That awkward moment

When i talk about how you hurt me
And at the disbelieving, half jesting
Look on your face

Can neither pretend i was joking
And laugh it away
Nor plod on like a battering ram
And shatter your mood

Becoming and being

When you spend all your emotions on the journey
There is sometimes nothing left for the destination

of my smallness

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.
- And the mountains achoed

This time he says it so well, that I have nothing to add

Straitjacket

A person changes a hundred times in a single day

I have found enlightenment so many hundreds of times

I wonder what it does to an enlightened guru,
Buddha for instance
When appearances forbid him to change his doctrine
After he obtains a second enlightenment

Middle aged rage

Unhappy little boys sloshing around in their own rage. They feel wronged. They haven't been given their due. No one love them enough.
- and the mountains echoed

And when they deny that they need affection
And make it even more plain
For all the world l see
What they truly want

Why do i still stay away
And refuse to give them
Exactly that

Because people like them
Are like wells that come out
On the other side of the world

Take and take and take
Until my resources are depleted
But still pine over
Their wasted childhood

PTSD

Dead fifteen years, but in my dreams, i murder him anew every night.
- george r r martin in a game of thrones

Twenty years gone
Of you throttling my innocence

Ten years I wandered the grey forests
Of despair and confusion
Blaming myself

Ten more i took to look it in the face

And at the end of every day now,
I tell myself I have
Come to terms with it

And yet,
Everyday
In my dreams,
The shame surrounds
And drowns me
Anew

what happens to stacked negativity

the keenly sharped arrows of arguments
that i will never use
on the person i intend them for
whom i will hurt at no cost

instead, from inside my head
they will poke and puncture my mood
to bloody tatters

(and when they lose their edge,
their rust will seep into
many genial moments in the future,
giving me the worst version of sunset evenings)

Not enough II - children

She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough.

- Khaled Hosseini in And the mountains echoed

i already know

that for me

it will not be enough

and thank god
that i am born in an era
when i do not have to be
ashamed of it

i don't need to hear

what i should have done
after i have already
not done it

Poetry

More of a relief
Than a fulfillment

More like a pee
Than a drink

Leaky faucet II - unfacing phantoms

Her mother would always be the leaking faucet at the back of her mind.
- and the mountains echoed

Sometimes i do wonder
What it would be like
To have never known a leaky faucet

A presence that grows
The more i try to pretend
That it does not belong to me

Leaky faucet I - drama queen

Her mother would always be the leaking faucet at the back of her mind.
- and the mountains echoed

And isn't it strange
That when i am lucky enough
To turn off the leaky faucet
I am unable to enjoy it

Sometimes it seems
I deliberately leave
Another faucet open
By an almost indiscernible
Half millimeter

Just to fill the void

Not enough I - parents

She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough.

- Khaled Hosseini in And the mountains echoed

What if

You always knew

That you are not enough

That their priorities

Lie far away from hearts

In the shadow world of 

Appearances

Hinged on ifs

Projecting emotions
On stories and scenarios

"if she does this,
I will yell at her."
"if he had said that,
I would beat him up."

Because it's so hard
To confront the perpetrator
Right then

not wanting children

not because
i don't like children
or because
i am not motherly
but perhaps because
i know
that my instincts are
of the compulsive type

and because i prize other things
over
spending many hours
teaching a child
how to tie his laces
i would rather not bring
the all consuming maternal instinct
into play at all

(again, the prediction of feelings)

Aquarius

Talking to people
Just to get to know them
Prodding them for explanations
Overturning old rocks for answers
Discovering what makes them tick
And moving on

While the other person
Is exuberant at the spontaneous connection
Flattered by the interest
And thinks it will be life long

In relationships
As in every other thing
Looking only
And only
For answers

wish it was so easy

in movies,
when you are in confusion
a rakish guy says something
you disagree
but you think about it
and decide he is right
you take unprecedented decisions, 
turn your life around,
and fall in love to boot

in real life,
you think about what he says
decide he is wrong
and let it rankle forever
(plus the rake is an obnoxious prig
you will never even like)

Confession hour

My relief
At the cost of your pain

Moth in fire

Tired of waiting for
A grand love
And hunkering so much after
My own story

I took
The first chance
That came along
Which happened to be
A half-hearted one

(How was I to know
That you would come along?)

And perhaps
I would have done the same
Even if I knew
That you would come
But it would be many years
Before you did

(Such is the hunger
Of the youth
For experience:)

I wish i had saved myself

Now I have nothing to equal
Your intensity
Your enthusiasm
Your virginity

Took so long to find out

On the one hand are
Commercial dream producers
Telling me men are
Fountains of love
Out of my dreams

And on the other are
Shrill cries telling me
That men are beasts
Out of my nightmares

And no one to tell me
That men are just men
Just
People
Who laugh, cry, and hurt,
Just like me

Why should I shiver

When you touch the screen
with longing
and proceed
to run you fingers along it

just because i am
at the other end of the
skype call

Force-fed monogamy

like a round pitcher
that feelings, like water
exapnd to fill

forcing one to dismiss
    best friends as friends
    girls crushes as best friends
    lust for them, and for strangers,
    as unholy
making us feel guilty
    for "improper" feelings
    let alone actions
forcing us to
    stop loving many
    and to think of one person
    as the be-all and end-all
making complicance with it
    a matter of pride,
    and the uncompliant ones
    the objects of our
    disparagement
   
and in the end,
even convinving us that
it is the water
that was shaped round
in the first place

Chicken hearted

The chance at something
That previously made me happy

I turn back because
I know
It is not going to be as i expect

I could
Make adjustments
Form new expectations
And go back
With renewed confidence,

Instead,
I convince myself that
It's a bad idea anyways
Because
It's not going to be what i remember

(There is nothing
that time does not ravage,
so nothing is ever going to
as it was)

Because I would not go anyways
Because I was scared of the jump,
I found a logic so watertight
That not even I could argue with it

Cold feet

The unwillingness to express feelings
Now
Fearing that they may not last
In future

And i will have to live by loving words
Even after ceasing to feel them

What we want

(or at least i)
Is someone who is not bored
When we repeat the same things
Over and over again

And instead understands
Why they are
Important

They say women are mysterious creatures

But you know you are not
Mysterious at all
And you think it is because
You are still just a girl
You wait for it to come
And wait
And wait

And it never does
You realize you are only what you
Always were
Cyrstal clear

And it is the trying to be
"mysterious"
That discombobulates you
And twists you
Beyond your own recognition

Which of them are closer?

The two
Who share feelings
Talk and laugh and commisserate
And are willing to do
Anything for each other

Or the two
Who may not like each other so much
But know each other inside out
And can predict
Every breath
That the other will take
Every response to any eventuality
They will make
Every expression
On their face
Every word
They speak
And every thought
They don't

The most important person in your life

May not be the one you love the most
The one who loves you the most
Or even
The one with the strongest (love)-hate relationship

But
The one
Who recurs most in your waking dreams
The one
Whose words you turn over and over in your mind
The one
Whose very unspoken thoughts poke and prod you everyday

In short,
The one who you strive to prove yourself to
And end up orienting every action around

(And may not even know it)

woman reading siddhartha

Madam Wu
Whose feet her mother had tried to bind
But whose bandages were cut open before the bones were broken
Always retained
Due to that early binding
A narrowness of feet
Unseen in even the most deliactely bound ones
(pavillion of women by pearl s buck)

And she
With her early attraction to renunciation
Always retaining
Even in her later, sensual years
A tranquility of spirit
That went by unnoticed
     In many wiser, more diligent women
     Who had it also
Made many believe
In her angelhood