An Interview with my Ancestor: Prose Poetry

“Do you write? Do you read? Do you dream?”

She laughs, a sound of broken trinkets and obituary telegraphs. Her dimples are poems of love veiled in her mother’s silk sarees and golden bangles, swindling in ribbons and wedding presents. Her fingers have embroidered lotuses instead of nails, feet dangling above water in periwinkle days. The vein of her heart is tangled in Begum Rokeya’s dream. But she says, “Child, to dream is to barter your existence with society and from that moment, all you try to do is cheat.”

Grandma’s Secret Kitchen Stories: Prose Poetry

The kitchen is the heart of the house. Come inside. The waft of the tadka is playing hide and seek with hungry wind nymphs. The fluttering pages of Grandma’s secret recipes are singing siren songs alluring little girls with mermaid braids.

Five More Minutes, Mama: Prose Poetry

Five more minutes, Mama, I am caught in a happy dream.
Five more minutes, Mama,  I am telling the moon stories of comfort in your old dupattas and warmth in your vegetable soup.
Five more minutes, Mama, I am building a pillow fort of your childhood dreams.
Five more minutes, Mama, the jungle of my dreams has marigold smiles and a baby shampoo advertisement that says, “no more tears leaking moonlight.” You will like it here, Mama.

Hey, Mama, if you are happy in a dream, does that count?

Mourning Idealism: Prose Poetry

Nothing prepares you for the ache of mourning. I am mourning my idealism today, trying to hold onto the ideals in a quicksand hug while reality grapples me like an inseparable birthmark. The trajectory of growing up is learning how to make a coral museum of grief inside the wormholes of your heart. Unable to build a Lego bridge where your idealism kisses your reality, unable to write yourself a soft epilogue.

Error 404! Person not Found: Prose Poetry

You can’t sleep so you go out with a smartphone flashlight, looking for yourself. Optical illusions of people surround you like Aurora lights ice skating on skies.

Halcyon and Hell: Prose Poetry

Before we were trapped, we had nursery rhymes in our smiles and technicolor cartoons in our eyes. Marigold cheeks engraved with red constellations carved by English teachers and moon craters for dimples. Before we binge ate cynicism cookies, there were slices of sunbeams for breakfast and playdoh dreams in our hearts.

Storm Hearts: Prose Poetry

Do you ever see fire smoldering in the eyes of people, burning like a pendulum of insecurities and silenced passions? Their pupils dilate and enlarge as if they are controlled by the marionette of society experienced in pyrokinesis. Their eyes are volcanos coerced to become pet candles. Vertigo on a leash, a tsunami in an aquarium.

Spamming Hope: Prose Poetry

I like to believe that time is pixie dust washing away in an hourglass. This year, it seems pixies were playing with the hourglass like Tiktokers play with playback speed buttons. I saw loneliness courting humanity, foxtrotting around the planet like Newton’s law of gravitation.

Unlocked Outposts: Prose Poetry

When did we start folding our souls like an origami of backspaced texts? When did we decide to play Russian roulette of “what ifs” before displaying fragments of our hearts to people? When did we become security guards with 7 years of experience to keep an eye on the people who wandered in our minds? When did we master the warfare of defense mechanisms with self-depreciating jokes? When did we construct an outpost to prevent the softness of vulnerability?

Armory of Art : Prose Poetry

Sometimes art is a canvas of whiplash shades of your anatomy chemicals and sometimes art is a sketch of a reality you string in a necklace of “sweet dreams”.

The Witchcraft of Adulting: Prose Poetry

They didn’t tell me growing up was nurturing houseplants of responsibilities and often failing to water them because you are binge-watching a DVD of nostalgia on nights when loneliness sublets you it’s house. They didn’t tell me growing up was walking in circles in my room past midnight trying to remember the face of my imaginary friend. Dimming in my mind in slow motion like the night mode of my phone.

Bar Brawls of Heart and Mind: Prose Poetry

My heart and mind are caught in a bar brawl and I am writing a list, 101 reasons why I do not want to take a bath in a tub full of cheap barroom whiskey. I am under so much pressure, that every time I yell about my mundane frustrations, a diamond falls out of my mouth.

Lullabies in Dead Languages: Prose Poetry

This year morgues served welcome drinks no one ever wanted. We inclined towards ice skating, tiptoeing with skates on sheets of paranoia and uncertainty. Silly! You don’t tiptoe on ice, you will plummet like snowflakes that never had the chance to twirl magically in a Disney movie.

Breathe of Hope: Prose Poetry

They are building altars on bloodied grounds and calling dead gods to bless purging promises they made in their name. They are cultivating hatred for melanin sundresses and rainbows. They are killing trees, making paper, and writing “save trees” on it.

The Art of Lying: Prose Poetry

I am a liar.

Let me tell you a story you wouldn’t even try to understand: I have vanished into easels and thrown myself into an ocean of stories.

The Tooth Bunny – Doodle

“Bunny kinda sus”

Whiskey in a Teacup: Snippet

She is whiskey in a teacup, swimming under the sunbeams of passions,

lightening at her fingertips painting a graffiti of wild dreamy fables.

Yet icicles are jabbed in her eyelashes, causing wrecks of ships and inaugurating museums for humans.

Lab Rats – Doodle

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”

~ Edward Tufte

Witching Hour: Snippet

In my daydreams, I am cuddling the moon and gluing the stars to form constellations like the connect the dots puzzles that arrived in the newspaper every Sunday.

Sleeping At Last: Atlas – Doodle

Some of my favorite lyrics from the Atlas album by Sleeping at Last that inspired this creation: