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Blindfold me,
uncuff my tortured hands.
I'll see you through my memories,
of a blood-war
where only I bled.
Your footsteps reeks of guilt
luring me to be your disastrous fate.
I'll chase your grim laugh.
Wait,
wait till I unscrew your beauty,
and puncture your happiness.
I'll gently tear your soul
wearing it as my comfort cloak.
Do not beg for my mercy,
instead call out to heaven
confess your crimes,
the atrocities you've done to me
and I might refrain.
Soon, my lullabies will lead you
to the prison of dreams,
I'll comfort you
with my gentle kisses
Until you wake up, once again.
—You called it upon yourself.
I can't say that I'm the easiest to handle.
I can't claim a saint's position in a game for the wicked, but I had given you a charter to my heart, with a map—heavenly and roadside cues to guide you.
I can't say that I'm the easiest, but what I asked was simple: meet me halfway, and I would too.
Why I Walk Slow?
I walk slow
as if my feet have sunken
deep in the flat road,
my steps small
like the silent murmurs of the grasses
I trod on.
I walk slow—
for the moss to creep from the shade,
for the demure leaves to find their voice,
for the fleeting clouds to build home inside me.
The journey that seemed to betray me
with each step I took,
but I found the treasure
as I walked slow,
the lonely rocks taught me to be strong,
the stars lent me their hope,
the furtive breeze told me to let go
and that's why I walk slow,
for what I seek
and what I learn
is all along the path
and not at the end.
The autumn leaves fall,
The sky, a shade of grey.
The rains are coming,
But it'll all be okay.
You've survived storms.
You've survived worse.
You've stood on the battlefield,
And been the most fierce.
You've won every battle,
You've held your shield high.
Can't control how everyone feels,
But god knows that you still try.
The battlefield's welcoming you,
You can't give up this time.
Start the final countdown,
And see how things will be just fine.
It's not white lies this time,
It's an advice to follow.
Fake it till you make it.
Let go of all the needless sorrow.
Hold your head up high,
You are not some mad maniac.
They'll try to break your spirit,
But never ever take a step back.
Hold onto your shield,
Just like you've always done.
You might be losing control,
But this time, you won't run.
You might fall and stumble,
You might as well shed a tear.
Don't be scared, don't hesitate,
It's not a sign of fear.
The kurukshetra's designed for you,
You're fighting for your own dharma.
Not everything's in your control,
Leave out things for karma.
See how the battlefield welcomes you,
It believes in you for the last time.
Start the final countdown,
And see how things will be just fine.
~Aarya
The more I run
the closer you come,
a shadow that clings
to my every step.
Isn’t it a tragedy?
To be haunted
by what you once loved.
After the Storm: Part IV
The truth is,
I didn’t see her slipping away.
Not at first.
She would smile at me,
but her eyes didn’t shine
the way they used to.
She asked me how my day was,
but I barely answered.
I thought she’d always be there.
I thought love didn’t need tending,
like it would keep blooming on its own.
But love isn’t a garden
you can ignore.
If you don’t water it,
it dries up.
And when it did,
she went looking for rain
somewhere else.
I remember now
how she used to sit by the window,
watching the world outside.
She wanted me to join her.
She wanted me to notice her.
But I stayed lost
in my own thoughts,
in my own storms,
not seeing the one
building inside her.
She didn’t leave me right away.
No, she stayed.
She waited.
She tried.
But I was blind to her loneliness.
I didn’t hear the questions
in her silence
or see the pain in her smile.
So when she found someone else—
someone who listened,
someone who noticed her—
I couldn’t blame her.
Not really.
But I did.
Because it was easier to be angry
than to admit I was the one
who let her go.
I didn’t ask her why.
Not at first.
I only raged.
I broke the quiet of our home
with words I’ll never forgive myself for.
She stood there,
tears in her eyes,
and whispered,
“You stopped seeing me.”
And that was it.
The truth came down on me,
harder than any storm.
I could have saved her,
saved us,
but I didn’t.
And when I lost control,
when my hands moved
before my heart could stop them,
I sealed it.
