Pyrotechnics

Tiredness/My Facebook bio

is being unable to create something
beautiful,
unwillingness to think beautiful, let alone be beautiful,
wearing the same Hufflepuff sweatshirt
Being reminded when you glance in the mirror, that you last brushed
Three days ago.

is opening up your laptop to work, and then watching that same show
Playing that same game
To remind yourself of when you didn't feel like this

is putting your feet against hot water bottles and willing them to burn
So that the hot water bottle does not have to be filled again.

is mindless scrolling, refusing to do anything that requires you to think for longer than two minutes
is refusing, nay, denying yourself, the right to write this poem
To write anything, to remember how to love
In that big elastic balloon way that swells until
you float

is to whispering "thank god" when it bursts.

Is to remember when your hair wasn't stringy
When you wanted to wake up
When you wanted to write good poetry
When you wanted to do things that did not involve
Folding yourself into corners
and sighing and popping a vitamin pill and
nodding at to this cut up handkerchief
you are sleeping with.

is moving a pile of laundry from desk to table to chair to pillow
is refusing yourself the luxury of
Ceilings and feelings
is crying when you didn't see it coming,

is crying because the puzzle is duplicating itself everytime you think
the pieces are all here.
is crying because you weren't supposed to eat another pizza
is crying because you aren't supposed to eat another pizza
is crying because you weren't supposed to
but you wanted to
is crying because why did you want to?

Is Sudoku for breakfast, pooptime, lunch, and dinner
is wanting to keep yourself sharp
and hating how much you have to bang your head against
The countertop to slice a tomato into pieces

Is watching people live laugh love and
laughing at them those basic plebs
and hating yourself for wanting it to be that easy
and hating yourself for not letting it be that easy

Is loving them and hating them, because they can
get that tattooed
and you can't remember what those words even mean.

is avoiding reflective surfaces because they demand time
is avoiding paper surfaces because they demand time
is avoiding the people who help you surface
Because you demand time
is avoiding yourself because damn you why do even want time?

so you fall asleep on fresh laundry, a pile of clothes from over a year ago
whose poor fitting is no longer a tragedy,
because you fit poorly in your own body.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want them, those women with purple teeth
Who have pearls around their necks, 

bare wrists
And daggers for fingers. 

When I say I want them, I mean, I want to be them,
Have gums that bleed unwaveringly with all the
Non-supplication, scathing insults, sarcasm,
Until the doorknob turns into your back
And you stand there, curiously open.

I want this cushion that has turned patchy

 yellow with tear marks and blood marks
To burst and reveal the teeth inside it, from

 the one skull I killed and buried
-not necessarily human-
And offer it to you in a little box so you know,
you know me,
Who collects relics of death, and makes relics of the living
Who would fashion a monument to resentment
And offer it up as a present, love me, it screams
I stare at it, the blood I have spent on it,
And I do not know which blood I hate more,
The whiteness of your love, or the redness of mine.

I pull my lips at the ends and stare wildly into the mirror,
And claw at my gums so they delicately bleed out what I want to say
Purple, fresh, a morning vendor's flowers for the temple.
Instead all I have to offer the gods today
is another
skull
taken apart
burnt
bit by bit
Ash, before it is purple. 

Things We Don't Talk About

How grave mounds and sandcastles are the same thing, except in one, we can
Pretend there are windows
How I build sandcastles over things I don't want to see
How that one time when I went to the beach
And I made sandcastles,
I could not make the windows,
Maybe I was making grave mounds.

How when I left, the sand clung to my clothes and shoes and skin
Till I could not walk straight
How I sat in the ocean
Seeking release
Except that was more
Dirt.

How I am here, but you know I'm not here
How the plastic bags we are carefully wrapping furniture in
Is confusing the furniture, has it become old, or are we moving again?
How I am here, but you know I am not here
And my ears are covered in bubble wrap
And how often I say "I misheard",
And how my friends are asking me to go to an ENT
but how else do you listen over the sound of your own screaming?

How this is trashy poetry, how everything stinks.
How juvenile, how annoying, how often I want to say I hate you
Like I did when I was juvenile, when I was annoying and I thought I had outgrown that
But here I am.
Out.
Grown.
And I really do hate you.

How sometimes we wrap furniture in plastic so that
When it falls it will fall without a thud, more of a plop,
So that we can feel the weight of pushing a chest of drawers down, then the shoe rack, then finally the study desk
My laptop and books and bra still on it
Plop. Plop. Plop.
Either my hands will tire or the furniture will thud
And it is kind of the same thing.

How it is hard to look at lamps without wanting to throw stones at them
How fairy lights are simultaneously the most frivolous and the most stubborn
Lights I have encountered
How feeble they are, how whimsical, how delicate, how pointless
To throw rocks at but here I am
Banging pencil boxes on them anyway:
Fairies, roaches, same thing.

