Underneath the bed, Behind the yellow curtains, On the far end of the balcony: Places I would hide if I were hiding from myself.

To be held once more, and to hold down spoiled calamari.

She is running her fingers through my hair, Postponing the creation of a ridiculous man-bun.

“Doesn’t this feel good?”

She doesn’t know That the sheer effort it would take me to answer this question Would break my heart.

“When was the last time you were touched like this?”

She doesn’t know That I have been driving a dying moped Whispering to myself over and over again: “I just want to be seen. I just want to be seen.”

She doesn’t know That she has allowed me the luxury of disintegration Until it is time for me to be whole again.

She doesn’t know That a few days from now I will be walking my neighborhood, Peering into the soft yellow of evening homes, My hand still warm from being held, And will swallow down something that tastes a little like despair Or spoiled calamari.

An Ancient and Persistent Longing (I)

I have sequestered an ancient and persistent longing in my bones, That weigh heavy on nights like these. Broken roots trail from cracked soles as I search The clay crevices of playgrounds for a scrap of recognition. All the while, an unshakable grief seeps out from inside me like a winter fog. Here is a dog waiting patiently for a dead owner to unlock a bolted door.

Well fed.

Yesterday I watched my neighbors on their terrace as they threw chunks of raw meat into the sky and into the beaks of the neighborhood kites.

My neighbors enjoy feeding. They're so good at it.

They feed their plants every day. I watch them do it, their balcony plants. Thriving, green, dew drop speckled, sunshine consuming, luscious, emerald green plants. Not like my plants. My sucky succulents and crappy creepers.

My neighbors are so good at feeding.

Every night when they think everyone is asleep, they tiptoe onto their balcony- their balcony partly hidden by their luscious balcony plants, and by lamplight they lift the metal grate covering the large blue tub in the corner.

They are so good at feeding.

They crouch by the large blue tub and feed the creature inside it. They do it so lovingly, taking turns, talking to it, singing to it, feeding it so well that it never makes a sound during the day. Almost as if it's not even there.

They're so good at feeding!

Even the crows who arrived without invitation, left with full bellies yesterday.

My heart is wrapped in the cold marble from my grandfather’s living room floor. I hold on to my brother’s hand, gingerly tracing my fingers across the scar from when he burned himself on the heater. I can hear my father playing the Colonial Cousins on the cassette player; I can hear the rain on the tin roof of the garage. I smell my mother’s tan salvar, my arms wrapped around her waist. I also smell fish, charcoal, chilies, curry leaves in my grandmother’s kitchen. The electricity has gone and it’s like a furnace inside. My father runs his fingertips down my back like he always does. It helps me fall asleep. My mother chases me around the dining table and smacks my arm, hurting herself. This is the first time this happens. My brother holds on to my waist as I cycle through the neighborhood, I hit a bump and he falls off. The back of his head is swollen. I hold him tight as he cries. I spend my afternoons staring at a large photograph of my grandmother next to a stuffed tiger. I imagine what it would be like to meet her.   I see my father cry for the first time. I cause my mother to cry many times. I take a picture of my grandfather knowing that I may never see him like this again. I sit in the back of the car with my headphones on.

Call it the blues.

You horrid hoodwinker, twisted troll slimy salamander, cavalier concoctor  of grief and unspeakable cruelty. How many times over must I submit myself to your wicked ways? Why do you insist on suffocating me in my sleep? Residing in my home during the winter? Why must we do this yearly dance? This premeditated violation? It leaves me blistered and hunched over, Grasping for strands of something... Anything that tethers me to the ground. And for that mad scramble, that desperate searching, I am grateful. It forces me to unglaze my eyes, unclench my teeth Open my arms and admit my inherent frailty; My obvious smallness. This fleeting miracle. This daily improvisation. This breath.  

I trapped the monsoon in an old mason jar and placed it against my ear. It rattled like old bones and beat and caressed the glass walls with equal fervor until I was seduced into letting it out again. It embraced my bedroom, seeped into my closet, adopted my bedsheets and sucked on my pillows. The monsoon tricked me into singing and held me as I wept. It brought me the moon wrapped in tea leaves. It brought me the smell of my grandmothers' freshly baked doughnuts. On the seventh day, I unleashed an army of umbrellas upon the monsoon, poking holes in them so that I wouldn’t forget. The betrayal drove the monsoon away. It took with it the jasmine, the unanswered letter, and the tree snakes. It took with it my parched heart and left me floating amongst wet furniture.

Last bus to Blue Lake

I’m sitting at the back of the bus Two older men reminisce about placing pennies on railway tracks; the threat of derailment, the excitement of hot metal on unblemished skin. They clear their throats, memories falling from their lips On to their white beards, into their pockets for safekeeping. The bus winds, buckles and rocks us into a conscious slumber; empty eyes used to the infinite green horizon, staring deeply into what could’ve been. I cradle the weight of the day and sing to myself. I think I’ll tell you about how I feel like an island, how I feel like there are cobwebs in my chest and dust in my fingernails. 

