The Poet's Sanctuary

Some rules come early. You don’t remember choosing them. There was a crossing I used to pass by. A few planks over a break in the ground, edges worn smooth. Someone had carved a warning into the wood. It had faded, but it stayed. A bird kept to that spot most days. If anything came close when the water pushed higher, it would step forward, just enough to make them stop. One afternoon, something small came up the path. Thin, restless, moving like it had somewhere to be. It stepped onto the plank, slow, testing it. The bird moved once. That was enough. The animal turned back, leaving only silence. It felt settled. Nothing unusual about it. Later, the water rose a little. Same place, same marking, same boards underfoot. The bird crossed first. No one was there to watch it happen.

Dear Competitive Exam, I know... This is probably the weirdest love letter you've ever received. People usually write love letters to a person. I chose the question paper. Our relationship has been complicated. You never text first. You never call. You don't even tell me what chapters you'll ask from. Yet somehow, you occupy more space in my mind than any crush ever did. Every morning I promise myself, "Today I'll study without getting distracted." Five minutes later, I'm searching, "Can someone crack you by studying only two months?" You must laugh every time. I've bought highlighters for you, new notebooks for you, new timetables for you... The only thing I haven't bought is consistency. Forgive me. I'm working on it. Some days I stare at your syllabus the way people stare at mountains. Beautiful from a distance. Terrifying up close. You have introduced me to emotions. I never knew existed. The confidence of solving one mock test. The heartbreak of checking the answer key. The bargaining. "Please... let the cut-off fall just two marks." You have taught me that "almost" is the most painful word in the dictionary. Sometimes I hate you. Then I remember... You never asked me to fall in love. I did that myself. You don't reject anyone. You simply ask, "How badly do you want this?" And honestly... Some days my answer is, "With all my heart." Other days it's, "Can we continue tomorrow?" Still... I keep returning. Like a fool. Like a lover. Like someone who secretly believes that one day you'll finally smile at me through a result PDF. I imagine that day often. No violins. No slow motion scene. Just me, refreshing the website every three seconds, forgetting how to breathe, and suddenly seeing my roll number. That'll probably be the most romantic moment of my life. So until we officially meet, Please be a little kind. I promise to stop saying, "I'll start from Monday." You stop hiding easy questions between impossible ones. Deal? Yours faithfully, emotionally, mentally exhausted, and still hopelessly in love, The Stranger...

There is a wall. In its corner, a spider’s web, paint peeling, a ceiling damp with quiet decay. There is a wall. Long cracks running everywhere, sunlight slipping through them, trying to look inside. Still it's standing, holding the ceiling above its head. There is a wall. Between self-respect and the weight of being looked down on. Between peace of mind and the echo of people laughing. Between a life that could feel enough and the ones who keep tightening the grip. There is a wall. It’s the wall of my house.

The Ugly Girl They said she was ugly. Not cruelly, of course. No one stood in the town square and announced her defects. No laws were written against her. No doors were locked. There was simply a little more warmth for her sister. A little more patience. A little more pride. A little more love. And what is discrimination, if not a thousand little mores given to someone else? Her sister fit perfectly inside the frame the world had prepared. Skin like milk. Features soft enough to make strangers smile. The kind of face people call beautiful before learning a single thing about the soul behind it. The ugly girl learned early that beauty is the only privilege people pretend does not exist. In school, teachers taught equality. Then handed the lead role to the prettier child. Again. And again. And again. The ugly girl knew every line of every play. But she always became a tree. A wall. A nameless villager standing silently in the background. The front row of the prayer chorus belonged to prettier faces. The annual photograph placed her somewhere near the edge, where memories fade first. Merit mattered. Of course it mattered. It simply mattered less. Classmates were not cruel either. Not officially. They only laughed when she walked past. Only compared her to prettier girls. Only reminded her, every now and then, that love was a prize she was unlikely to win. Children can be remarkably honest. And honesty, without kindness, is merely another form of violence. Years passed. She learned to laugh before others could laugh at her. Learned to insult herself before others had the chance. Learned to disappear while standing in crowded rooms. The strange thing about loneliness is that eventually it begins to feel like personality. Then came love. Or what looked like love. A man noticed her. Not her face. Not her mind. Her availability. Her willingness to settle for crumbs. People who have starved their entire lives often mistake scraps for feasts. She loved him completely. He loved her conditionally. She waited for messages. He waited for better options. One day he left. Not because she was ugly. That would have been easier. He left because he could. Some hearts are abandoned for reasons. Others are abandoned for opportunities. After that, she became successful. This is usually the part where stories become inspirational. But life is rarely interested in neat endings. The promotions arrived. The money arrived. The respect arrived. Yet every achievement felt like receiving flowers at the grave of a person who needed them years ago. Because success cannot travel backward. It cannot sit beside the little girl in the school auditorium. It cannot place her in the front row. It cannot silence the laughter. It cannot teach her how to see herself through kinder eyes. And so she grew older. The world grew kinder too. People called her strong. Resilient. Independent. They admired the armor without noticing the wounds that required it. One evening, standing before a mirror, she finally understood something. The tragedy of her life was never that she was ugly. The tragedy was that she spent decades looking at herself through borrowed eyes. Eyes belonging to teachers, classmates, strangers, lovers, advertisements, and impossible standards. Eyes that had never loved her. Beauty standards change every century. Sometimes every decade. But the damage they leave behind outlives them all. The ugly girl was never ugly. She was merely born on the wrong side of a collective hallucination. And perhaps that is the most frightening thing about being human. A mirror can only reflect a face. Yet somehow, we allow it to determine a soul...

