#dropofbleach

[dropofbleach]

//Home// When I think of home What should come to mind are shoes at the doorstep and steaming cups of coffee, Foggy smiles through cold window panes looking over greenery like no other, But I know deep down That home is not where you come from, grew up or end up You create it, no matter where you travel For home is not a place, it's a people. Who said we needed the stars to guide us home When we found ourselves underneath them instead? Home is just another feeling, just another time we try and convince ourselves that we can make something last, some eternal concept of feeling safe that we can't let go of. It's in sleep laden eyes late at night as you try and stay awake to get one more word in edgewise, 'cos a lifetime of conversation ain't enough. It's in a hug that makes you feel like you aren't as broken as you thought you were. It's in that comfort when you realize that you want nothing more than to see someone happy, and your happiness in their existence alone. It's pulling each other back from the brink of insanity, laughing and shouting. It's in saying with conviction that I'm not perfect, but we definitely could be. So when I think of home, I think of misfits on a park bench, surrounded by the unmistakable sound of laughter A sort of calm descending upon me Happy and aware, of how lucky I truly am To be able to say, "There's no place like home," and mean it, Without the silly red shoes.

[dropofbleach]

//Cookie-cutter framing// When a guy told me, "You're not like most girls," I found myself saying thank you And not asking what most girls are like because I'm too scared to know the answer Too scared to remember that everyone's different and by saying what he did he didn't mean it as a compliment He just meant That I was doing what I'd been taught to do since the age of five When I was made aware that being a girl isn't quite the same as being a boy What they taught me but didn't tell me was that I would spend my entire life pleasing others and adjusting and making do with what I have Because I've already been given too much. I've been given a voice. The next time my voice dies down in my throat Like hands around my neck begging me to stop Stop talking, stop thinking, stop existing I can't listen. Because I'm not like most girls am I. I don't listen. I don't listen because I don't want to have to look good to be taken seriously I don't want to have to think about being selfish all the time I'm sick of feeling like yet another cookie-cutter frame This monotonous batch one after the other, no more than an object and being thrown into the fire if I'm just a little too brown or god forbid, not perfect. I'm sick of realizing that I'm not enough to change the world and probably will never be. I'm sick of myself because my voice isn't as loud as my conscience and the sirens in my brain shake my balance but do little to shake someone's faith in their unrighteousness. But I want to have faith too. I want to have enough faith in the universe to not feel like a burden As I give my opinion with a spoonful of sugar, as important as one’s morning coffee, but as ignored as stains on a coffee cup Gathering dust because my heated argument did little to remove it. I want to have faith in myself. To speak up. And start over. And try again. How can I. When breakfast tastes like disappointment. But for the record. When another guy reminds me that "I'm not like most girls." I hope I'll have the strength to say, "but you're exactly like most guys."

[dropofbleach]

Happy Birthday, thatha. Lots of love from your GD. I asked my Avva what she missed most about you (And as much as I've told her she doesn't need to reply to me in English cos I can't speak our mother tongue) she said, "Everything. I miss every minute and every hours." I hate to say it out loud but I've doubted the love you both shared before I saw all the pain and suffering and the codependency that made the air come alive The struggles of depending on someone who depended on you all their life The jokes I would make to pass off your anger at her when we were around You always laughed at my jokes One joke, in particular, was to just wear your clothes when I couldn't find that one shirt or was wearing torn pants Now in the hurry that we came, I had no choice but to raid your cupboard but you're not around to see them You're not around to scold me for ironing to fast Or to laugh at the memory of how I set the iron box on fire Or to see the sketch pen marks I made on the new one to mark different functions and for you to actually use them The prayer room was always too small for your being as you sat on that tiny stool with the agarbatti playing catch with the folds of your lungi There's so much space there now I gotta find why I ever doubted it Because of you, I know that I am not incapable of caring about someone for no reason but an inexplicable bond Because if grief is the price you pay for love then I owe your man up there a pretty big loan How many words and songs can I list in your memory and why don't we do that for the living There are no love songs to me anymore because everything sounds like longing For a home, I lost and found and lost again "Come home for tea," you'd say when I called from 300 km away I'd say my helicopter was on its way You're gone and I still see the crinkle on the sofa where you sat Where you'd doze off when I spoke too much And then insisted you were listening I really hope you're listening to this now Code for when you were feeling down was "I'm in the well,"

And I don't know if Avva wants me to grow my hair long so I could have Rapunzel-ed my way in there to have helped you 

I catch myself looking up either way, and I hope the view up there is better than this one

I just really wish I could hold your hand again

You know I miss you every minute and every hours too.

