Literature - Page 5

‘Don’t come to the office again, not even to meet your friends’ Lila said, in a bitter voice. Her thin lips shrunk. Nadeeka’s face darkened, and I was pleased for a moment. Both Nadeeka and I were suspended from work last

When you have to leave home the word belonging loses the be and just the longing is left. When your language isn’t spoken by anyone, when you have no one to talk to in it but you your memories stop trying

Amid the hurriedness and haste there lazes stillness, motionless and chaste In an unseen galaxy of a trifling territory It is but a forgotten keyhole of a lost realm As you step within spreads out a Universe trimming your dream bundle

I got refuge under the shadow you left It should be of yours in the desert of relationship Composed by the song of the heart joined together You are not there How does the shadow remain? Possible, because it is for

The trash can filled with all invaluable items Items, those I preserved On and on for years together Started to open the day I understood Understood What is what Who is who? Where is who? Why is what? My charismatic articles

Days are tricky as dogs, you don’t know what they will offer you on the next day even if you had been running on your own routine. I was really tired of handling everything on my own. I had been so

‘Great! I will meet you there in a bit!’ Mo said, via text message to Zareena. One message filled with the expression of his desire for her was enough to make Zareena squirm in delight. How weak she was to Mo’s

Her hair Freshly harvested dreadlocks Unedited gospel of love Off limits to combs. Tresses like streams Of eternal fire- From the arsenal of her body. Poems conceived in a celestial tongue When stars align with cesarean precision. It is our own

by that river I bend down to note down in my notebook for I hear the water flow but see not the bottom of the bed, not even knee deep I breathe the fresh air but creeps that doubt I think

He shouted: Middle of night – is it time to wake up? I screamed: why can’t you check by yourself? I don’t want my sleep to be disturbed I wish my mum was here to tell the time. He complained of

Come Again, Another Day When it rains like this in the City I think of you Like being inside a waterfall The thundering cascade Can the glass in the windowpane stand it? It is morning, and the sky is dark grey

His budget-conscious ma-ma used to make him fill-up on a steamed pork or chicken bun before going to an extended family yum cha luncheon So he never really developed an honest appreciation for the more gourmet seafood dumpling. And though he

Breeze of autumn swooshes the leaves, The world gushes forth fast and furious. As I sit in a solemn wooden chair, Resting my neck in a wine red cushion By my window, lacy white curtains pushed aside Sun sets behind the cedars

Clouds swarmed in great dark clumps a malformed day transformed to murk as she was dumped – a squall settling beyond wailing walls, wind bawling Following through the icy halls head bowed, bag in hand flat soles slapping cold stone flags and

In this case There’s no honour in being violent No honour in unleashing feelings that refuse to stay silent There’s nothing worse than Leaving your daughter more than frightened But still Some would go beyond those limits To protect the family name

I used to feel it a lot when I was younger. The sense of bitumen laid smoothly over something so much wilder, and more complex. The awareness of what exists, past the boundaries of the nature strip. It is a great country,

No one is speaking, but everything is. The wordless hanging hurricane lanterns on breath, firefly words electric over forever’s backyard shiver me sideways inside the blizzard of myself. I’ve kissed you with that breath, the shawl of snow. Now, wherever you go

is made with a poetic love, like breaking lines in my poem I chop into pieces the Roma tomatoes and the English cucumber with the yellow onions, all raw adding also some boiled dried Indian chickpeas with un-fried sunflower seed, sprinkling generously

Verbal, verb-less, jabs of manifold colour crimson, gleaming gold and darkling from sisters of the cross of the familial kingdom arches of the eyebrows, with pits and crests on the turbulent waters of marital seas bobbing sisters, aunts, nephews, and nieces, and,

A Monologue About A Ghost & Groundhog Day I never got around to getting a driving license, having my own car. (Pauses, as if sorry). My parents were a little too high strung to teach me. My boyfriend at the time, who always

Waters when they evaporate, meet… at a global conference, to speak of fish dropouts, obscura of clouds, near-deaths, hydrological dynamics, monocultures, and metals: nickel, lead, chromium, at their beds. The bend is notional: water for coffee, cane, banana, paddy, mills, distilleries, fertilizer

I hear the sound coming from the weeping soul You reflect it-the pain and broken heart With the spreading wing of mercy and love Solacing the weeping heart…..! Yes, the wing of the heart is broken The dancing leg is in the

A Short Story Something is finally happening in my life. And I don’t mean like baba noticing the drawings and sketches I’ve been leaving around the house for him to see. No, baba is much too busy to pay attention to something

“I miss those simple times” but maybe We lived through a mere interim False hope Prayed for healing rains on our dreamy heads not ashfalls among the dead. Oh “I miss those simple times” but don’t you remember? Our foundations, our hopes

Last night it rained. I lived that storm in my senses. Felt in my bones that inevitable hush… The calm before the storm. Listened to the distant rumbling of thunder and watched distant flashes of lightning illuminate the night sky. I stepped

In the time between Blooming and withering of a flower…. In the time between One gunshot and another…. In the time between Two explosions you hear… Children set off on perilous journeys, From darkness to darkness… The sun and the moon Armed

I live in borderlands where cobwebs spin my fingers together and sun burns the mark of earth on my tongue. My home is two places and none. Born here and there, speaking the languages of both, my greatest fluency is silence.

01. Sat in the spiritual place on a Friday After checking your availability You are busy at home I entered the place. You too joined me in the line of Prayers shoulder by shoulder with others I smiled at me Not sure

 Amid the limbs of Burning up birch trees, Blazes the crimson sun clock I return home, Doves are fluttering away from my fingers… One blend of yellow and white… An attic pigeon sequinned with beads… A bird with eyes kohled

Wide-opened arms of the poem embrace the solitary flame, dancing alone in this dark. while the book kept aside a girl of half nightingale and devil of another descends Through creviced shells of poetry. “What more do you know about the dark?”

Hair traitorous grey shameful need to pretend anti aging. Plucking, dilapidating; dyeing, dying. Betrayal of knees, hands, feet, neck (knees!) circled & magnified, almost expired  — quick sale! The male body needing no such revision. His landscape a shameless prairie

This word that keeps poppin’ on my Instagram feed Means so little, so it seems To crafty marketers and vacuous beauties Hash-tagging like tomorrow Will never come Kindled to autoignition point, Melanin shot golden stars out of their hiding places

Why all this vilification, boy? Had you thought that I was your toy? That my every day and every night Was dedicated solely to you by right? Designed, was I, to pledge you my troth, By vocation and avocation, both?

You see, You are much too old. Your river seeks canyons to carve. Your melodies are not music. Not yet. Your language is yet to be born. You are of the Sea, the Earth, the Breeze. You are Freedom. You are