the flickering light that will not be fixed the cobwebs beneath chairs and behind beds who gets the mattress when two sharing a room fight who gets the AC, who gets the pillow, and how there is something about a duplex and the terror of stairs- from underneath the fear of a horror movie, a face staring from between the gap, from the upper floor the coming to life of a family drama you did not want to watch there is something about concrete and two floors that still cannot shield children from the shouts and cries, everything becomes quieter, the voices become clearer; the horror of stairs where you sit listening closely to the swords of words a battlefield, your childhood the collateral damage to a burning family; listening closely to the beating of your own heart there ...

the patterns of well-rehearsed fingertips hands remembering rhythms of the body like the beat of a song you’ve heard every day; who said a game for two (or a few) can’t be played by one?

the witch hunt alone in all godly hours she mutter spell under breath jibber jabber to world it is she who fell the rain it is she who drown the land it is she who travel the air it is she shake the earth it is she the wild hair stay unchained in wind it is she the laugh reach ear at night it is she burn in rising flame it is she who never die it is she in café-bar it is she who get drink it is she in library behind book it is she who get the wink it is she echo in hollow monument it is she fly in bird wing it is she who serve food with little long witchy hand it is she who give comfort with jibber jabber spell it is she whose breast you suckle it is she whose vagina you lend it is she whose milk you drink it is she whose blood you born.

काश तुम सुंदर होती दुनिया ना इतनी अंधी होती दर्द ना इतना भीतर होता हस्सी ना इतनी खामोश होती शक़ ना इतना गहरा होता काश तुम सुंदर होती रातें ना इतनी तन्हा लगती चाँद ना इतना फीका लगता बातें ना इतनी अधूरी लगती सच ना इतना कड़वा लगता काश तुम सुंदर होती कम-से-कम डर ना लगता चेहरो से भागती ना यूँ आईने से मुस्कुरा कर कुछ तो बोल ही लेती गिरते संभलते चल तो लेती कोई सहारा तो रहता सुकून के शब्द जो कहता अब बस यही सोचती रहती हो काश मैं सुंदर होती