Now, I sit in this garden,
where her hands once planted life.
I press my fingers into the soil,
searching for the pieces of her
I’ll never find.
I want to believe
she forgives me.
But forgiveness feels far away,
like a place I’ll never reach.
I should have loved her better.
I should have seen her pain.
But I didn’t.
And now,
the storms stay with me,
raining over a love
I let wither and die.
At first, it tasted like sun-beams with fresh smell and inviting ripes, ready to be devoured by angel-like souls who fed upon anything new, anything worth the race of their innocent little curious hearts. They bestowed knowledge, wisdom, the gift to individualistic pursuit, and the will to defy. It would lure in them with speculations and mysteries, disguising their true intentions.
At last, it tasted like slaughter in their mouths, mingled with tragic sight that broke their angel wings. It would go rotten in their stomachs, slice their insides and gut their flesh, break their bones, making them mortal feeble dust. It would bestow death, sin, destruction, self-loathing. It would make them whine in madness as they slowly wither each day and night. It won't hide like before, instead it would take them for sinister pleasure called revenge.
"Sometimes, I don’t know if I want to be found or
if I’ve grown comfortable being lost."
After the Storm: Part II
The rain had stopped,
but inside me,
it kept falling.
I walked to the garden,
her kitchen light behind me,
her shadow moving slowly—
a habit of love
that I barely noticed
when I was young.
I think of my wife now.
Her smile,
the way she laughed at things
I thought were small,
the way she loved me
when I didn’t deserve it.
I didn’t care enough,
didn’t see her for what she was,
until the day she was gone.
She told me once,
“You’re always somewhere else,”
and I shrugged it off.
Now I know where I was—
lost in myself,
blinded by my own storms.
She left quietly,
as if she didn’t want to disturb me,
even in death.
And when they called to tell me,
I stood still,
the phone cold in my hand.
I didn’t cry.
Not then.
But now, I feel her absence
in the spaces she used to fill—
her favorite chair,
the empty side of the bed,
her cup cooling on the table.
My mother sees it.
She doesn’t ask,
but her silence speaks louder
than anything else.
Her love feels like forgiveness,
though I haven’t earned it.
I kneel in the dirt,
the rosemary brushing my fingers.
My wife loved this garden.
She planted these roots
while I stood in the doorway,
too busy to help.
The rain has stopped,
but the ground is soft.
I press my hands into the earth,
as if I can find her here,
as if I can say,
“I’m sorry.”
This is how loss feels—
not like thunder,
but like the quiet after,
when the world keeps going
and you are left behind,
still soaked in the storm.
They say history repeats itself,
but it is not history;
it is us—
our stubborn grip
on the threads of the familiar,
our refusal to unwrite
the tragedies that define us.
We call it destiny,
but it is only fear
worn like a shroud.
I remained unsettled, bruised over the words that didn't leave my mouth and bruised over ones that did without intent,
I remained forgotten, forgotten by the love that never knew me and that one I told about my somber night,
I remained silent, silent to be heard in the middle of chaos and silent to be completely free of words,
I remained plain, plain enough not to be threatening the world and plain enough to be left alone.
-At what cost?
After the Storm: Part III
I stayed in the garden
long after my mother went inside.
The air felt heavy,
like it knew the weight I carried,
the truth I buried
In the rosemary she planted.
She was my swan.
Pretty and innocent-
or so I thought.
She moved through life
with an elegance I didn’t question,
a beauty I was too blind to doubt.
And me?
I was the fool who taught the swan
how to cheat.
I gave her trust,
love,
freedom.
And she took it all,
used it to hide her lies
In a veil,
I never saw through it—
not until it was too late.
It was a letter.
Not meant for me.
Folded neatly,
tucked between the pages
of her favorite book.
His name was there.
His words were there.
Words I had never written.
Words I could never take back.
I remember confronting her,
the way her face changed—
how quickly grace turned to guilt,
how silence gave her away
before she even spoke.
I was the storm then.
I raged,
I begged,
I broke.
But she didn’t deny it.
Not once.
That night,
the clouds hid the stars.