[dropofbleach]

//The Weight of These Chemicals// You know that week before your period where you're more emotive than usual And you're convinced something is wrong with you or someone is plotting against you The latter just turns out to be mother nature's scheme to use you as a punching bag Until you curse Adam himself for his selfishness In putting a word in with the big man up there leading to the creation of womankind Because it's just your period, and more often than not during this time You're not listening to the irrationally rational voice Telling you that keeping the peace is more important than them knowing exactly how they hurt you It blows my mind and my uterus how much control these little chemicals have before, after and during the bleeding onslaught For so long I didn't want to be the girl complaining about a monthly occurrence that I didn't even have as bad as others Replacing calling myself a woman with the word girl and shrinking myself to fit in the spaces I occupy even in a screen I just wanted to say it hurts, and to know that I'm doing this to myself is harder to swallow I may not know when the boat of grief capsized into the ocean of gloom A hot water bag seems to be a dumb life jacket in the grander scheme of things And the dramatics ceased to hysterics If it's all just chemicals, which element do I bunk with till I leave the periodic table?

[dropofbleach]

A small note

Hi there! There's a whole 19 of you out here so far, and I am more shocked than I thought I would be. An odd number to celebrate at, but this whole deal has its own share of odds to overcome. If you relate to my poetry once, twice or many in passing, you must know you have carried a part of me ahead with you.

Much love, dropofbleach

[dropofbleach]

//Lost love// Tucked in between many a 'are you sure's' and 'take care's' I love like roots Creeping downwards and silently holding myself and what I know as together as tightly as I can The pandemonium of middle school math horrors come to life With the ease of calculators in your pocket They named missed calls after me, and should've named alarms too I also love like getting to the root of issues Flipping through solutions before we get to the climax of every story I love like the bark worse than the bite The terror worse than the fright A stickler for right and wrong, fickle undertones of rainbows I'll be there for you, but I might leave like the night Be back before you see me gone or only notice my absence I love like a flutter in the wind Handbooks of pressed leaves that have been forgotten by their birthplace But carry their message nevertheless I house them in a sanctuary where I keep our conversations A greenhouse we tend to till forgotten Sometimes, we forget I mean every hug I give, because there was a time I didn't believe them Clutching at time is my Olympic sport Light shoulders and palms to rest this love in The seasons have arrived like the Frosts and Wordsworths of the world conspired A heartless exterior implies the space of something there once upon a time I hope you know that these days, I'm planting seeds within

[dropofbleach]

//Sharp// To write in a way that will summon all the attention to itself And none to myself at all To want for nothing more but words to be read, recognition be damned Is this the writing I should aspire to? Wouldn't I hold myself to the most virtuous standard if I wrote solely for a bigger cause? All for one and one for all we can pen But at what cost does art begin it's genius When it is recognised or when it is known? If we create to communicate, and communicate to connect We connect to feel, and feel together Like a syringe pulling from skin pulled taut We draw from the world continuing around us to light something within Mustn't we give back in return to the sharp prick?

[dropofbleach]

/Call me// "Call me," she'd say when she was wheeled along the downtrodden path as her family watched on from the gates teary-eyed "Call me," she'd mutter again as the glass doors opened as if sealing the true longing behind the previous time but the only ones who heard it were the receptionist at the counter with the plastic smile and the watchman who tipped his hat regardless of whether those who he met could see or remember his reverence. What always escaped them and would continue to was that her voice would always be too loud her personality unable to be contained within the aged skin of her existence like a burst of sunshine on a cloudy day to someone hoping for rain "Call me," would ring out with more exuberance than those white walls could ever understand to the doctors and nurses who constantly wore their hearts in their mouths and words on their sleeve "Call me," she'd whisper to the girl in pigtails from the next ward over before she ran back again who opened her heart again with an orange crayon a burst of colour among a sea of greys and a smile with teeth as crooked as hers "Call me," she sounded sadder as somebody's son left flowers on her bedside table kissed her on the cheek and asked if she remembered the boy with the blue eyes and dress shirt who visited his mother every day "Call me," she'd said every day until recently to a man with the same blue eyes and a dress shirt as he left for work who made her feel just feel but not anymore. For a while, they were just more words that could not match her grief and she couldn't recollect his scent or his smile when she felt low the years had taken those memories away perhaps for good as recently there was a step in her soul, a shine in eyes that had seen all, and was seeing all again with childlike mirth and wonder and the nurse with the kind smile agreed that nothing should taint it she also eyed the peace that had made its way over into her "Call me," she had begun to murmur to the cross on her bedside table next to the diminishing white pills and a worn-out photograph of a beautiful family

She used to urge her mind to conjure up some semblance to her life in vain but now when she prayed it didn't matter "Call me," became a ritual. To her and to Him. So it wasn't much of a shock when soon enough He did. And it was the only one she remembered.