Toothbrush

For one, it wasn't even my regular toothbrush
I had it at home, when I lived two hops away
And lest it get mixed up with the rest of their toothbrushes
I hid it in the cabinet in the living room
On the last shelf but one,
Alongside the teddy bears that my girlfriends
Had gifted me in high school
With our names scribbled on their bellies, you know

Every weekend, or so, I went home
I didn't have to carry my toothbrush with me
Tremendous, gasping liberty that
I could go home anytime I wanted
Didn't feel like working, go home
Didn't feel like eating what I cooked, go home
Felt  like sliding into weird combinations of pajamas
Which  I had abandoned long back, but mama kept
Go home

That toothbrush was my thing, really
Like my time capsule
You know, how movie characters hide things
Quietly in their childhood homes
And go back decades later to retrieve the toys
They had stashed above the fireplace, behind a brick
Or something, like that
That toothbrush, held time still for me
Whenever I wanted to unwind time, freeze space
It was there for me,

But then they moved
Pushed everything in cartons, clothes piled in suitcases
And crockery wrapped in old newspaper,
They hired a shitty mover, and moved
And I wasn't even there then
Nobody remembered my toothbrush, I guess
It must have been heaped with the mounds of other junk
That we had collected over decades,
But didn't have any use for, no more
College books, ties we wore in school,
Our Saturday white sneakers, purple bowls we slurped noodles out of
None of it was to be hoarded anymore
So much for low inventory

A lot of things broke while moving
Lives were shattered even
It was like utter metamorphosis
The next time I went home,
Toothbrush  aside, I no recognize nobody
Their faces had changed
Times had eroded them, hoarse
Their voices had gotten coarser
Stories had become more fumbled
I looked in the trash and fidgeted for our old life

Found nothing, nothing at all.

Low Light

Sometimes I wonder if I can see in darkness. I don't trust the dark enough. But once the lights are off, I see almost everything. How eyes adapt. Even the streaks of mellow street lights filtering thought tight maroon curtains are enough. The notification light of the cell phone is enough. Multiple cell phones, iPads and such. 

I had a knack for total darkness back in the day. I celebrated my tweety-fifth, sitting alone on the bathroom floor and smoking, in the dark. My roommate knocked on the door when she had to pee, badly. I don't remember her name. All I remember is that she had straight hair, like ironed hair. She would iron her hair every morning before we left for work and I would steal glances at her, in between my several morning pretend chores. 

Morning chores. Evening chores. Now, night chores. I don't need the strength to go on from day to day, week to week, hour to hour because I busy myself with such chores. Water the plants, assemble breakfast, pack a lunch, dry out the clothes, don't forget this, don't forget that and such. One after the other, jam packed schedule. My routine is my one bloody saviour. Never having a moment to sit in the blank, pitch black darkness to merely think is probably my secret. Otherwise I wouldn't get a reason to get out of bed. In a way, this is the best thing ever. In other ways, it's the worst possible damage I could cause to my soul. 

When I am in a routine, I don't let the little sorrows of life catch me. And when life crumbles like a pack of cards, instantaneously catching me unawares, it's probably the numerous alarms I set to wake up, to go back to sleep, to take pills, to pay bills, to get to work because I need money to pay said bills, that eventually get me back on track in my no thinking life. 

Earlier I loved the darkness so much, it brought me ecstasy. Somewhere in the middle I weaned myself off it, you know, how we do that. But now, again, I am using darkness to catch a break from this mindfucking to do list that I have turned my life into. Because I want to probably grow that courage to go on from today to tomorrow, inside me, for real, and not just fake it around.

