Excruciating Intimacies: Navigating Through Poetry
It isn’t intimacy unless it feels a little tender.
Poetry
Finding Myself In My Body: Reclaiming Pain
A house that is a warzone. A courtroom for custody battles. Dumping ground for other people’s pain. My body.
Two Cities I’ve Loved – Bangalore & Mumbai
Feeling the tug between two places – one that feels like home and one that is dutifully home.
Sympathetic Losses & The Empathy Monster
I have poems by old lovers,
not about me
not the loves,
not the poetry.
When Gods Become People
An ode to disappointing idols, to deified affections, to desecrated loyalties,
Urban Domestica – Peace in Pieces
Finding peace in the domestic, finding poetry in the mundane
I Will Listen
I’ve been in so many conversations. I’ve come back overflowing with so much. Wisps of other people clinging to me. They turn into dreams, into nightmares, into fantasies, into nagging nameless worries. Then someone says hello and they pass. I started to worry about losing myself in you, in them,…
Silent Gods – A Political Poem
This poem was written to the prompt ‘भारत भाग्य विधाता चुप है’ (Bharat Bhagya Vidhata chup hain).The Indian national anthem addresses the ‘Bharat Bhagya Vidhata’ (the benefactor of India’s destiny). This prompt suggests that the benefactor is silent. Trigger warnings: My poem contains other references to the national anthem &…
Road To The Rainbow
𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚⚡ It feels wrong to speak of rainbows. To write about them is like trying to put a net around the breeze, to attempt to scoop up sunlight in a bowl. I have seen but a handful of rainbows and even that feels incorrect to say since I’ve never grasped…
Punks & Cheese
You are made for instant love stories,for picture-perfect odes,for sweet-scented songs,for candy smiles& dimple kisses I carry a pen dipped in bloodA shiv serves a chalkas I punk upa symmetric story& make it minewith a sweaty handprint Which is why I say nomore often than hell yes!(the only yes I…
Lemonade
Little bits of crueltydrop off your wordslike ice shardsoff a glass of nimboopanithat still has a sliver or twoof lemon floating in it And I hesitate to point it out I want to pick it out of your beingBefore you taste your own sournessBefore you have to swallowyour imperfectionsAnd before the…
𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗗𝗜𝗗𝗡’𝗧 𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗫𝗧 𝗗𝗔𝗬
When you kiss a friend,they leak out of the chais, cappuccinos, white wines & long island iced teas & camaraderiepast the milestones of recognitionwhere the light switch flicks on in your mind& your friendship mode self turns onand that feels like it would look uncomfortableBut it’s notand you, overarticulate you,…
I Don’t Belong Here
These carefree whistlersgirls throwing hearts & bodies outto men who will let them falland men who will pick them uponly to throw them backI have been thrown away,thrown over, thrown backI don’t belong here The screaming thundersdripping rage & accusationsto fertile minds that will turn theminto gangrene & cancerThe storms…
Fairytale
I want a new fairytaleFairytales are greatI want a new fairytaleFor every single day Write me a book of fairytalesThat build a universewith bricks of paper,Where love doesn’t feel like a curseRoads of words where hope doesn’t turn into vapourBring me a fairytale I haven’t heard beforeReplenish the wonder I…
𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙-𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗚𝗜𝗥𝗟𝗦🤹♀️🤸🏽♀️
Girl, love yourself though it be hard. I know sis, I know, I’m there with you too. Though I don’t quite know how to do this right, I’m learning. And this means unlearning everything we have been taught since birth about what love means, what us means, what I means….
Talking About Love With You
You tell me this is what it means to loveYou say that is love, this is lovingYou point me to poetryas a dictionary for the love languageAnd therapy terminologyto dissect this feeling These my friend,are conversations about love,Not love itself(And note, that I call you ‘friend’,not ‘my love’)Because I’ve read…
I See Hope Silently
Let the waves comeLet the winds blowLet me be soaked, burnt, frozenTrampled by every manner of foe Let the shouts riseLet the voices echoLet there be slogans, insults, criesAnd words that land like blows I will melt, I will breakI will drown, I will searI will bear every wound &…
Ghosts Over Tea
GHOSTS OVER TEA – a poem
Red Is A Good Colour On Me
When the king falls, and he will fall Another will sit in his place And a hundred others will hold him up & plot his disgrace They will talk about the politics of bodies They will gamble these bodies The woman with five husbands Was shared property & objects have…
Love Gardener
We have to separate the feeling from the person who inspires them. We are so literal, we use the words “my love” to describe a sentiment as well as a person. But our feelings are entirely our own, to process, to draw from for poetry, to express in our ways,…