Your voice was an iced fruit apple slice to us, Shared while seated outside every summer, Though you never travelled in any season. Your laugh was a comedy catchphrase.
You were the pink Marks & Spencer meringue nests, Crystal-cut glasses of cherryade, and amethyst birthstones on bracelets. You were the bag, laden with photographs, postcards, Prayers, and magazine tips for houses.
The school I confided in you about, And the certificate I earned from there— You were the imagining of it framed on hospital walls.
You were the marble-handled, soft-bristled hairbrush, The Revlon make-up, the hot drinks before bedtime, Silky blouses, blazers, and slippers.
You were the grandma we prayed for a miracle for, As we willed you to get well.
Now you are the neat, grassy path I know by heart And tread with utmost care; The earrings of your sister we must arrange to repair, The door ajar at a certain moment, The good luck wish, the tiniest horseshoe, And rosary beads we last left you with.

​March 5, 2025 06:18

Nothing. No one. Or other pieces of emptiness that wander through my atrophied memory. The big white birds talk among themselves incessantly, even in the middle of the night. The sea was yesterday a blue wall, which I would not have dared to cross for anything in the world. So beautiful. The elders once came from the other side of the horizon to here, and for them it was the end of the world. Pines tortured by the wind surround me, today, it’s blowing from the East, from Central Asia like the people here. An abandoned cathedral, Greek Orthodox and all white, was empty. The path climbed steeply to the top. We passed a cemetery without a cross. A man imitated a bird there, looking perfectly ridiculous. In my dream there was a painting painted thirty-five years ago broken by a stranger. I discovered a piece of it by chance at a friend's place who was indifferent to it. This strange character can't speak English, the others are bandits. In the gallery everyone thought I was rich, it makes him think about Under the Sun of Satan when he looks at them. At night I hear the heavy footsteps of the seagulls above my head, moving and screaming even in the middle of the night. They are insomniacs, winter is coming to an end, it's the season when they talk too much. Something or someone stole two eggs, as white as both my eyes, from a nest placed on a window ledge thirty meters above the ground. So she never came back. Human beings and animals are the same, it's sad or not. It’s the beginning of the fasting for some, the awakening for others, at six o'clock sharp. Life is paradoxical, as the angel Gabriel told me once. I have nothing to say against that, I don't know, nor will I ever know. I could have or should have jumped, no one would have known anything about it. She’s totally aware that suicide is the only way out for him if things keep on going like this. Others have always been afraid of him, rightly so, and vice versa. After madness, nothing will be the same again.
And yet, the blue sea was certainly not a wall for him, but an abyss, in the end.

I have noticed the other side of love
By the withered rose and the river at night. 
I collect and water them to give to the dove
And raise the flag of truce with the wings of a kite.
I bow down to love ignoring the proverb-
‘In war and love everything is fair’ and right
And keep at the threshold the point blank arrow
Hoping one of us may die without sorrow. 

​Still, calm and noiseless
The charade bustling street is at rest
Emeritus drawing from the overflow
Well of Knowledge
Birthing life in white and black
 
Emptiness! A fight of vanity
Isolated in the other world
Waging war against inner demons
Ranging from human venoms
To cracking rumor
 
 Conspicuously muted
Her Mouth is sealed
Yet, she raced in heart
As she swims across oceans of thoughts
Mi Corazón esta perturbado
 
The bang is louder
Will she yield to its call?
Again, this tune fascinates me
Will she dance to the rhyme?
It all resonates with my soul!
 
This arrow pierces through her heart
It aches like a kiss of blade
Rivers ceaselessly flow through
Her balls, sad but true
Her guard is down
 
Imminent pains of gains
Applauds her tenacity
Her breast flapped in agony
Of want and needs
Reality is falsified
 
They all speak the familiar language of danger
Project of death in a lovely package
No more fight in paradise
Paranoid by paralysis of desire
Who wins, the demon or me?
 
This shadow deep in hollow
May one day hallow her hassle
Shackles of lack
Luck and will
Trends afar her
 
The cloud is ‘bout resting
Before dawn
I valiantly beat him
To rust and dust
Though choked but she moves!
 
Till next episode
Where the moon bows out to the sun
I shall retain my strength
To wind through the storm
And sail across the Nile

When first we open our eyes to the world,
tiny fists clutching the boundless,
we are cradled as enough--
fragile, infinite, perfect in the gaze of love.
No questions asked, no measure weighed;
we are simply here, and that is all.
 
But the world, sharp-edged and brimming with voices,
sees not the light we carry.
It begins its chiseling,
its carving of worth from the outside in.
“You are too dark,” it says,
“too pale, too slow, too loud.”
“You love the wrong way.”
“You dream too big.”
“You belong elsewhere, but not here.”
 
With every glance, every word unspoken,
the mirrors around us shatter.
Each shard reflects another flaw
we didn’t know we had.
What once felt infinite
now seems confined to the lines
others draw around us.
We shrink to fit their frames,
contorting ourselves to be seen
as something—anything—close to enough.
 
And when we cannot shrink further,
we fall.
Fall into the silences of our own making,
lost in the echoes of “not enough.”
We let the weight of their judgments
shape the way we see ourselves:
broken, unworthy, incomplete.
The soft hum of self-belief quiets
beneath the roar of the world.
 