Hallelujah 

Matter

You know how Amazon does what Amazon feels like. So they delivered a little foldable table to me in a cardboard box more than twice its size. Initially I thought that I would throw the box away. Then a couple days after I thought why not make a shoe stand out of it, like one of my little anti depressant craft projects. I even bought tape. The storekeeper smiled at me. Not your usual storekeeper kind of smile, I wouldn't bother. But his over warmth made me suspicious and shaky. Like literally I kept the cash on the counter and ran. Should have also ordered the tape from Amazon. But anyway, that shoe stand thing never happened. So I thought I would help my sterile pegions. There is a couple of pegions that has been trying to have chicks for like a year now. They gather hay and leaves in my balcony, build a nest, lay eggs and care for them everyday. But those eggs never hatch. Like I watch those eggs, check on them every other week. But they don't show any signs of life. I even googled pegion gestation. But still no. And one day my maid would lose her mind and sweep the whole balcony away. Now I am thinking if I just kept that box in the balcony instead of making a shoe stand out of it, may be the sterile, infertile, subfertile couple of pegions would find a more hospitable nest. And I would ask my maid to just not interfere. In their business. Everybody needs warmth, it's November. Today I gave away two of my old sweaters to her. One pink, which I had bought about ten years ago as a Valentine's Day gift to self. Now it's too small for me. Also another fairy white one. That one would fit me even now. But somehow I don't like it, never wore it. A friend of mine, a rich one, had bought it for herself and hadn't liked it either and she had given it away to me. I didn't like it much. But given my rudimentary sense of fashion, I thought I would keep it. That sweater moved with me wherever I moved, and that's like half a dozen places, I never touched it once. And today I gave it away. Got rid of it. My maid didn't like it either. I had to tempt her with the pink one and said she would have to keep them both. May be she won't keep it either. Nobody would ever love that sweater. It's going to be discarded unused after an extremely stretched shelf life, I wonder what that sweater thinks. 

A Jibe at the CalorieCounter

Most of my life revolves around food. Food is not the centre of it. But it's a big part of the underlying. It's a motivator to get through the hours. No I am not one of those thin people who make memes about googling their next meal. I am actually fat. Remember, the fat gay man in Sopranos who was beaten the crap out of, to death. Vito Spatafore. Him, I sometimes remember. His food issues. He fucked a chef at a local restaurant. I relate to him. And think a bit much about food. I am fat shamed, yes. I am unsuitable, hell yeah. Always have been. I have been rejected on account of being a fatso. And have rejected some even fatter people. There is bias everywhere. There is so much fucking bias everywhere, you cannot live with yourself. I like to watch movies about fat people and their food distractions and how their lives fall in order. Long ago, after tremendous self coaching I made my peace with it. Accepted myself as I am built. But it keeps returning, those slight jibes. They push you into the abyss. I stress eat. I follow several food handles on Instagram. I follow people on Twitter who fake tweet about body positivity. Who knows who thinks what and says what. I don't know how to starve, I mean I did know. Not anymore. In the beginning I used to assume it's my mother. But no, it's me. I am responsible for myself. Food is an endearing distraction for me. And even if I am not hungry, I gotta eat, I am a compulsive one. Torn between food websites that post ten different pictures of cheese and spaghetti pasta by the hour and aneroxic women who eat nothing but thin air, I can't help myself. And probably don't want to. Is this self love.

Yes, it is. 

But, who'll take care of the Baby

Your shirt always creased 

In that mild way

That only with someone

With eyes for you

Could only see

I remember, those road side stalls

Where we stood and slurped

Cold-drink-ice-cream-float

With greasy egg chicken noodles

You, applauded me

We walked into the 5 am forest

A flower stuck in my hair

Your sweet-man-gait

Broad chinned smile

When my ovaries leaped

Today, I compare

Myself with a dozen others

And look for scraps of 

Happiness

You're a rich badass, though

I don't wait for you to salvage me

Man, you stuck in my memories

In numerous parallel pasts

That didn't even happen, ouch

I write

I write to create that past

Alternate threadbare truths, 

You know.

Even-though no one reads

Relentless, I never cease

At constructing what could've been 

Sunroof

Our Saturday home has a Sunroof. Rented for a couple thousand bucks. Couple thousand. Swiped off an unsuspecting credit card, to pop up as a surprise in the bill, a month later, like an unwanted child and what not. 

Downstairs there is a Champaca tree. Magnolia Champaca. The one with seductive yellow bud like flowers and honey like smell. We have a swing tied onto one of its branches. With nylon rope of fluorescent green and one discarded wooden table top as a seat. Sometimes I sit in the sun and swing. 

When I am inside, I use the Sunroof. It's right above the empty hall, by the stairway. Leaning on the railing of the spiral stairway, I can see the sun. Clouds. Sometimes the moon. Sometimes the birds. And when it lashes, I can see the rain. Falling vertically, forcefully, under gravity and striking the glass top of our Sunroof. 

In Autumn mornings, when the Champaca flowers I walk down the stairway, pick up fallen flowers from the dust and clutch them onto my hair. Back in the house, a thick beam of sunlight falling through the Sunroof lightens the hall. I stretch myself under the beam of light and bathe for a while. On afternoons, I pull a chair or just sit on the floor and watch the night envelope the sky.

A Sunroof is an amazing thing to have when it intensifies one's propensity for life. Just for a couple thousand, off an unsuspecting credit card.  

