letters

i used to write letters
on carefully picked papers
with specific stationery 

i loved signing them off
yours 
yours faithfully
yours truly
yours sincerely
something about belonging 
to others felt right
being known in connection
because somehow i was never really mine

dont get me wrong
i love (loved) the people i wrote for 

i thought i could stack words 
on top of one another
and call it a person
that the long lists
of 'yours' would make me one

but i cannot

people are too many words 
to fit on a page or eight

i felt this need to 
romanticise relationships
write them in ink
to be able to feel them

dont get me wrong (again)
i love the art of crafting letters

thinking of words 
putting them together
handmaking envelopes 

but i cannot

because paper trails 
don't do justice 
to constellations

i used to write letters 
to 'my future self'
hoping she was better

but i cannot

split myself in three
a past, present, future, me


i will still write letters
on carefully picked papers
with specific stationery

but i will not
sign them off with a


yours sincerely

Teenagery Musings Before I Complete Two Decades: Boxes and Rooms

I am not one

To go back to messages exchanged

Words typed and backspaced

Emotions behind dimly lit screens 

But when I do

It feels like unpacking packed boxes

Ones lost (forgotten? lost? forgotten?)

While shifting 

towns, 

homes,
and rooms

With a friend's comforting words 

In a city lost in blurs

The only extension of home 

In a city that is not mine 
Like a landline 
With the spiralling cord holding my legs
Rooting me back in the ground

Soft voices
In 8 minute tracks
Warm white light
Washing faces at 2 A.M.
Laughter in spells of sleep
Love? Comfort?

An almost room 
With a name on top

Songs sent back and forth
Photographs
Conversations of 'facts'
Stars
Flowers
Poetry
Boxes that should be tagged 'miss'cellaneous

Misspelt words
Written through watering eyes
Desperately reaching out
Badly worded texts
With pruned fingers
Waddling through the drowning water

Traces of terrified fingers

Typing naive responses 

To older boys 
Trying their 'luck'
At what? A Fuck?
Asking about
Threads covering my skin
Questions I only understand now

Boxes I never open
With photos I never seeked
With texts I never read
Disgust echos in every fibre
Long lines of texts
Confessing supposed undying love
From both the unknown and oddly known
Bad rooms that I would rather lock

Arrows shot through
Anger and hurt
Confrontations 
Rolling eyes
Clenched teeth
Smashed screens
Realising the 'ends' in friends

Quick articulations
Meticulously chosen words
Sharp witty terms
Half-hearted burns
Terms 
Politics
Accusations
Name-calling
Blocking 
'Please go google'

Boxes with cobwebs
Memories so old 
That even feelings have now gone cold

Turning twenty is terrifying, moving out of the 'teenage' years fills me with an odd sense of growing up and dread. I have always been a person who has not allowed myself to indulge in 'teenagery' things, especially I've never let my poetry be about teen cliches and crisis or cringe. This week I let myself indulge in the cringiest cliches of being a teenager because it is the last time I get to, so here you have it teenagery musings before I complete two decades. 

Writer's Block

Since I've had one for the last many months

I choose to write of it

Hoping it breaks this insane cycle

Where I sit at a desk and my brain screams

Only to come up with blank pages

As though the inkpot of my feelings has dried

It has dried and hardened, not diminished

Making it toxic as it sits inside

The first few words come up to my throat 

Like the bile I feel every morning when I wake

But just as I gulp it before I puke

My backspace kills the chains of alphabets

Even now, I sit here with dwindling thumbs

Staring off into space after every line

This poem has literally no reason or rhyme

As someone who is supposed to have a way with words

I seem to have lost mine

I wish to end the poem abruptly

Because that has been the flow of my thoughts lately

They begin with a hope and passion

And then

Time Travelling

I am stuck.

The fabric of time has wound itself around me
I stepped in, mesmerized by the colours
And now

I am stuck.

Taped to this tapestry
Sewn-in which are tales of my history
Of what little is left in memory

I am stuck.

On a day of the past
Sitting in front of a little television
Now things get a little fast;

The television shows
With all the blows
The Contra game
Mario jumping into his fame
My father
My mother
My family
On the carpet giggling
Cutting pictures together laughing
The trees
The Bees
That bit me too often, alright
The colours are bright
As we paint a pot
The winds outside carry shades of hues
Painting the world, a colour other than the blues
My room with fairy-lights strewn
Glowing stars on the roof
Board games
Bored games
Everything

And stop.