One of the gentlemen has a date tomorrow, he isn’t growing older, he’s growing better and he can do a thousand pushups. He’s had many fine honeys come by his house this year. The other gentleman laughs shyly, his dog died a week ago.

I feel like an island, in the midst of things. Holding steady, blowing in the wind, curiously calm but weighed down.

I have reached my stop.

Blink fast, little soldier. Dispel the images of your fathers hairline from the fragile fragments of your memory and blow the scent of her sex from your nose. Blink fast. Pay no heed to your crumbling insides, the dreams that preach, and the reality that lulls. Blink fast, think fast. The mountain is overhead, approaching like a bullet. Blink fast.

A note on ensemble creation

This is part of what I said during graduation. This is a reminder.

Is this work significant? Yes! This work is significant not because of its content but because we are engaging with the very act of creating- together. Significant because we have wholeheartedly acknowledged the need for the other. I do not exist on my own, I exist in relation to, in partnership with, I am sufficient and yet I am not. Love, contradiction and space for each other. This is what I hope we carry with us into the great unknown.

Stiff collar up, raindrops in his unkempt beard He lights an old cigarette

Collect the back of her weary head and untangle the lullaby from her hair. Her clay soles rest on the cold marble steps of your home while you attempt to breathe life into her mothers words. You sit by the door, eyes fixed on curious passersby, shifting in place while she begins to snore softly. Sunlight catches particles of dust hovering over her mouth. A gust of cool wind nestles her underarms.  The song comes to you and so you lean against the door frame and sing to her.

For our fathers.

Your father came to mine and held a cold pipe to his throat. It happened in the midst of the annual festival while we were outside discovering what it meant to be adults. While I held your hand for the first time, my father was being dismembered, around the armpit, not the job of an expert said the postmortem. And while you clenched at my shirt, your father breathed his last, struck by fate and the blows of a dead man. The organ in the church is especially loud this morning. Our mouths still taste like each other and yet it is so bitter.

Naina.

She lost her eyelids years ago, when the smoke was too thick and the fumes burnt skin. So she began to excavate the past with fervor, unable to sleep; Sifting through memories as if they were in a dusty photo album. The grandfather clock, the flower patterned bed sheets, the plastic table cloth, the moss on the bottom step, the chimney smoke, the frail hands, the first touch, the grey scooter, the pink oversized dress, the burnt chicken, the delayed goodbye.  The crown sits heavy and she bites her fingernails, the ghost of a smile dancing on her pale lips, the echo of a lover reverberating around an empty house. She is haunted by everything she wishes she could see and by everything she wishes she couldn’t.

I am dancing with abandon to the sound of your laughter-filled wonder, bar stools like galaxies are exploding in our midst and we are reaching and touching and it is just so sweet.

We are in an open field with a gulf that separates us. I am standing with some thread and a needle in my hands and an unshakable hope.

We are going to be great

We are going to be okay. A truth repeated over and over, so that we may believe that we are enough. Tiny, fragile, fickle people at the precipice. Unwilling to relent to the prospect that our intertwined fingers, with blood rushing to and from, with skin, skin so familiar that we know it as our own; may we not behold in the familiarity of the others touch the way we stare open mouthed at burning balls of gas? Your body, your mind, the sight of your face before I close my eyes, the cosmos sharing space on my cheap mattress, I am in awe. We are dipping our big toes into an ocean. We are walking on taut sand in the twilight and I am tasting your name on my tongue, letting it fall over my lips, two-syllable syrup for my soul, sweet thing, my life. 

We are going to be okay. We have loved and we have lost. We have succumbed and we have let go, and we are okay.

We can be great. An orchestra plays in my chest as we reach with all our might to love deeply, to believe in magic and to stay true to the inherent need to seek.

A bulb explodes in a dark room. We are whispering as my fingers excitedly trace the lines on your palm, there is expectation and hope and hopelessness and we are falling, grasping onto stones and jagged edges, the great organ in the church catches our ears, we are laughing and marveling at the sand sticking to our heels and I hold you close to me as we tumble and we know that we are going to be okay, we are going to be okay.

Here and now

I’m walking to the bleachers at the park. They hold no sentimental value to me whatsoever but they are all I can think about as I drag my heavy feet across the road. I must get to the bleachers, I must get to them and then I will allow myself to break.

I wake up excited for the first time in a long time. Our paths have crossed and she has managed to touch my heart and my heart remembers and I am putting on my shoes and walking out of the front door and stopping and walking back and locking the door to my room and pacing, my hand on my doorknob and then not, I am excited. Everyone must know and she must join me in this room and we will dance and we will erase the pain and bridge time with our lips and it is all so exciting but there is nobody to share this with, she is across the universe and I am desperately skipping rocks across a tumultuous river hoping to make contact with the shore that is moving further and further away and all I want to do is yell; I am here! I am here! I am here! 

I am scared.

I stand across the road and watch her disappearing through her window. Hoping and dreading with equal measure that she finds me there, pathetic and wanting.

Yet I wake up with pride and joy and love in my heart. And hope.