Covalent Bond

That afternoon, he picked me up from chemistry tuition. That day we were going to learn about the covalent bond. How ironic.

I made an excuse. Something very pretty silly. Meeting him was a consequence of a chain of careful excuses. Some at home. Some to friends. Lies made me anxious. Back then, I didn't even know how to contain anxiety. Meeting him had become synonymous to this anxiety. Love, like carbon, does rarely come in its purest form. Love often manifests itself in one form or another. Going down, this anxiety would probably be synonymous with love. And one would have to quietly and patiently unfurl this anxiety, one petal after another, like flowering a rose bud. And at the center of it, find love, untouched, unhinged.

For me, it was always the little things. His face was always neutral of any expression. It wasn't a poker face, never a poker face. Yet, devoid of joy or sorrow. He was always in his skin, contained. But when something genuinely funny happened, his taught face would break into a smile. A slight half smile, if I may. And then, that would lead to a laugh. He didn't laugh that way at jokes. At jokes, he guffawed. That guffaw was devoid of emotion too. But that slight half smile, that one's truly one of my favorite things of him. Most cherished.

The afternoon that reluctantly replaced the class of chemistry was misty. His bike made an usual sound. Probably, it always did. But this was the first time I heard it, being away from the traffic, and all. We rode into what appeared to be the country. I diligently held on to his shoulders. He did cajole me to hold on to more, but that didn't augur much in his favor. Holding on was not my preferred act then. I never assumed we were for the long run.

I was astonishingly young to take it by the day, but I did. We stopped for some tender coconut. After I drank all the water, I sucked in lots of air through my straw, just to ensure I hadn't wasted a drop. And that had led to that sheepish half smile of his. The hawker scraped out the soft coconut cream for him, mine had none. He teased me with it, before giving all of his to me.  He was a serious guy, and that probably made him engaging in trivial acts like these very adorable. Yes, he was adorable, whenever he gave in.

It was rather confusing, why we would go out. It didn't seem to fit. All the zigs and zags were out of place. He wasn't my quintessential type. And I wasn't anyone's type. But once we were together, these rationales seemed to matter much less.

Later, I tried very hard to take it by the day. But somewhere down the line, I forgot how to anymore. And got extremely involved. Like head over heels over head. He was quite brilliant. He would make up for the bunked classes eventually, I told myself. And help me too, probably. I swayed and twirled.

Years later, I realize, how much time erodes us. His half smile has stayed. But he has lost some hair though. And I, I have recently got my first few rounds of dark circles. I tell myself they're faint enough and it's gonna be quite alright.

Personal Day

Today, I did nothing.
I saw, others walk away with prizes

Today, I sat all day
Sprained my ass.

Cooked both meals,
Ate with a fork, white-yellow meals

I didn't read, neither write
Didn't intimidate myself with fear of missing any buses

I didn't kohl my eyes
Looked for the moon in a cloudy dusk sky

Later it poured, oh
And I braided my hair, standing in the balcony

Yes, that's special, my thinning horsetail of a hair.
My fingers running through semi moist strands of those

And now, with my braided hair
And my bellyfull of quietude, I slip into my Personal Night

Shuteye

Every other day, I would like to shut my eyes for a bit. A teeny-weeny shuteye. And view life from a distance. To assess our collective tininess. To bask in our inconsequential failure at being. And to nevertheless, extract joy in syringes and save it for the lifetime of winter. Or harsh summer.

You wouldn't get it, probably. But I feel loved when a gust of cool breeze grazes me on a hot afternoon of May. I wait through exhausting and unending days at work because in the end, I get to slurp noodles from my huge purple bowl. I love the onset of the night, despite our complex issues, convoluted emotions and unfinished businesses, it's an excuse to  call it a day. It's over. Or, soon, it will anyway be. I love the way, the wind blows in my city. I appreciate how invisible I can be, if I want to. I love how being far-far from home, gives me wings of freedom. I lust for how a longish faltering stare from a man, can make my heart go up in bubbles, even if it's gonna lead us nowhere. No one, nowhere.

Despite the propaganda otherwise, I think I am kind of getting it. Shuteye. Night Night.

Moving

One of those things that dims the daylights of my mind is nostalgia. Rotten nostalgia.

So, we lived in this house, with cracked walls and sickening noise. All that, for years. Over and over again. The peel off paint was life. The poker face neighbors were mundane routine. Their screams and fights and their failed attempts at life submerged our failures too, in a way. So, we were happy-sad. In a way, equally un-confusingly both. Crammed parkings and scribbled love letters in scooters. Dimly lit garages and longish uncomfortable stares from known strangers, was a concoction we called home.