when we die, i hope we become a part of the sky. so every time it rains, we are everywhere we couldn't be while we were alive. & every time the sky changes its colors, it's just us finding new ways to stay beautiful.

If I Could Write it Again.. I could begin with “once, we were infinite,” but even infinity has an end. There was a moment quiet, unremarkable to the world where your eyes met mine, and the universe paused just long enough for me to believe in forever. We weren't a fairytale. Fairytales have spells, and ours was all silence and slow unraveling. It felt like poetry written in a dying language beautiful, but no one could translate it right. You were the ache beneath every smile. The echo in every room I left too quickly. And if I could write it again, I'd still let you break my heart. Because some endings are worth the story they come from. ~ xyz 14 December, 2023

If Love Ever Finds Me I don't dream of Paris. Or candles. Or a sky filled with fireworks. Give me a rainy evening, your cold fingers searching for mine inside the pocket of my hoodie. That is enough to convince me God still writes poetry. I want to learn the geography of your existence. The little scar you stopped noticing. The way your voice becomes softer when sleep begins stealing your words. The single strand of hair that never stays behind your ear. The smile you save only for moments you don't realize I'm watching. Sit beside me. Close enough that our shoulders forget which one belongs to whom. Let's waste an entire afternoon arguing over which movie to watch, only to spend the whole time watching each other. Read your book. I'll read mine. Every few pages, look at me not because you have something to say, but because love sometimes looks up just to make sure its favorite person is still there. When your head finds my chest, don't listen to my heartbeat. It becomes nervous around you. Listen instead to the silence. Even it starts smiling. Come here. Let me braid your hair as badly as a man possibly can. Undo it. Laugh. Scold me. Then ask me to do it again. Some happiness deserves to be repeated. Let's cook together. Burn the bread. Forget the salt. Dance while the tea boils over. If home ever learns our names, I hope it remembers us exactly like this making a mess and calling it a life. And when the world becomes too loud, don't ask me to fix it. Just place your hand inside mine. Miracles have happened with less. One day, our hair will turn silver. Our hands will wrinkle. Our steps will slow. But I pray you still reach for my sleeve when crossing a road... still steal the warmer side of the blanket... still rest your sleepy face against my shoulder... as though after all those years, the safest place you have ever known was never a house... it was the small distance between my heartbeat and yours...

The Weight of Ordinary Things No one warns you... that absence first learns the shape of ordinary things. A chair keeps facing the window long after the conversations have retired. A cup remembers the warmth longer than the hands that borrowed it. Dust is patient. It never asks who left. It simply settles until every untouched surface begins to resemble acceptance. People think forgetting arrives like rain. It doesn't. It arrives like sunlight... so gradual you cannot point to the hour the shadows changed places. One morning, you reach for a memory and discover it no longer bleeds. It has become a quiet object you can hold without dropping the rest of your life. Perhaps healing was never the repair of what broke. Perhaps it is only this... learning that even silence eventually finds another way to breathe.

The crows don’t come for the dead. They come for what’s breathing without being alive. For people who smile cleanly while something inside them has been gone for years. The bodies walk. The rot stays.

Where do you go When you lose what was never yours? When you live inside a mirage, Where everything you reach for Is always farther than it seems. You remember the exact moment You realized what you were holding Was nothing but thorns. Still, you smiled. In that moment, Pain meant nothing. Now your hands Carry the bruises, Long after you've let go.

