Right In Front of Me

I just want you to spin me around.
Can you spin me around, please?

After much pleading and strategic tickling, he agreed. She laughed and laughed, screaming happily and kicking her legs in the air. He spun her really fast, so fast that when she looked up she saw the fan stay still.


Not so fast! Not this fast!


I can only do one speed, paagal.


The best part though was that even if she did let go and waved her arms about he would still be holding on to her, carrying her, spinning her at ceiling fan speeds while they got disapproving looks from the grown-ups.


She was half the size of him, half the age too. With almost invisible gold fuzz all over her skin and the sound of her 't's softer than snow, the half Muslim girl is learning to make friends in a place that she doesn't belong to. Or maybe a place that she belongs to the most.

Dear Shahrukh,

Can you please pretend to be lost again so I can help you find the place you want to go? The person you want to meet?
I promise you my skin is soft and new. I promise I'll let you touch it despite the shivers and the jolts. I promise you my hair is washed with Chinese Cinnamon shampoo. I promise you my chains and necklaces are very easy to unhook. Easy to untangle and easier to break.
Your voice likes to give me sleeplessness and your pictures prefer to give dreams.
The stars on your fingertips, the moon in your eyes, the night in your breath. The universe in you. It's all I see. But a chance to see through your eyes and I might even tell you that I'm in love with you.
There is so much we need to change about us.
All I'm asking for is a nod of your head and we're all set to go.
You and I, doing great cliched things, like finding a cure for cancer?

Just Like Heaven

There are plenty of boxes left to fill. Trying one by one, it stills feels somewhat empty though. Gladly I'm going to keep accepting all the printed pages of Sudoku you slip my way and now I've got a puzzlebook full of them.
Truth is, my lips belong, for just once, somewhere near yours. My soul asks to be in sync with yours.
And you see outside puzzles. You see the plastic and stone world around and you inhale its smoke. With a sigh and a smile you let it out. With a sigh and a smile you let me out.

Would they have silk threads of hair like you, falling in place itself, or my thick black waves?

My Favourite Pictures of You

There's a picture of you. Your two year old self is playing with waterproof toys in the bathtub. You have six teeth in your mouth and you're very busy creating all sorts of splash storms and bubble trouble.

There's a picture of you decked in saffron marigolds. Decked in gold, with red patterns on your hands. There is a betel leaf in your palm and his mother is busy smearing it with henna. The smile on your face is wider than an ocean, but the smile in your eyes is building bridges into the woman's heart. The possible fragility of these bridges is something you're just starting to worry about.

There is a picture of you lounging on a sofa. You are in some book shop in Lisbon but you're busy reading the hard lines on your hands. You are counting the divisions on your fingers with concentration so fierce it seems you are studying, in depth, works of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky rather than going over familiar paths. Next to your foot is a spilled cardboard cup of coffee.

There is a picture of the back of your head. You are sitting in front of your computer. The words on the screen are blurred and illegible. The date indicates that the photo is two years and almost five months old. Judging from that time, you must have been writing an e-mail. Or better yet a poem. Rhyme used to be your choice of expression then.

There is a picture of you with your hair in your face while you're playing a blue electric guitar. You've got a mad look on your face and you're beaming at the girl standing with the keyboards right next to you. She's singing happily. The songs you've taught her. You are more proud of her that moment than you've ever been of anyone before. What a woman she's become.

There is a picture of you wearing over-sized sunglasses and beach shorts. Standing in front of a homemade birthday cake with dripping raspberry pink and apple green frosting, you are holding up the cake knife like a sword, trying to scare your parents. The joy on your face is priceless. It's the irreplaceable joy of turning six years old.

There is a picture of you asleep. Unaware, perhaps, or dreaming.

There is a picture of you wearing black lace, velvet and f aux diamonds. Your back is towards your bathroom mirror. Your voluminous black hair reaches your waist and you resemble a goddess painted on a Greek urn. You bring light into my atmosphere.


Photographs. Distorted versions of the truth maybe? Bound in albums and frames and frozen forever.

Yes, I Smile

because all this time you knew and all this time I believed I was the only one who saw it so it wasn't really a secret after all. It was something I shared and I smile because I don't know why or what or how but love is the only thing that fits between me and you and you can dismiss this idea with a careless shake of your head. But, no.