Anyway, we moved. In truckloads. Carrying faint half formed memories. Tears in jewelry boxes. Decades old school uniforms in trunks and our ancient cursive writing notebooks. Piles of utensils. Torn albums. Broken photo frames. Tilted fridges. And all this, with a mother that abandons nothing. Her only hope is that holding on to things, will literally cease the process of letting go. Only, it won't. We took as much breath as our lungs could contain and moved. But we left our diaries behind. And some other artifacts from the dingy-old-good-old-past.

Now, this new place has whiter walls and wall size windows. And it overlooks a huge green field. Yet, we feel so homesick. And we count nights. We fiddle for keys of that old home and clutch it tight, might that get us some sleep. We are collectively yearning for a place and time, that is slowly vanishing. Or much, already has, by now, may be. And we can do nothing.

30 - On Never Being Icarus

I am too scared to look within.
Don't know what I might see,
I am too scared to be
Alone with myself, tonight.
There's no confetti
Or rose petals and chocolate
Just a crumpled bed-sheet
And half read books strewn
I am imploding, as we speak

Haven't we had too much?
Haven't we had too little?
I am thirty
When will my love of irony,  die?
My drama. My scarcity
My appalling dearth of guts
My fear of myself
And my pointless distractions,
Lined up one after another

So I ne'er haveta think
Where I'm headed
If I am getting ahead, or stuck
Or simply regressing, guess I am
My whole entire idea was to,
Just stay afloat
Merely nostrils above water
Exactly this way,
I'll float out into the sea
With least possible effort.

And life treats me right back,
The same way.
Quid pro quo
With minimal reward.
And hence my implosion
There's this logic
That I don't want to see.
But now see.
I know why I fall
Probably, I'd be no other way

My love for oblivion
Goes a long way
Transcends all ambition
My diminished self worth
Digs up nadir after nadir
Tied in my own tongue
I am succumbing to
Self inflicted asphyxia,
You know

As I child, I stumbled on Icarus
Icarus who, flew too close to the sun
Melted his wax wings
Fell into the ocean and died
I can't recognize who I've become
But certainly far apart from the child
Who was fascinated with Icarus
I've probably made my choice
I've set my heart on
Never Being Icarus.

What we will not do

Sometimes my heart goes up in hot flames wondering about the things we will not do. Never do. The essays we will never write. The books we will never read. The films we will never watch. The wandering awefuckinsome artists we will never come across. The dresses we will never buy. The colors we will never paint nails with. The markets we will never walk through. The beaches we will never lie on. The secrets we will never share. The TV shows we will never watch. The wall hangings we will never buy. The time we will never have. The foods we will never taste. The wines we will never slurp. The cities we will never ever travel to. The bougainvillea we will never stand under. The breads, the views, the pens, the shoes, the smokes, the bracelets, the stories, the poems, the secrets. So much is lost in not doing. 

Also the bygone singers that we will never listen to. Sometimes, I am so afraid to read something because I know reading it is going to make me realize there are twenty dozen more beautiful stories like that which I am never going to flip through. So much of time we have lost, and there's a serpentine future ahead of us. And we are never going to be in those times. Except wallow in suffering in this moment at present that how absolutely hopeless we are. 

Kaput Again

Living days in perfunctory anxiety
Missing the bus, most of the times
Building worlds within worlds
Pointing all furniture toward the TV

Waiting for that day of the week
When you can say, that
My day has been bad enough
To deserve a smoke

Cooking, chopping vegetables
Peeling vegetables
The same condiments, in every meal
Yellow mildly disgusting food

Walking, looking at your toes
Stealing eye contact
Being mum, containing poetry
Caging prose

Coating hours with abandoned love
Soaking minutes in sunlight
Chasing cabs, chasing autos
Wading through knee deep flood waters

Fiddling for change
Running out of money
Thinking you're poor
What have you done, nothing

Except watch TV and shirk
Watch TV and shirk
And live in this perfunctory anxiety
Waiting to go kaput

Prequel here

The Dissappearing Act

Your classic disappearing act. Post facto, I now know that it was an orchestrated act. But in that moment, in those moments, in those bygone years, they felt like accidents. Probably, you were just busy. Too much work. Too many presentations. Too pushy a boss, may be. Or could be that you went out for a beer after work with your buddies and forgot to call. That night. The night after that. And dozens of such nights afterward. Or were you just tired, didn't want me to see your fallible self? No, that couldn't be. I was a delicately forgiving girl. The answer was simple, you just forgot. About me. 