Enough becomes a weapon.
It shifts and twists in the hands of others--
“You are good enough for now,”
they say, with kindness that stings.
“Is this all you’ve got? Surely it’s not enough.”
“You’ll never be enough.”
The word folds in on itself,
its edges cutting deep,
turning possibility into limitation,
turning wholeness into doubt.
 
But enough is not static.
It moves, it grows.
It becomes a breaking point:
“I have had enough!”
Enough of their rules,
their assumptions,
their smallness that demands
we make ourselves smaller.
 
It becomes a reckoning:
“I am enough for myself.”
It becomes a declaration:
“I have more than enough to give.”
 
Rebuilding begins slowly,
tentative as a newborn’s first breath.
Piece by piece,
we reclaim the shards others discarded.
We stitch together the moments we thought
were too small to matter--
the resilience in our tears,
the kindness in our failures,
the courage it takes to try again.
 
And yet, rebuilding is not a single act.
It is the slow, deliberate sifting of noise.
The voices that once roared “not enough”
still linger, insistent and unyielding.
Their echoes creep in during quiet moments,
whispering, testing, taunting.
So we sit with them.
We let the noise speak,
not to believe it,
but to understand where it came from.
In the clutter of doubt, we search--
for the voice beneath the noise,
the one that is our own.
 
This is the hardest work:
to unlearn the lies we were told,
to untangle the barbed wires of judgment,
to separate the truth of who we are
from the weight of who we were told to be.
But in the stillness of reflection,
truth begins to emerge,
a fragile whisper at first:
“I am enough.”
 
With every step forward,
the whisper grows louder,
until it becomes a steady song:
“I am enough.
Not because I am perfect,
but because I am here.”
 
And as this truth takes root,
our gaze turns outward.
We see the brokenness in others,
the weight they carry
of being told they are less.
But we know now--
we know the lie,
the cruel game of measuring worth.
 
Enough is no longer a question,
nor a weapon,
but a promise.
It holds space for our flaws,
our beauty, our growth.
It reminds us that in being ourselves,
we are sufficient.
 
In their eyes, we see the same glimmer,
the same light that no voice can extinguish.
And so we say:
“You are enough, too.”
Not because you’ve proven it,
but because you’ve always been.
 
Let the world try to tear us down.
Let it question, measure, compare.
We will answer with the quiet defiance of knowing:
We are not perfect,
but we are whole.
Not better, not worse--
simply, wholly,
enough.

They told me the curse was a kindness,
a spindle’s prick to spare the kingdom
from the burden of my broken mind.
“Let her sleep,” they said,
“Her thoughts too sharp, her tongue a thorn,
her dreams too vast for walls to hold.”
But I did not sleep.
Not in the way they meant.
In my cage of roses, I lay awake,
each thorn a needle threading whispers:
What if the curse was never kindness?
What if the silence wasn’t mercy?
What if my dreams were a forest
they feared to enter?
I grew wild there.
The briars were mine.
When the prince came, blade in hand,
I laughed to see him bleed--
for once, the world bent to my thorns.
He begged for a kiss to break the spell.
Instead, I offered him my dreams:
a tangle of shadows too sharp to untie.
Let him sleep now.
Let him know what it means
to carry a forest inside.

I was always the broken one,
a jagged shard of mirrored light.
The fairest of them all--
but they never told me
fairness was a curse.
When they laid me in the glass coffin,
the dwarves wept salt that carved
rivers in their faces.
They did not know
the coffin was not a tomb
but a lens.
Through it, I saw the prince’s approach,
his perfect features fractured
by the warped glass.
I saw the cracks in his smile,
the pity behind his eyes.
I saw myself as they saw me:
a body polished and preserved,
an object too fragile to touch
but too pretty to let go.
So I shattered the glass
with my unkissed lips,
cut my way out of their story,
and left the prince bleeding on the forest floor.
He called me wicked,
but wicked is just what they name us
when we break the molds
they cast us in.
I wandered until I found a mirror
that didn’t lie.
And in its broken face,
I saw my own reflection--
whole at last.

I chopped off my hair after the last prince. He only wanted what all princes want. The good talk ended right after his climb. I pushed him out the window while he gazed at what he could no longer reach. He only broke a few bones. Healing imperfection will humble him. I’ll weave a blonde rope and climb down.

Would you measure a warrior’s worth
by the rewards they’d earned
or the trophies they’d spurned,
by the number they’d slain
or the many they’d spared;
praps you’re persuaded by the songs
of their kin who survived them.
Or you’d celebrate their renown
and vaunted prowess in battle
when it is really those without
such advantage who show more
courage in not fleeing the field
when outmatched by every other foe.
See – it is those of whom you’ve not heard
that might more truly deserve
your prayerful thoughts and earnest hymns
your hushed tales, be they ever
so tall, by the warming hearth
of our time-wearied feasting hall.
Would you have me tell you their names
though your lips are unworthy
to speak them, your ears deaf
and your mind too dull to grasp
what it genuinely is
to have known Thorin Oakenshield,
last of his ancient and noble line.