How oceans were supposed to be blue
And here was the coastline
And here was the sunset
And here was the hanging bridge, that necklace
And here was my mother on a mat with corn on the cob
And here was laughter
And here was a purple dress
And how the ocean was brown
And tasted like crying. 

Tentative Memoirs to Love

Tonight the moon is crescent and tilted
Like a hammock over which we could dangle our legs
Or a slide on which we lie, become children,
Yellow petal which we could stick over our eyelids, draw eyes
Or sit on, like it is a yellow life boat.

Your palm has crescent lines, held up to your cheek,
It is like they are permanent memoirs to smiles.
You see the purple gorilla hanging from my bag,
For a moment, you are one, like you take little
Pictures like I take little pictures
But the picture is only mine to see.

Once in a while there are swings:
Seats that traded their feet for wings.
We are birds.

I do not need to be pushed.
As a little kid,
Nobody was there in the park so I
Flew and I flew and I was alone I
Taught myself to swing I
Do not need to be pushed I fell a few times but I didn't tell anyone I cried I
Taught myself to swing I
Nobody came to the park so I
Taught myself to swing.

You push me anyway.
Until my shoulders relax, my feet fall,
And I am still flying,
Because you
push me anyway.

Once in a while I dangle my feet
Off your quilt legs.
I lay back and rest my head,
A child safe, in your
Crescent and tilted hammock self.

water//happiness

The anemones are singing,
Waving their fingers like you do for children.
The octopuses are parachuting,
Dropping hints in ink: there is going to be a novel about this.
My hair has spread out
Into its very own starfish limbs, here,
if you cut off a lock, the lock will grow into another me

Or the lock will clog the bottom of the ocean
And then we'll need to find the plunger kept in that cupboard
In the memory of your first school.

The soap slips away from me like it has newly
discovered walking but from videos of snakes
Or swimmers
: in the water our feet merge: we don't walk
We glide.

I threw away an umbrella and it somersaulted
In the rain, two sparrows have now perched on its handle
Straining their necks to figure out how they could use this
Obvious boat as decoration in their nests.

In the water I am a loop, a squiggle, a haiku
In the water I can bend backwards and stand on my head, in the water
I am the Cirque du Soleil and maybe the crabs
Are waving their staccato pincers
In appreciation of me

In the water I am turned blue as though I am stained glass
And if I break the surface, I am mixed medium art titled
Ways of Breathing: Laughing.

In the water I breathe in salt and liquid and the conversations
That a school of fish whisper in bubbles to me
To telegram to another school
At the other end of the sea.

My green circular plastic tub is expanding
Until I no longer feel its edges.
And if my toe brushes against the edge,
I check for the bottom
Which I use to break through the surface,

A person, a precondition, a fountain.

everything feels like rain

I lie down on the hot, hot floor,
Like in the Lawrence poem;
And think of how everything feels like rain.

The curtains are flapping:
dissected wings taken from a life
that hasn't forgotten how to live.

I am whistling air into them
little whirlwinds, the kind you make when you dance
Without listening to the music.

We have evolved music, dances,
For rain, we have whispered desire to our windows
For rain, we have made little boats out of love notes,
For rain, we have thrown flower petals from our balconies,
For rain, we have looked up at clear skies and
Been downcast when the sky was not.

In the mirror, I have made partings, in my
hair, mouth, dimples, as though we were built
To be little receptacles of rain. The rain itself
Was magical until it could be stored, then it was just
Water. But we cup our hands out and throw
Water at each other. When that isn't enough, we find
Water breaking the road, and we invent a game of, then a word for
Water-hopping, puddle jumping.

Left alone, the umbrella refuses to stand upright,
As though umbrellas were created to ferry rainwater,
But our world then turned curiously upside down.

The water in the tap has become blue, someone let loose bottles of ink in the tank, no one admits to it
Because no one blames anyone, sitting under the tap
Our skin finally matches our mood, maybe finally we will fade
But now, we have little tags reading :
"Specimen may bleed blue when washed".
Imagine us walking in neat lines, turning the roads blue,
Washed.

The train passes by in the nighttime, the floor rumbles
And I feel it in the pit of my stomach, like
I was caught in the middle of thunder.
Tomorrow, I will see you.

I check the flowers I bought for you.
In the hot, hot night, they are white, and lit by
Slivers of drops.
But I have not watered them.

You will thread a flower in your hair,
And the drops will shake off on your ear.
And you'll laugh and say,
"It feels like rain."

Memory is a Strange Thing

The summer before college,
We lay on my parents' bed, feet up on the wall,
Pillows on our chests.
Your curls wrapped my straight hair, and you said:
"I know they hurt me,
I just don't remember how."