As I turned myself inside out. You know, and such.

How could you? 

It was my fault. I never asked. I let you off easy. 

But can I now, travel back in time and sue you? For negligence. For apathy. For pulling off your treacherous disappearing act. And not once or twice. Several times, if I may. 

You held out a mirage of niceness when you appeared back again. It made me forget. But that shouldn't have been that way. 

I should've held some ground. I didn't. 

But now, when I don't even bother to think about you, I learned somewhere that disappearing on your near ones is typical drug addict behavior. You pulled it off with such panache, were you one of those?

And your drug of choice, was by no chance me, was I.

Still can't believe, you outsmarted me, so well. Man.

So much poetry for zilch.

Abnegation

Our soggy sandwiches. Our constant running out of dental floss. And our several mental issues. Mental and physical. Psychological. Our indignation with the silence of P's. Our misery toward wrong grammar. And yet our vicariously short-lived memories. Our endless drying out of thoughts. Our fear of facing those thoughts alone. Our finding comfort in food. Our daily challenges. Monthly challenges and yearly challenges. Our struggles with intimacy. And with space. Our sickness. Our health. Our money. Our poverty.  Our unhealed wounds. Our under realization of calibres. Our own resounding echoes in the air tight rooms we are constrained to. Our crippling social awkwardness. Our fight with depressing daily news. Our nausea. Our vertigo. Our pounding in the stomach. Our fear of having a child. Our scare of overeating ourselves to death. Our fear of losing touch with our deep inner selves. Our fear that our potted plants will die. And that we all will die and all this will come to nothing. Our strange acceptance of that end in nothingness.

Locking Pandora Again

All my life I've been looking for someone discreet. And now you've been bestowed upon me. Hell knows, I wanna engage in small talk with you. Me and small talk. Yes. I am afraid of scratches. And for you, I wanna play with fire. Tonight. Adrenaline is rushin' to my head like a madwoman. It's all a game after all. Nothing is ever enough. And I'm always falling short anyway. In money, space, time, success, joy. Nothing's ever enough. So I've put my finger on the thing. The key that can lock Pandora again. I'm gonna use ye as my drug to forget everything. Hereafter. I'm gonna chase you. You swan. Ye beautiful beautiful eagle. You snake. You man. I'm putting my foot down and letting go. And shedding all else. I'm gonna close my eyes and hallucinate about being chained to your wings in midflight. A bit too late for poetry, isn't it. Will you have a drink with me though. Drench me in your wine. And let me wreath around you and lose this garb I've been faking so long. I'm gonna lose my story and merge with you. That way, I wanna tremble my pain out. My sedimented sorrow of a mountain will melt and drizzle out of my holes as I am entwined. In that position, midflight, I wanna leap down with you, plummet from heights and meet my end in the gorge. Instantaneously. In a pop.

Fijacion

Our fates are intertwined. We are enclosed in this chamber. With just the right amount of oxygen. We will last right until we collapse into each other. It's as if the universe is conspiring for us to merge.

Your roving eyes. Those nimble movements. A glimpse of your flesh from between buttons. My stealthy eyes. Arm hair, warm breath, your outstanding voice. Getting dissolved in the everlasting noise, yet filtering out.

Again your eyes. Their roving fijacion on me. What a live contradiction, this. We humble ageing bodies, don't even deserve love of this kind no more. We have had our times, back in the day. Long tortuous years.

Love, like a person has aged right with me. It is about five years older than me, rather. Whatever age I am in, love is exactly half a decade older. Now I am thirty. And love should be thirty five.

But aloha. Love is suddenly eighteen, even thirteen, when you're around. Some Benjamin Button phenomenon this.

Your shiny ignorance, my colorless past. Both us folks have had exams, degrees, jobs, loves. Movies, songs and books. Many many infatuations like each other. But all in the past. Hell, we don't even deserve each other, vide our separate justified rationales. But fuck rationale. Why is this even happening now. Oh.

Vagaries

There must a word each for these:

Standing in the shower for a bit longer. And a little longer. Letting the hot water enter your pores, seemingly washing away bad days, dissolving failure, from under arms, from between the crevices of thighs, lumps of hair, falling off, water in sharp strings hitting your chest, where it hurts the most, and scraping off, whatever it is that you are trying to; scrape off. There must be a word for this. 