The sky watched
as I held her trembling hands
and asked her why.
She didn’t cry.
She only said,
“I was lonely.”
The world shattered.
A thousand pieces of us
fell to the floor.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
And she?
She wasn’t the swan I loved—
she was something else,
something I couldn’t bear to see.
In the end,
I don’t know what came over me.
I don’t remember the moment
my hands moved to her throat,
the moment her gasps
turned to silence.
It wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t hate.
It was loss,
A serene loss.
Her body crumpled to the ground,
fragile as the petals
she used to press between books.
And I stood there,
the storm inside me
finally quiet.
Now, every step I take
is soaked in her absence.
Every breath I draw
is heavy with regret.
I come to the garden
to search for forgiveness
in the soil she loved,
but there’s none to be found.
She was my swan,
and I killed her.
The rain has stopped,
but the storm never left me.
Is it far-fetched to wish that my tears could be enough for us both? Too childish a hope to want my scars to suffice for us both? To let you see the even line of the sea while I battle the storm?
But it's a wish—a single facet of life where we are entitled to let our minds soar beyond the horizons of possibility.
I wish you'd be different from me, all the while knowing I can't stop the inevitable. You're bound to fall and bruise, bleed, and carry scars of your own.
Oh, but I wish you'd read this. Sink into each word and step into the realm of the unsaid. I wish you wouldn't make the same mistakes I did, face the same giants I faced, or fall into the same pits I fell into.
Look at me. The universe hasn't even finished knitting you from threads of the stars. I haven't given it the needles or the yarn, yet I ache for your non-existent tears, for I know they would be the death of me.
#3
Snippets of the letters for you.
They tell me,
“Work harder,
be better,
stand out.”
But I’ve tried,
and all I’ve ever been
is someone who exists
in the spectrum between extraordinary
and forgotten.
I’ve learned to smile at the world
while asking myself,
“Is being enough
ever enough?”
#beingmediocre
Would you hand a brick to a woman building a world with her bare hands, trap the lights inside her eyes to project on the night sky,
Would you help the fabric of heaven to be draped on earth, allow the stars atop to convince her into waving goodbye,
Would you give her the tools to build a boat out on the turquoise sea, push the waves out of her trail in a heartbeat,
Would you see her thunder like hoizer beat, find the music of her flaw and feat.
I stand here,
at the crossroads of my thoughts,
wondering what the next move will be
a leap or a step,
a word or silence.
The choice is mine,
but still, I’m afraid
of what happens after.
How do I feel about it?
I still ask myself this as I read it over and over, adding bits here and there where it fits and trying my best to fully explain my own life situation to myself. Trying to grasp onto reality as I replace the situations of lives lived inside myself. The life of my own as well as their own can't be summed up so easily into words of how I basically "feel" about it all. So many unanswered questions. So many unfounded talents, both mine and their own. It's like our lives were put on hold, until the next moments, while the records just kept skipping along. Continuing to skip the same old songs into unrecognizable heaps of unlistenable tunes. Ones even they themselves can't stand to listen to. Even though, they themselves, were the ones that wrote out the masters. As if the momentum to move forward past it all was met by the exact same need to go back into it all and unfold. I try not to get so lost in thinking of all of it. Pressing to leave the past where it lies, while I try my best to hold onto futures I one day hope to see. Where they are but mere imprints on what made me, yet nothing compared to the dreams I hope to achieve. They are like the dust my footsteps stir up as I dance freely. There was never a sense of future with either of them. It's as if they were lost long ago in whatever swept them along into a failed sense of belonging. Trying their best to hold onto something that they could never keep. Never mold besides the genes their actions did prove to be. Do we choose the lives we live, or are we sporadically thrust into randomness fated to work our ways out of it? How do I feel? I feel like I'm doing my best to undo all the learning my childhood gifted me through the thoughtless years. I wonder why my memory has been so horrid and now somewhat feeling clear, I find nothing besides the grace to not have remembered each moment. I value finding myself and my mind now that my path is clear without them. They aren't horrible people by any means. Just lost. I aim to not be lost amongst life's beauty. I breathe in and out, something given to me so easily, yet never was I taught to appreciate the true meaning. Life is so much more than I ever thought growing up. Maybe that's why my heart has grown beyond the bounds of this particular vessel.