I am stuck.

Like a cassette stuck on the same song
Nostalgia;
That has lasted too long

I am stuck.

The winds just carry blues and greys
These days
Time is now just a blurry haze
Passing, as I sit and gaze

I am stuck.

Rattlesnakes

Open the box slowly, 

Careful not to them let them in out,

Slide your fingers below the lid,

Pull it off.

*Clang*

*Hiss*

One slithers out

Slowly

Calculatingly

It whispers into your ear

Singing tales 

Venomous to the core

Wraps itself slowly around your neck

Cutting your breath 

Choking you

It snakes around your chest

Crushing your ribs

Digging into your heart

Makes a hit for what matters most,

Innocently pretends nothing is wrong

Seeks your shoulder to cry on

But asks you not to pry on

Once you know the truth

Go ahead

Throw a stone at it

Scream at it to go away

It recoils, 'wounded'

Remember, victimisation is her game play. 

Another slithers out 

Pretentiously

Sweetly 

Stares at you with its beady eyes

Convinces you that it means good

Bites you when you look the other side

This one claims to love you

As it fraternises with the enemy 

This one blames you of creating camps

Accuses you of the divisions.

It says it has morals,

So it won't bite your neck

Instead it will slowly cut into your heart

Because you thought it wasn't a threat.

One more crawls out

Sickeningly

Jealously 

A late arrival

Wrapping itself around your head

Telling you, they're happy for you

As their vicious tongue gives you a lick

You smile

Swat it off, lightly 

But it tightens the grip

Unsure of what it wants itself

Puts you on the guilt trip

They rattle you to the core

Creating their nest in your stomach

Burrowing into you

Throw them out

Scrape them off

Don't house them any longer

Out-about

Looking for another person to devour,

Meticulously they shed their skins

With it, the guilt of their sins.

‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’

A dark brown almost black desk,
Over a decade old,
Sat in my room

Serving as everything 

My little brain could imagine at nine;

A spaceship rocketing through galaxies
A tower with a balcony

A little shop where my sister and I sold 'Magic Water'

A stage for performances

A carriage drawn by horses.

A dark brown almost black desk,
Over two decades old,

Sits in my room

Decorated with trinkets

Pieces of my personality

My colourful potted plants
Too many candles

Letters
Feathers

Books

Pictures

Pebbles.

I sit here, fabricating tales
Of sorrow and joy,

Creating worlds far and beyond

Stitching feelings together;

Calling them Poetry

Dreaming of dragons and stardust

Flying through the clouds almost like a Raven

So when The Mad Hatter asks
‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’

Looking right into my eyes

With his glassy dazed gaze,

I whisper,

'Because it can be anything.'

Charred Words

Standing in front of the house,
The one I had heard a hundred stories about
I saw you rise into the air 
Like the black smoke, you used puff once
I felt you turn into the ashes
Like the ones that burnt me on the bonfire on New Year's Eve
Only, this burn won't heal as easily.

As we drove away from the
Hamlet of your Childhood Tales
I noticed something missing,
With a looming feeling of emptiness 
Like the times we would leave for a vacation 

Only to realise that we had forgotten something to pack
Yet, this time the article can't be replaced.

The next day, 
I found your eyes in the mirror,
The silver glass showing me your young gaze,
Not wrinkled with your wisdom yet,
Like the ones we saw in black and white photographs of you
Except, these are too sad to be yours.

A few weeks later,
I heard you in my voice, 
The same tone resonating in my ears
Like the sound of your annoyance with a touch of humour 
Just, lacking the heaviness that yours carried with ease.

Today,
I read you in my poetry 
My pages covered in words of you
Like fresh 'mint leaves' as you described them often
But, these words, seem to be too charred to be you.

Stomach It

Look at the blood on your hands
The dark pigment slipping through your fingers
How badly do you wish your body were a jacket you could slip out of?

Does it feel good when the blade of your tongue
Cuts right through skin?
Do you taste the metallic taste of the liquid?

Slowly
Methodically
You slice every word to hit a mark

Push the buttons
Pull the levers
Perfectly

Twist the mind
And hence mangle the body
Slow dancing
To the ballad of abuses hurled
In the blood bath

Does the guilt of what you have done ever get you?
Catch up to you while you run around gas lighting lies?

But remember,
Just when it gets too bad
And your insides can't hold the gore
Of what you've done
Stomach it.