Looking for that familiar face, almost everywhere. In buses, trains, sidewalks, malls, movie theaters. Everywhere. Scared equally that you might actually see it. It's a familiar face, though not very familiar. You had seen it, long time ago, probably. You don't recollect the contours of his cheeks, or the shine in his eyes, the shape of his glasses, or the ending of his chin. You have never seen him for real, for real, so you have made neat assumptions over the years. And living a parallel life with that face, a tiny parallel life with zero repercussions on your three-dimensional  life, this one, yes, where you have a job, and a family. That face construed of assumptions is not a part of this life, but still you look for it, on some days. When it rains, or when you're just sitting around. There should  be one word for this. Because it's possible to live many lives inside many lives, without anyone else knowing, and without these respective lives asphyxiating the fuck out of each other.

Feeling that you know a man inside out. May be you don't, in entirety. But then you know a bit too much for being an absolute stranger. You are seated on couches beside each other, and are barely familiar. But you feel that you know so much about him that you cannot look at him in the eyes, because your eyes will tell. Your eyes will quietly give away that hint that, yes, I know more about you than you have disclosed so far. Or will ever disclose ever, in the future. Probably because I have heard about you from someone, or I have encountered your twin brother from another mother in my past and that motherfucker fucked me up, bad. So you can't look directly at him, even when there's no alibi not to. You look at your wine instead. 

Going through days, even weeks, thinking and feeling a lot of thoughts. Mostly random, Unrelated, so totally detached. You read stuff on your work station, or sitting on the toilet, or while walking home. Stuff that stays, irreversibly buries itself in your heart. Like stuff that is deep as shit. But you cannot assimilate it and write even three words. You just cannot. Because you cannot summarize, you cannot firmly put your finger on the singular story that you should write. Things seem so generic and vague and hazy. There's no specificity on the surface of it, but the depths are swiveling you around your axes. You're being moved, but you have lost the prowess, even the bare capacity to understand the gist of what you're thinking. So yes, there should be word for this.   

Swimming against the daily disappointments of life, sluggish careers, strained relationships, crippling social awkwardness, and all other syndromes that are there, body fat, bowel issues, hearing issues, seeing issues, all the issues in the freaking universe, the involuntary and rather distant passage of time, lack of me-time and the boredom of solitude, both, endless but undisciplined diets, pointless to-do lists, laundry (yes), dishes (yes, that too); you slowly but steadily lose all your libido for life. But, yes, let me interrupt, but, then comes a shallow realization that if you're not in the shadow of a major calamity of life, you can ignore the daily disasters of life and continue to live, like your average person. Say a prayer before dinner every night, and eat. So yes, a word for this too. 

Vignettes

One time I wanted to be my mother's Chinese bamboo. Sitting in a glass bowl, full of filtered water. Water that is changed every day and my roots cleaned. And shifted from place to place in the house during the day, depending on where the sun fell. From the east in the morning to the west in the afternoon. Sitting quietly, paralytic and observing everyone in the house pass by, busy and breathless, running for school and tuition, out from hot showers and swallowed breakfasts. I envied that plant so much. 

And later, I wanted to be my husband's pet cat. No, my husband doesn't have a cat. Neither is he a cat person. Nor is he a dog person. We're not animal people, at all. But I wish I were his pet pussy cat. Black in color, with white stripes, furry and soft so he would cuddle and squeeze me, every now and then. And hold me in his hands and snuggle. And I would lap milk from my milk bowl sitting on our coffee table in front of the TV or behind our sofa. And I would lazily witness passage of scores and scores of mornings and afternoons and judge the motion of the wind and the shadows of the window grille. Hundreds of thoughts and emotions, in entropy, behind my little black pussy cat poker face. 

The Chinese bamboo, at least existed. But the cat doesn't even. 

Another Obscure Sorrow

I thought about,
Coming to bed with a glass of
Rum,
And I forgot, whoever does that?

I chase street lights at dusk
Let dust settle on me
And watch days pass me by
Nights, more so

I leave thoughts unattended
Let love hover over me,
Like a bee, and then
It just scares me away

I let my feet crack
And I eventually run out of creams
See my dull skin, in yellow bedroom light
I see I am suddenly older

I abandon books midway,
So unfair, this
And sometimes I take my time, own sweet
When I finish, I forget the beginnings

Sometimes I yearn for a past reader
You know, an oracle
Who reminds us of our memories
Because life, like a cannibal, eats itself away so thoughtlessly