°Karlzz•
One day,
when you long to be heard,
I might be there,
but deaf.
I’ll hope you gaze into my eyes,
and in that quiet,
you’ll find the answer,
without a word.
- Achu B
#Agony
She greets death with a kiss, in love with the treason of altering her soul like the night fall won't pass and crumble the things close to her heart's desire. It is a custom of a woman, to repair what you didn't break, they told her long ago and she treats what she didn't believe in like a myth told to scare small girls with big spirits. They said, if there was a shadow of a doubt in your veins, you must let it be buried formally, in front of everyone that wants it gone. If you have voices of your own too big for your small frame then you will do well to bite your tongue they chanted. And she knew if there was anyone to be scared of, it wasn't them for even the slight change of tone of her wolfy voice shakes something inside them. She knew the only way to control a menace is to weaken it with fear or use the method of pirates and collect the heart of an ocean like an object. They think power is control yet power was the ability to move the ship without lifting a finger.
Preservation is a price too big to pay for someone else's sins.
"How long before you realized that the ones you looked up to had craters as deep as their length and rifts that tore their souls?
How long before you saw they were simply better at mending their broken pieces and sewing their tears on their own?"
I am tired of this world that keeps asking—
be softer, be kinder,
give more of yourself than you have.
But what is left to give
when your hands are already shaking,
when your heart is a house without walls,
and the rain won’t stop coming in?
I tell myself to keep trying.
But even trying feels like drowning sometimes.
#pretending
#losspoetry
I'm not pensive, I swear.
I don't ask my heart
why do you keep beating
even after all the accusations
you face, for being insane.
My mind, in no way,
suffers from a cataclysmic typhoon
of dern, gloomy thoughts
and my soul remains unscathed,
untouched by the trivial waves of emotions,
hence, it never aches.
As I said before,
I'm blithe and nonchalant.
I live today
only after forgetting yesterday
and bury no traces of it
that smells like regret.
It's all in their minds…
what a strange world I live in
and must I add, I say no lies,
NEVER.
#Irony
They promised me kingdoms,
but left me with ruins.
The crown,
once gilded with promises,
now crumbles with the weight of betrayal.
I sift through the dust,
searching for jewels
that were never real.
The throne is splintered,
its wood groaning under the weight
of stories I can no longer tell.
And yet I wear the rags of royalty,
a monarch of ash,
ruling over shadows
of what might have been.
#hopeinruins
#losspoetry
The Food Problem
"What am I going to eat now?"
Asks the rich, for he has an abundance
Of food choices—he's been spending
Half an hour scrolling down the culinary app,
Salivating on the sight of the appetizing meats and snacks.
Some days he'd repeat the same thought process
While studying the menu at a restaurant.
"What am I going to eat now?"
Asks the poor, for he has none.
He then proceeds to scour the trash can
At the back of the restaurant.
The sight of the leftover chicken makes him drool—
Not much of the meat left, but it's better than yesterday.
"I'm thankful for what I'm having."
Says the modest. He then continues to pray
Before consuming the simple dinner he can afford that day—
No thought to complain for he has known
The taste of meatless bones
He found inside the garbage bin
At the back of the local fast-food chain.
A little jewellery I own:
a pair of silver earrings, a gold nose ring,
a pair of silver anklets, a pearl ring.
These are said to be mine, to be my own—
this little jewellery I own.
They shimmer, they glitter,
shiny white and yellow metal.
A place in my heart for these pieces,
though I may sound materialistic.
Earned through hard work and sweat,
a gift from life's anchors lovingly set.
A sense of belonging they hold,
a sense of warmth in the cold.
The little shell I lived in was shattered,
my little jewellery lay scattered.
When I broke the nose ring I own,
the little jewellery I owned was disowned.
– Iris
“I spent so long trying
to be strong for others,
I forgot how to cry for myself.”
