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Morbid days and morbid nights, Trees that no longer live, Blood in grandmother's hands, Red fluid that bled thick. The blood now powdered By her hands that crushed The necks of mint leaves. Baby faces on the walls Painted yellow and pink. The same faces haunt at night, Nights that remind them to laugh, Laugh and giggle Over their dead bodies Thrown in the kitchen garden. Trees that no longer live, Plants that died in grief, The tiny yellow leaves Of the stems that grew on the bodies, The roots that captured the hearts. The blood is now powdered, Maybe underneath grandmother's pestle. The mortar smells of rotten flesh, Grandfather's misery and mother's tears. The babies laugh as they protest, They would have bled every month anyway. Ten dead babies and a newly born, Grandmother's love and souls torn. Let the baby live That bleeds only once At the time of its death And not every month...

A lover of simple things and simple gestures as I have always been, I rub my eyes idly as I open them to celebrate the wee hours of the morning. An unusual air of serenity surrounds me each morning when I manage to wake up before the sun rises. The tiny alarm clock on my table confirms that it’s six. Half an hour of walking around the beautiful lake nearby leads me to my favourite destination – the tea shop. Those were the days when life was as simple as it should have been. I had just left my previous company. There were another two weeks left for me to go home, which, in turn, meant another week free of the worries of packing my clothes and selling the furniture. I decided those days would be completely mine – days of my very own life dedicated to solely the one true owner of it. I would walk for half an hour or cycle for a few minutes each morning. I would sit on my favourite seat in the park, hum songs that heal my soul, and dance to the tunes of those songs in my ...

Blind eyes of the night, Half a moon to gaze at, Half a moon to cry for. She steps on broken hearts, Pieces of fierce glass That used to be mirrors. She walks a little too close To the burning walls of hell. The gates will burn too; The fire can no longer contain The wave of iced hearts. She picks the broken pieces Till her fingers bleed, Till those walls turn to ashes. She steps on the ashes, Till they embrace the ground Till one can no longer tell Ashes from the soil. A slow death, she says, Is the cure to all pain. And her last world is  Now ash, soil and blood. She flies to a new world, Of iced hearts and blind eyes. Half a moon to gaze at, Half a moon gazing back.

I hope you still write her letters, I hope tears still fall from her eyes, Reading those letters she never found. And when you look at the letters you never sent, I hope it's her eyes that see the love wrapped, For they no longer need to know the words. But even when words fail to work magic, I hope you still believe in your letters... I hope you still write her letters But I hope you send the letters you wrote..

I turn out the lights And he turns on the radio, And it's almost like a routine The way he approaches the bed And I approach him. We smile at each other With other people On our minds. We start with a gentle peck And then probably a kiss Of feelings close to disgust. He kisses my scars Scars that remind me of wounds- Wounds that he wasn't a part of. It isn't love And we both are in pain, And we make love, A good night's sleep is preordained. I turn out the lights Inside my head as well. "Oh, stop thinking." He turns on the radio And a million thoughts Approach his mind. Tomorrow, We shall not remember each other for I have someone else to go to And he has someone else in his mind. But we'll smile at each other- Smile close to disgust. And we'll call it love When naked bodies meet Knowing not, That love it is not. For our naked souls await To be revealed And a good conversation Was our sole need.

So many years have gone by And age has made both of us A lot older than we used to be, A little wiser than we used to be. And when the yesteryears Enter stealthily through the doors Of a veiled moon and a dark cirrus, We look back at what we used to be And what we have become today. So many years have gone by And I don't see a single sign of you And you see me not in who I am today. I have changed as I should have - I have built a small hut in a new village now. You still are in the city we used to live in. And maybe we'd have been so much happier now, But I have changed as I should have And you, you still have those grey hairs Like the rays of moonlight falling on my face now. And when I have changed as I should have, You still live in the city we used to live in, Looking the way you used to look, And maybe, just maybe, you haven't changed a bit, The way you should have changed.

Of late, I have realized I left too many doors open. I have this habit of not shutting the doors when I should, of leaving some space as tiny as a cleavage. Some doors I have shut a long time back. I didn’t simply shut them; I slammed some, the way only a teenager does when she is angry because her father snatched away her iPod. Some doors I struggled to close, one inch a day. A few of these doors are still left ajar, not awaiting someone’s arrival, but knowing there is nothing to hide behind closed doors. Closed doors – I think it’s easy to close the doors, to hide underneath the blanket of comfort, to pretend there is no world outside. Of late, I have realized easy is no fun at all. I have been trying to unlock the doors I shut eons ago. The rusted latches refuse to comply. Some doors I closed a few years ago, are giving up trying to stay shut. I look at the rooms these doors protect – mostly empty, devoid of the life they once used to hold. Was it only after the ...