I Hardly Remember the Taste But I Could Still Identify the Smell From Among a Thousand Others

I change my mind about you almost twenty times a day. But there's one thing I know for sure. I'll go back.
To that dark corner, where the walls were painted with pink castles like an extension of reality.
Go back to when the warnings in my head were drowned out by your alien pulse. Your traveling heartbeat. Going through the flesh and bone of your chest, through the fabric of your shirt, and reaching its destination in my ear.
Then you spotted the carving on the wall. The carving that marked the place Someone had loved Someone Else. And together those two watched over us. Only shyly looking away once or twice.
They wrote down our future for us because they saw what they saw. They didn't even ask or let us decide.

***

You know me, you know I'll stay uncertain forever because its easy. Easier than to stand tall in front of the decision at the end of this tunnel. Me? I'm so unlike you.

So I started to think I had stepped out once more with armour intact and shield in hand. I started to think that your arrows wouldn't be able to pierce my mental metal. I started to think that I wouldn't fall when wind blew fierce, like desire. And I did become impervious, but incompletely. In my mind.
Now I'm defeated, embarrassed and back to square one. Disgusted by my words. The ones I spoke and the ones I wrote.
And you, you couldn't get inside the empty ones and you're here. This is hardly your territory.

See, you're headed in the right direction and time will tell, but come on, don't try this hard.

Every time that I said it was about me, it was actually about you.

The Adventures of Mr.Paradox and Friends

He carried a little black box with him at all times, tied it together with ribbon and in small neat handwriting wrote on it 'My Best Intentions'. Very few people knew that the box had always been empty. He paraded it around, held it close and gave the impression that it was something very dear to him, that empty little box.

He always wore a chocolate-coloured coat, on the inside of which he'd sown on a few pockets. In small neat stitches he put labels on each. The one labeled 'My Love' held a twenty-six piece childrens' puzzle that assembled to form the letters of the alphabet. His second pocket was labeled 'My Time'. It contained a broken string of pearls. The third, and last, pocket labeled 'Morals/Dignity/Respect/Honesty/Self' was empty, like the box.

And one day he fell in love, with that friend, the one who held him together and actually meant something. He reached into his pocket and pulled out five puzzle pieces to spell her name. He sliced open his chest, and there he placed them, like a title upon his heart. To honour her. She loved him too, but he wasn't all that she wanted and when she set off to find that man, the one she'd be proud to love, she decided he was extra baggage that couldn't be taken along on her journey. So she left, just like that. With all the explanations and reasons given, she left. And he was left helpless with branded heart and all. He would cut himself and pull her out but that was pain even he couldn't take one more time. What was he to do?

He has been around a long time and now he knows how things usually turn out and so he never intends for anything at all. He lets them grow until the roots and stems become so strong that they break through the walls of their round glass bowls. They overflow and bubble and leak out to form a flood. Leaving him no place to stand and so he withdraws and quits.

His existence is lingering but fading towards permanent.

If he could set words to fire, he'd only set fire to himself. He swore to God. Yes, he did.

Get up, get out, get away from these liars
'Cause they don't get your soul or your fire.
Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine
And we'll walk from this dark room for the last time.

Because Some Things Don't Go Away

This ever-changing number is a symbol of our growth. It is God's method of reinforcing the constant inconsistency of life.
Tomorrow after today and later after now. Some things are difficult to escape from. An expensive habit that leads to the door of an old friend. An addictive drug.
Or just the process of accepting ourselves.

Bent needles only stitch broken chains. Uneven patterned paisleys with purple Anchor.

And you will find yourself flailing your arms wildly and kicking violently in a pool that you once proudly filled. You will also see the people peering from above, shaking their heads, watching you sink and saying to each other they didn't want to waste their breath. On you.
So the sinking will continue for a while, then cease.
The ever-changing number will stop changing.

The Artists

We travel. You are near, with your monsoon love. With your gusts of affection, your showers of adoration. Gods and goddesses come through. A teacher and a student. Naivety comes through like the strand of your hair falling into your eye. One Non-grainy Canson sheet after another. Grape vine after grape vine. We paint. Oils and water. Density and weightlessness together in the same works of art. Paint our minds and paint our souls. Cages of skin and blood and veins opened to set free everything. Charcoal ideas and pencil inspiration.
Two paintings but only one masterpiece.