And if she takes her time to draw your face in canvases, envisions the things you would say to her while staring into her soul like the sailor song would if it had eyes, don't take her for granted,
And if she takes her sweet time to read you her favourite line in a book, thinking you would know her more while she gently guides you to her inner world, don't take her for granted.
~now you know your deadly sin?
"The Quite love"
~Mahir Muntasim
"I love quietly,
Like the moon loves the tides—
Unseen, unspoken,
Yet moving everything.
This love is a silence within me,
A wordless song that echoes endlessly.
It asks for nothing, expects nothing,
Yet its weight fills my being.
I watch from afar,
Not daring to touch,
For to touch might destroy the purity
Of what I hold inside.
In my dreams, we meet,
But even there, I keep my distance.
For love, to me,
Is not possession or claim;
It is a surrender to the beauty of simply feeling.
So I love quietly,
Like the sky loves the stars—
Each one far away,
Yet all held together by the same vastness."
The reason I couldn't write a love poem
The reason I couldn't write a love poem
was because I didn't know how.
I never mastered the art of
scribbling words that strike the right
cord of a heart to make it leap
in envy or in wish of finding such love.
No, actually, the reason I couldn't write
a love poem was because
I didn't like to. I didn't like that I
should sound too personal.
I didn't like that it was so easy to
pen down such heavy a word.
I didn't like that it made me think I could find love.
Okay, that isn't true. The real reason was
because it felt like blasphemy.
I thought one should have a degree
of knowledge of what love is about,
and I utterly was a clueless being.
I knew nothing of love; neither did love
know a thing of me.
Now that is half a lie. The poignant thing
about this world is love,
and it curses through the veins of
every living thing.
I knew by heart what love was,
but not by senses or expression.
Many a time I've confused it for something
different, and something different, so
it just didn't feel right to write.
No, that wasn't the case really.
I couldn't write it because I wasn't
in love and never was, and intended
to never be because I believed it was
another way of confinement.
I didn't want another being to
be the reason for the transition
of my mood, that their actions be the
reason for my happiness or sadness.
I wanted to be free
in the best way possible.
Okay, the truth was I was my worst critic,
and each time I wrote, they either
sounded like a puppy sick love
or too stern or unrequited or
not good enough to be called a
love poem.
So there was always something wrong
to point at to make it end in the
trash.
No, actually, everyone seemed
to be writing about it,
and I never wanted to be among
the crowds.
I felt there was always something
better to write about.
I believed there were enough love poems
in the world to satisfy the whole
of humanity.
Okay, the real truth was that I was
afraid,
afraid to write about
something that could end,
afraid that I'll end up burning those
pages,
afraid they would turn out to be thorns
that stab my heart,
afraid that it would be about you
and that I would love it too much
and might hang it on my wall,
and that I might look at it so much
to picture you again and again.
Okay, the one that never could possibly
be a lie was that
I wanted to write about a love poem
without using the word love,
without using roses and sweets
to design my notes.
And also, I felt I never needed to
in such a manner.
I felt the best-written love poem
that I could ever write would
be about my mother,
and that the best romance I could
ever describe
would be the beauty of nature.
Okay, the reason was that everything
in the list were either half a truth or
the truth.
The reason was that I had too
much reason not to
or that I created reasons to keep
me from it,
and that I questioned everything
and I was good at playing the devil.
And when I had finally asked the
girl in the mirror why she wouldn't write
about it,
"I don't know, I don't know."
Her words endlessly echoed in my
head, or she never stopped
saying them.
That was the reason.
— Myra
MY ATELIER
Your heart is my atelier,
where I sew the deep cracks
you carry
with my diaphanous words.
Your rhythmic lubb-dubb
settles itself on my pages,
the blueness of your soul
becomes my ink.
On your earthy diaphragm
I grow my ever-green metaphors.
Your ribs cage me inside
freeing me from my demons,
my sweet, secure haven.
Your gritty, harsh breaths
traveling from your nasal passage,
rains in your thorax
drenching me in a life—
so tender, so recherché.
On the soft walls of your heart
I paint all my desires and dreams.
#heart
#connection_of_us