I Adore When It Isn't Me

Her brow wrinkles in concentration and her ink-stained fingers tap the bench in rhythm. Coffee with what looks like whipped cream on top sits half forgotten next to her stack of notes. She looks up in time to catch a retreating smile. "I was singing out loud, wasn't I?", she asks the smiler. Exasperation Central.

Sometimes

I’m tired of reading between the lines and measuring the depth. I’m tired of placing everything under a damned microscope. I wish I could admire the beauty of the surface, for a change. I wish I could appreciate meaninglessness, irrelevance and anything that is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Only sometimes, though.

Poisoned wine

Poison,
Was laced into
The first glass of sweet wine you offered me

Since then even water tastes like fire

From betrayal is born vindictiveness
And for those of us who never forget
It is akin to the demon child born of a mortal womb

You will always be the poison in my sweet wine

Delusion

The past can be terribly deceptive. It’s like an old photograph. You see a smiling face, a loving arm around someone, and your eyes start glistening with unshed tears.
I look so happy…
Photographs can lie.
They’re just images you create.
Smiles can be faked.
The past can delude.
All because you want to believe.

Mirror

Remember that day in the coffee shop? You know who appeared on that empty chair beside you. You tried to hide her, didn’t you? With extra cups of cappuccino and silly laughter and inane conversations. Do you think your friends noticed? No, you did a pretty good job.

It’s a pity reflections can’t be killed.

Of Peace

Days passed into weeks, into months. And in that time, she slowly started to forgive, because forgiveness is the start to peace. And perhaps this is why peace makes the most profound and costliest bruise: its acquisition comes only through heart-wrenching sorrow. And she forgave, because the memory doesn’t eat their soul. It devours yours.

Pride and Prejudice

Sometimes,
you close your eyes
to shut out the whole world
Pretending,
you’re the only one in it
For a piece
of that illusory peace

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Sometimes,
you close your eyes
And leave them shut
Just to see if,
when you open them
the other person is still there

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Speakers interchanged
But the words stayed true.

Waiting to resign

Once upon a time there were just dreams and doings
Victory and failure;
Zenith and nadir,
See-saws and slips
Happiness and despair.

Today, there is Acceptance.
And an unfathomable piece more than simplistic outcomes.
There are differing motives.
Incomprehensible facts,
Complicated states,
Unknown pitfalls.

Despite the sudden up swell,
Resignation has still not arrived.

The right choice

She bit her lip in frustration. She couldn’t believe she was in such a situation again.
Choices. Argh. Why did it always have to be either this or that? Why me? Why me?
No. She had to choose. She had to make a decision. And the right one, for that matter.

"Beige. The beige bag."

Lady Cleo

The ‘queen’ reclined there; surveying a freshly showered dark night shining like a knight’s gauntlet that lay beneath her.

Some faces, familiar hukka smell, chocolate fondue, her stretched, bare legs appeared in a dream.

In the half-light of lanterns there was no harm in being all that she wasn’t.
Daybreak was still a while away.