i look at all these women
left without their partners
who had to make it on their own

i look at all these men
who fought wars
who died before their time
who took care of
their daughters
their nieces
but not their own lives

and i sometimes wonder
whether there is a destiny
and how all these people
carved its boundaries for me

i sometimes look for the women
among all these mothers
who had to take care of so many
i sometimes look for the men
among all these children
i look for the fathers
and the joy and pleasure of women
and the joy and pleasure of men
i look for glimpses
of balance
of forgiveness
of self-forgiveness
of ok-to-change-your-mind
of accepted lagom
of mature love
of intentional healing
in the middle of this survival battle they all won

and i think of my choice
to become who i am
and how it doesn’t sound like my choice
when i look back
and i think of how much i love it
and how much i love to love what i do
and if there is a destiny,
whether it’s so bad to follow it

i am not only a woman
i am a woman of my family
and a woman of my own
i am both

it is my grandmothers
and my grandmothers’s grandmothers
that mother all the people
who take the good mother
out of me
it is my father
and my father’s father
that know how to play so well
when the happy child
is awakened

and i still look for the woman
in all the sacrifices of these people
i look for the woman
who could feel the pleasure of life
purely for herself and her enjoyment
and suddenly
there’s no wonder i go there
so rarely
and so abruptly
no wonder i find myself there
so thirsty
and out of control
no wonder i made sex
a life-or-death matter

Saturday morning
hangover, unable 
to overthink
i become a house with open 
doors,
i feel spacious enough for 
everyone in the room
before lunch
two people had already cried on my shoulder
in the evening
before taking off my clothes
i noticed how the fabric of the right sleeve
was imbued 
i was thinking if we could disentangle
the specific chemistry of each person’s tears
i was thinking about my shoulder
and how
it became a room in the house of my body
where people entered
i was thinking about the water in tears 
and how it touched my skin
and how we are so thirsty sometimes
without knowing the shape of the water 
we need

Sunday after lunch
i started waiting for ashley
which was nothing but light rain
inside my body
it didn’t rain lightly
it felt on the verge of giving up
it could have been the food
or all the unspoken words 
i swallowed
but didn’t know how to digest

Monday morning 
i watch the five pairs
of shoes in the middle of the living room
and think of summer dust

the first week of September
my second favourite month
was a mirror
of how my life has felt lately
a constant discovery of corners
where sunlight nests
shamelessly,
an investigation into the innerscape
of wild rivers and streams
overflowing their banks. These
floods are called crying. I am being
sculpted by this pain
I invited without knowing

it never felt so real
I am uprooted
from all my attempts to remain skeptical. And
I tried hard.
but
this layer of reality
once unveiled
I cannot unsee,
this way of dancing
practiced once
I cannot unlearn,
this shape my body
is taking
to allow life to inhabit me
like all the wild animals
returned to the age
of roaming freely
I cannot stop wanting.

I sometimes feel
like a wild animal myself
in the middle of the city
I get close to people
with curiosity
and fear of not hurting them
with the rawness of life
that flooded my veins
and is now flooding
the streets

it’s not even Saturday

the moment you gently
   slip into the sleep valley
   and you only have time
   for one last conscious thought

the moment you wake up
   but you still have your eyes closed
   and the story about who you are
   has not yet caught up with you

the moment you catch yourself
   returning to your body
   after being mindless about it

the moment the noise stops
   and you are present to notice
   the change
      to silence

the moment your inner body relaxes
   and you catch yourself
   sighing deeply

the moment you deflate inside a hug
   you felt safe enough

the moment an acute pain stops
    and you are there
    to reown your non-physical struggles

the first conscious movement following stillness

the touch of the air you’re moving with your hands as you’re strolling through an empty house

the last breath before a speech in front of many

the last breath.

i always ask for less than what i need
i rarely take what’s rightfully mine
but sometimes i take more
and then i regret
i do receive but always with surprise
i am grateful i learnt to give
exactly what i can
i share some things with ease
and sometimes i don’t even think
about sharing
i know how to refuse
i find it easiest of them all
to play and to imagine

my tongue feeling dry
after i ate a pack of salt & vinegar crisps
my favourite
tired eyelids
i smell the milk blending with the black tea
city lights and roads
arranged like arteries
vascularising the darkness underneath
we penetrate the cloud-shaped fog

i guess i like turbulence during a flight
in the same way
children who experienced neglect
and abuse learn that

something is better than nothing

one is the loud voice
I sometimes pour myself from
one is the silence
the silence
the silence
that feels the pain
that learnt the anatomy of pain by heart
so I can feel it but not suffer

one was the joy
the joy that took space
sometimes from the space of others
the joy that lives in the way I walk
one was the warmth
the warmth that gave space
sometimes from her own

I 
am the place where joy and warmth
make 
a 
ground.

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