PARACETAMOL A wire wrapped tightly to my spine, I lay on the bed, straight as a line. Because I couldn't move, as it gave me pain, and my mind told me to stand up, but I knew it would all be in vain. The clothes on my flesh felt heavy as chains, and to get rid of this pain, I tried my best to strain. One, two, three, and four how many they were, the crows outside the window, I knew, were spitting slurs. I thought it'd all get out of control, and then my mother gave me paracetamol.

When I see this cup, it does not sit quietly it calls. Glazed in colors that linger too long, light caught in its curves like something alive, something waiting. It leans toward me without moving. And I I feel it the pull in my throat, the dryness it creates just by being seen. My fingers begin to remember what it would feel like to hold, to lift, to drink but I stop them. I let my eyes wander its edges instead, trace its shape without possession. I close my hand before it learns to reach. Because I know some thirsts do not end in drinking. Some only grow louder the more they are fed. So I leave it untouched, not out of fear, but out of knowing. I pass it, again and again, teaching myself the quiet strength of restraint. It is fragile not just in form, but in meaning. And I will not be the one to break what I do not yet understand. When the time comes when holding is no longer hunger but readiness I will lift it gently. Not to empty it for myself, but to pour. To offer. To share what it holds without losing myself in it. So, dear cup you are not mine to rush. I want you yes. But more than that, I choose the moment I become worthy of holding you.

I begged the night, I begged the sky, I swore to bleed before goodbye. With trembling hands, I clutched the flame, And whispered love, and spoke your name. The candles wept, their shadows spread, Like mourners gathered round the dead. I prayed for mercy, just one chance, To bind your heart in fate’s last dance. But all you gave - two words, a knife, That split the marrow of my life. Five letters etched, a deathly brand, Carved deeper than I could withstand. I can’t - you spoke, the final breath, And left me courting only death. Now every night the echoes call, Through shattered glass and ruined hall. Your ghost still haunts the crimson room, Where roses rot and ashes bloom. I walk in black, with love’s remains, Forever bound by phantom chains. - xyz 30 september, 2025

The thoughts that kill each other every night, Declare a truce when you're around. I open the door of my lungs_ Inhale you, exhale doubt. love doesn't live in the clouds with no parachute, I found you in the laziest spots, Between the lights of the cars in the street _ Right there where I put my feet, so effortlessly.

The abandoned car tyre, with its scars from war, remembrances of the days when it used to battle roads with so much vigour that when it crashed on stone you used to hear bullet sounds, shots fired at everything that tried to hold us back. It carried the weight of an entire people, moving them forward or backwards, or wherever they desired it. It was considerate and attentive that way, the best at turning toward. You could tell, because it was the car tyre that always reacted to the brakes or pumps first. The car tyre that curved just enough in the parallel parking section of my license exam. In that way, it was always more full of hope than air. How it lifted itself off the ground and morphed into a flying machine to ensure my niece was delivered on time that one time when labour came too early. How it sank itself into the ground like it was grieving with us as it dragged us to my father’s funeral. The car tyre that spun over potholes so softly, so quietly, we were convinced the road was smooth. The car tyre that watched the sunset with us on our first date. The car tyre that gave so much of its life to people it did not know so it could get me to college. The car tyre that only ever got flat when I wanted to drive over the bridge. The car tyre that never tired. The car tyre that puffed up even more when its contemporaries succumbed to the friction of life. The car tyre that withstood all the pressure ever thrown onto it in the name of loving us, loving me. The car tyre that’s now abandoned and sits just outside the shade of the tree. The car tyre that burns with the flames of summer that have slowly torn it apart. The car tyre that nobody seems to care for anymore because everyone has moved to different places. The car tyre that looks like it’s been eaten away at by loneliness, the car tyre that’s formed wrinkles on its sides. The car tyre is past its prime. But the car tyre needs to be loved. The car tyre needs to be cherished. Because there will never be another tyre like it. I wondered why it seemed so familiar. My mother is the car tyre.

i pull the blanket tight waiting for sleep to trick me old thoughts don't go away they dig in sharp scratching inside all night i don't fall apart quick i stare at the ceiling cracks making deals with quiet it's weird how nothing hurts more than a cut ever did then tears come fast hot like mad words wetting the pillow with goodbyes i never said sun sneaks past the curtains cold and plain and i get up putting on a fake smile like last night's mess was only a bad dream