A Thousand Minuses

there are ten million people in the city tonight
and no witnesses to my sleepless cries.

starless skies, the moon displaced;
echoes of a love’s lost trace.

feathery kisses, soft whispered names,
in glimpses of envy, perhaps a hidden flame.

boundaries blurred,
lines crossed in the night;
a strange resistance to the candle light.

a fragile dance of fleeting chances.
broken glass. missing pieces.

in shattered fragments, glimmers of hope.
a thousand minuses, a love I must outgrow:

you were the angel; but alas it’s true
you will never love me the way I need you to.

Disintegration

Your eyes had glazed over icy cool, more blue than warm. I always told myself you’re there, you’re in there, I know it and if only my arms were a little longer. I wanted to reach in, hold you, teach you how to love the way you taught me. You had forgotten your own lessons. When did you begin to run on this toxic combination of pain and oxygen. What happened to your fire? I wanted to rekindle your heat but your insides were too damp with uncried tears diluting your own wisdom.

I did not know of your new drills, that you choked on chords and your shower-songs had been washed away by pink-red water. That your damp pillow had taken over putting you to sleep every night, an affair I’d only trusted the stars with. That your pen met paper as seldom as your magic smile curved your lips. It’s so clear now, crystal clear, that you were never afraid of footpaths and heights and science lab root sections and apple seeds, but of yourself. Scars on your skin, scars in your heart.

Snapped wire, broken glass. You always used to say ‘shattered’ has a beautiful sound, only you stopped once its feel spiralled into your existence. I wish I had shown you how when you were 4, you played with a glass-painting kit and the broken pieces fascinated you because they were so pretty. I wish I had force-painted your wings with war paint before your knife decided they had to go. Why didn’t you let them grow.

I wish I could see you wave goodbye to airplanes once more, not caring for a second whether people were watching. And again. And again. So many shades of colour took flight when you left without a goodbye. What are the colours like, where you are now? Does your golden glitter heart see more than black and white again.

I remember you from when you left little surprise hearts in our notebooks and always sang the loudest as we blew out birthday candles and how you were more proud of us than we were of ourselves and how your soft chin quivered as you tried hard not to cry when we did. This is how I choose to remember you.
You taught me the science of time. Today could be my last tomorrow. Or anyone’s. And with this knowledge, I promise to learn to love living every day. For you.

Eyes Mine Know Well

has no one ever told you that
your eyes aren’t brown?

your gaze has borrowed from a hundred places
a colour I’d use to paint a million pictures
clay, I think,
soft clay from the hills and valleys
with the spring-kissed earth
on those postcards you send
only to the ones you love.
your eyes have every shade of colour I ever gathered
as a child from the old pebble beach,
and golden specks; I’m certain
the sun once danced in you.
the falling leaves of autumn
have swirled into the way you look at me,
teaching me new languages,
of storms, of sentiment, and of silence.
surely,
if the smell of rain were made of a colour,
your eyes would be its name.

did the fireflies learn from your piercing gaze?
I know I want to.
I know the stars slipped out last night,
with only your eyes as their excuse.
I’ve mastered the art of tiptoeing past
the crackle at their surface,
and into the beckoning flame.
a kind of candlelight;
searing at the edges, yet
gentle at the core

13/05/17

Angel

There are ten million people in the city tonight
And one angel.
Touching souls,
Plotting promises of good days to come
Where screams once painted sleepless nights.
“Everything will be okay, honey.”

“I won’t ever recover from this.”
Broken shards of glass
Still shine in the light.
Still can be picked up and
United to reflect the colours of your dearest dreams.
Don’t give up.
You have to win.

“Okay, I want to.
But isn’t zero worth more than a minus thousand?”
Every life is a pile of good things and bad things, he says.
The good things don’t always soften the bad, 
But the bad things don’t spoil the good.
It isn’t a minus thousand.
It’s a hundred, and a minus five, and a seven, and a minus thirty.
Numbers are your friends.
Zero isn’t worth anything.

“I no longer believe that there exist good things.
I can’t think of any; there must not be any.”
If you stare at the sky long enough, he teaches,
You begin to see the stars.

“I see them now,” I realize, in awe.
He smiles at me until my smile is no longer under my own control.
The angel that lit up my life.

Love,
Ta-treyi.
8/1/17

The Dark Night

​Sunshine brings life, yes, but
I seek shadows for comfort when I’m alone.

Scars shine in the moonlight.
It’s thunderstorms that conceal my tears
Hide the stars, cloak the moon, 
Eclipse all light
So no one stares
As they weep with me,
Flashing lightning in snatches
To illuminate my grateful smile.

People think of these as mere absences,
But silence is a saviour
From all my commotion, and

The dark night is, after all,
What makes the moon and stars worth looking at.

-Maitreyi

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160214.html

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Starry Sky

My Angel, I smile
As my closed eyes fly open; this time
In colourful dreams –
The nightmares never come.

Because should I awaken with
the ghost of my scream from last night on my lips,
I know you’ll be there
Whispering it’s okay, hush, it’s okay

And maybe you’ll listen to me sleep,
Watching over me with your warmth,
A moonbeam in the gloom.

Mon ciel étoilé,
My starry sky.

Rien n’est éternel, mais notre amitié est pour toujours et à jamais.

Love,
Ta-treyi.

The Starry Sky

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140830.html

Flame

My lips are chapped.
I don’t fit in small sizes.
I’ve got messy hair,
I don’t have clear skin.
I’m not smart
I’m not ‘cool’.
My eyes hide behind thick glasses,
I’m too soft to be heard and
I crack lame jokes.
This girl doesn’t have that fire in her.

But it’s your loss that you,
You don’t see my raw smile, the most genuine one you’ll see
Don’t see how well every inch of me fits with my piano pedal and keys
Nor how wildly beautiful my hair gets after an hour of dancing in the rain
And you haven’t held my warm, welcoming hands
Haven’t been blown away by the whirlwind that is my mind.
You don’t know or care how thoughtful I am
Or see my eyes shining every sunrise, every morning.
You don’t hear me sing lullabies to my cat every night
So she doesn’t go to bed crying like I do
Your loss that you’re oblivious and
You think I’m a burnt out matchstick

When really- there’s this glowing ember waiting
To engulf you with its flame.

Whirlwind

 

I’m a whirlwind inside of my head right now

And the butterflies in my stomach!

They need no urge to appear.

Their fluttering gives me life. It’s a sunshiny feeling, I swear

But then the brutish grey clouds eclipse my warm star of fantasy,

Their cold, cruel droplets of misery blur my vision,

I can feel them condense on my skin.

The last vestiges of my stability shivering.

It’s getting everywhere, it’s clogging my mind, clouding my reason

In torrents, overwhelming; my butterflies are terrified

And the butterflies know only too well –

They must rise above the clouds.

Can they?

They try so hard, they really do

They are capable.

But somehow, instead, just as they reach the silver line,

Crossed wires spark a flame.

Five words uttered viciously send them into a frenzy again,

And somehow, instead, they just get stuck in that whirlwind.

I’m afraid of the rain.

Flung away harshly, disoriented, those beautiful butterflies

They’re lost, in a daze.

And they’re broken, they’ve lost their wings

And they’ve lost that charm, that sparkle, that grace

And no longer

Do they give me life.