*

An artist made 1600 moons moving,
From 1950 to the day his father died,
And left it for us to watch in a circular hall with no lights.
This, his father saw this.
This, his father died watching this.
This, we live watching this.

We kissed in the hall, as the moons switched phases.
This, we came alive to this. 

The moon we remember isn't the one
His father remembers.

*

Lately I've been describing my long-lost emotions
To myself
As though they are people who have folded aside their bodies.

Fingers, pressing buttons on a remote whose batteries have died.

Calves, walking a narrow maze with edges.

Hands, floating in the darkness, acting as eyes.

Torso, leaving sweat fingerprints on my sheets.

I'm giving them skin and blood so that next summer, when you ask,
I can say,
"I know they hurt me,
And here are the injuries."

*
"The channel won't change."
I watch her every afternoon,
Afraid to use the elevator
Afraid to leave the house
Afraid to walk the long garden
Afraid to press the wrong button.
"The channel won't change."
My grandmother says.

I nod quietly, and watch her fingers pressing 

buttons on a remote whose batteries have died.

*

When my grandfather could walk using a walker again,
He'd call me, saying he had a surprise,
And take baby steps up the staircase and down.
He'd count each of them out for me,
Thinking I needed to know my numbers,
Even though I was thirteen. 

He'd count thirteen steps and say,
"It's because you are thirteen."

I can't count to thirteen without hearing a clank and a thud
Of calves, walking narrow mazes with edges.

*

I watched my grandmother fall thirteen steps.
They were thirteen, because when I got her upstairs, 

we had counted them.
I was her
Hands, floating in the darkness, acting as eyes.

There was a thud every three steps, twice when she landed.
I heard them with a clank I couldn't explain.

I remember that first drop of blood, and thinking
This red is regular, every month, this is regular.

That night, I was
Hands, floating in the darkness, acting as eyes,
Unable to forget sight.

*

My dream was blue.
The sky was blue, the rain was blue, we were wearing blue
The building was blue, 

Yet the blue you wanted belonged to the sky. 

So we jumped up, and I could brush against the sky.

It was my dream.
It was a happy dream.

I woke up, and I could see my shadow in sweat
Torso, leaving sweat fingerprints on my bedsheets.

It was my dream.
It was supposed to be a happy dream.

*

Lately I've not been thinking about it ending
But I have been thinking about endings.
My grandmother sleeps next to me,
Sometimes taking up the entire bed.
I am home very little,
In her sleep, she forgets I am there.

I whisper to her in her sleep,
"I know I hurt you, and I know I'll hurt them,
I just wish I didn't have to remember how."

Everything/Disrupting the Butterflies.

for Vidushi 

Last night before I feel asleep I saw purple butterflies dancing in front of my eyes
And in the morning the yellow flowers were shaking and I saw the proboscis of black butterflies
And when I was mixing red paint, there were pink, white, red butterflies swirling
And at the foot of my bed there is a lion cub illustration that puts butterflies
In my head when there are no flowers.

We have not smelt flowers in a long while.
Gardenia, say.
Say Dahlia, say carnations, say pansy, say camellia, say daisy, say dandelion, say dandelion, say
dande lion.
And above the lion cub is a swirl of colours that seems accidental,
But they are to fool butterflies who haven't smelt flowers
in a long while.

Imagine the lepidopterist, who cuts up butterflies, telling himself
quick
preserve the colour
preserve the scent
preserve the powder
preserve the abdomen
preserve the wings
and preserve the colour.

You take photos of our food, and ask for a brownie and a charger.
'Aren't you worried about your battery running out?'
You say, watching my phone blank out.
'I'm paranoid about my battery running out.'
'That's okay.'
I say.
That's okay.
I know you'd preserve the colour anyway.

And above the swirl of colours
Is someone trying to capture someone jumping into a puddle but
Catching motion requires a net,
With spaces as offerings to
the Chance of Losing Everything.
Ask the artist.
Ask the butterfly.

You sleep in the train, and in the autos.
You sleep with your specs on, and they move as the train does.
I cannot hear the flapping of wings in your head,
But it is loud enough to let you sleep over the hammering of the train.
Sometimes your sister grips my hand,
Because she can't hear me over the sound of her heart hammering.
Some people have butterflies in their stomach,
Her butterflies fly higher.

We walk to a bookstore and find a woman with ears like butterfly wings
Who pulls 43 books out with the speed
Of a butterfly's wings beating.
we ask her
what she does
how does she live
what is this magic
She takes care of her cat, she says.

Later, I watch as you lay still next to a cat,
With an asymmetrical, winged smile.
Two girls at the cat shelter look at me quizzically.
"Cats take care of her", I say.
They look at me.
"what is this magic?"

