Rant

I don't know what in my days has lead me to read and write less these days.
I don't know if it's the doing of that devil called age but I do feel a constant weight of fatigue. Maybe it is being ill for months now that is taking a toll. Small things. A fever that keeps coming back, a cough that won't go, puffed eyes in the morning, a back that misbehaves.
But they all add up and at the end of the day, when I am finally back home, I feel like every ounce of air has been sucked out of me.A nap may help, I think and I get onto my hard bed. I stopped using pillows because of the back. So I hug a bolster and sleep-often through dinner time, often in work clothes and wake up feeling like I've just finished walking a mile.
Fatigue is cyclical, I have discovered and it feeds on itself to remain alive.
I, too, have stopped fighting it these days and I am afraid this is what I have become.
Sometimes when I look at the mirror I imagine the skin around my eyes to be darker than my cheeks.I also feel the circle around my mouth is turning darker. Twenty-five is no age at all, I tell myself and a small part of me acknowledges the sinking feeling that drive women to try out tubes and bottles of foul smelling creams.
I don't know what it is that is doing this. If it is age, fatigue, disinterest or just plain laziness.
Truth be told, I don't like it one bit. I miss cooking and I miss going to run.I miss being active.
And I hate the feeling of sitting at a party and realising that I don't like parties.

City (or In which I try to write again)

Someday, maybe, I'll stand and look back

At this city, at this time where you and I

Made stories out of cardboard boxes

And laid them bare under rainy skies.

This dusty city of dustier bylanes where

I saw traffic lights change colour in your eyes

And this time when we drank rum

In paper cups; the air littered with fireflies.

This city of melting roads bursting at their seams

Will always be ours to sigh over, and cry over

In spite of all the roads that wait to be walked

And all the maps your feet need to cover.

Of course it floods under ten minute rains

And burns under the stench of old tyres

But it has seen us lean in midnight stupors

And watched us blow off, and burn in our domestic fires.

Losing

There is a time when one gives up. Admits defeat.
You stand in the middle of a square and you take your armour off. Leave your sword on the ground and take off your helmet. A layer of powdery brown coating the old grey.
Your hair matted with mud and sweat comes rolling down your neck but stops right before it reaches the back, and sticks to the grime on your skin. You cringe from the mud on your cheek-eating into the scars.
You have the sun in your eyes and you blink very fast to avoid the inevitable. And then your tongue licks off the blood from the corner of your lips.
You are blinking very fast. You think it's the dust and you squint and look for the person you were fighting-with, against, for.
Only it isnt a person anymore- only a patch. A charcoal sketch of a person with a curtain of dust between your shadows. The shadows get longer and your knees fail you.
Your nose hits the dust and you bleed in drops. Maroon circles on dry brown.
You would cry but the salt would sting your wounds, the winds would drown your sobs. You remember your mother's voice and stories of phoenixes and fires.

You lie there under a blanket of dust-sticking to every bit of body you have. The sun burning lines down your back. You put your shield down. And let out that last ounce of wind in you. The fight's kisses shine bright on your neck and shoulders and they burn in the sun. You force out a sigh as they begin to prick while the maroons become one with the brown.

The time would be apt for a soundtrack to cue in-violins with strings fuming against the furtive brushing of the bow, bass drums erupting with blows interjected by the soft mocking of an oboe. But nothing plays and nothing moves. This isn't your matinee dose of the improbable.

This is you. Bare bodied, bruised, bent.
The wind has stopped. The fight is over.

Bokeh

Did you come to see me the night I ran?
When you, your head swimming in stars, walked through the gate?
Did I come to you with my eyes full of winter,
Asking how many fireflies souls eat to stay up late?

Was it me who sang with the keyboard taps that morning-
After the night they danced under blinking fairylights?
Did you stand still when I held my lenses to your face,
The sunlight bokeh-d on the wall with the stuck on kites?

I forget if it was you or I who blinked first
When rainclouds descended upon your brown eyes.
And the night when the rain finally flew down all the drains and pipes,
I don't remember if it was your sleep I broke with all my sighs.

For two people

You and I spent a lifetime sitting

On parts of stairs untouched by feet

Looking at sunsets spilling into cups

Brimming with tea- never milked 

And always too sweet.

We have spent our years on roads

Pulling the seats bending low

And listened to ceaseless chatter on the radio

With the fiddle of impatient fingertips

The songs always too loud for us to know.

You and I spent weeks planning

Colours of curtains and widths of doors

Huffing up furniture over stairways

And setting up tables on laundry boxes 

Spilling cola on linen, and gravy on the floor.

You and I have walked a lot

Through clots and fevers without much care

On bad backs and failing wills

Buying impulsive bangles, but never earrings

Never having to worry about another incomplete pair.