They painted the walls lavender the year I came to live here.
I spent a year staring at the colour.
They were supposed to change the colour that summer,
but they didn't.
In the winter,
There were butterflies on the floor,
Who dove into the walls, expecting to
seep in the nectar of life,
But found themselves dead.
The walls, they said.
The walls, they promised flowers.

And above the puddle-hopping,
There is nothing at all,
Except for a lavender wall.
But before I left, that summer, you gave me a green book
And that said
'Everything is art.'

Say lavender, say lavender, say lavender
Say la wonder.
So I stare at the walls until they appear-
Lilac, mauve, violet, purple.

This is my Everything.
Ask the artist.

Ask the butterfly.

Things I'll Tell My Children About My Childhood Home

When the lights went out, we came to life.
We were always sitting of the edge of shadows,
Waiting for the light to break, 'Load-shedding' we called it.
We lit the darkness in little candle flames
And ate from a single plate by a single light.
Even at five, I knew where the candles were kept,
And that darkness meant candles which meant stories.
We laughed and talked without looking at each other
Like we had learnt the maps of each other's faces by heart.
Even now, when I need a story, I need darkness
To have it come to light.
Load-shedding, we called it.

The houses were always in primary colours.
Every evening, for eleven minutes, the sky would be
Yellow in the middle, pink at the edges, and
We'd wait until the houses would start shining,
Yellow in the middle, pink at the edges.
Every time my mother found a colour pastel scrawl
On the pristine white walls,
I'd blame the sky for seducing children
Into acting the drama of eleven minutes
In eleven untidy seconds.

The pond was marmalade because what else could it be?
The sofa set was a castle because what else could it be?
My mother's double bed was an archaeological digging site because what else could it be?
And I was the best girl ever,
Because what else could I be?

When it would rain, each house turned into a island.
For seven days, we would look down from the verandah and hear
In the crashing of the rain:
Holiday, holiday, holiday.

And on the seventh continuous day,
there would be fishermen, ferrying
Us travellers, explorers, paired animals,
From shore to shore.
We never saw the fishermen except on that seventh day,
And one rainy evening, I read about fish that slept in the soil until rain,
And I wondered as I saw them, the next day, singing, shining in the rain,
If the authors forgot to add '-ermen'.

We'd wait until we heard the jingle of their nets;
Little, scurrying fish jumping into their little, scurrying vessels
And sail into the sunset, in this tide of this temporary ocean.
We'd return, world-weary and hagridden,
And state wisely to our parents:
'He was right, Magellan.'

There's very little that goes perfectly
Against the backdrop of a purple evening.
I got a boyfriend here once, and he seemed wrong.
I got an almost boyfriend once, and he seemed wrong.
Once I got two kittens home, who played in front
Of a television on static,
And they seemed wrong.
So I cushioned myself into the purple sky and thought to me,
'Thank God I cannot be seen.'

There was always a new summer, and always the pond,
Always a litter of puppies, always a lost frog,
Always tadpoles in the stream nearby and
Always dead earthworms in the muggy field,
Always the crow hatchlings on the same telephone pole,
Always a new summer, and brief reminders that the day was circular
And the year was always whole.

This time was the last time I returned.

I found a lane I never visited in my nineteen years.

Because there were other boundaries I was breaking,
I broke into a run
And I found an unexpected wall,
And in its middle,
I found an unexpected sun.

Neen.

And then the hills.

Back when we were walking in
Secret tracks, climbing stair upon stair
Searching for alternative paths,
We came upon an impasse.
Someone opened up a window and
In this version of the story,
There was a bird inside.
And in this version of the story,
The sky was turning orange in the middle of the day time.
In this version of the story, the bird whizzed
Past us, leaving behind a trail of feathers
And in this version of the story,
We had enough love to watch them.

In this version of the story,
We had enough patience to watch
Feathers falling gentler than snow,
And in this version of the story,
We had more, enough
to wait until the feathers could catch up with us
So that we could catch them.

In this version of the story, the bird burst into the sky
Until we didn't remember what colour it was-
Only that this strange bird turned into fire,
And disappeared, and
In this version of the story, the half-light was
Sufficient to see that no matter which way
We held up its feathers, they would reflect the sky:
As if we were given personal clouds for the times
We would not see them.
As if just by standing side by side,
We were staring at different birds,
Different skies.

As if,
That night when the bus was a beast,
Breaking against the ribcage of the traffic lights,
The feather would wound my collarbone,
Singing,
'Home, home, home.'
And the feather would tickle your collarbone,
Singing,
'No, no, no.'

In this version of the story,
The woman in the window
Would not tell us we were
'Going in the wrong way'
In this version of the story,
We'd stare at our feathers till
We realized that there is only one way
Before an impasse,
And it goes the same way
As a bird turning into the sky.

Which bird, which sky.