Harassed by desperation

I walk down the street and eyes follow me everywhere. Every step that I take is reinforced by a blink or a wink that passes from man to man thinking that they are praising me with their leers and smirks. Unashamed among the footsteps of the ants, blindly tracking the curves in my figure, mapping myself in front of themselves, placing their claws on my neck taking me into a clouded haze where I only drown lower and deeper until I disappear. I walk down the street where cars are growling and fires are burning brightly, feeling their eyes clinging to me; they are echoing deafeningly, beating until everything else disappears. In a trapped maze trying to make my way through and I feel impatient dirty fingers slide down my support. Quick prodding poking, hurried desperate invasion that stops me in my tracks for a second but they have disappeared already. I walk down the street only to be explored by unwanted surveyors that I cannot grasp in retaliation. I walk down the street only to be harassed by cowardice and desperation that I definitely don't need walking down with me.

Polychromatic waves

It burns my skin seeping into the ivory waves that used to be sapphire daylight. I mixed the ripples with the scarlet rays until they bled yellow inside me blending with the dazed blue sky that spread out on my dented fingers. Small eyes peeked at me as I folded it, making the waves rumble and rush over one another until they moulded to form a shining silver that twinkled at me.

Thoughts

I'm draining into iron holes losing pieces of myself with each dragging drop of water that drips down my wheat body. Thoughts are tangled with my fingers, pointing and poking my scalp telling me to go left right draw a circle turn over reach out unleash myself curl up. It extends into my rolled stomach, crawling from my wrapped up palms and flowing into my legs that feel like they cannot support me. I climb into a deep dark hole befriending the wolves until they make my thoughts go away.

Hidden in henna

They say a husband's name is embedded in his bride's henna, hidden in the dark patterned flowers of her palms. Everyone believes it and I did too. Sometimes in the past when my palms were decorated in hypnotic patterns, I searched for him, a mr right to my mrs right, our names entangled together echoing in the delicately stained curves. But now its been years since I explored the dents and scratches in my fingers for a face masked under the effortless twists and turns. Now when I stretch out my soft pink hands they are bare of scented henna and I watch as his name lights up in my wrists where it is intertwined with my veins and beating comfortingly in the place of my heart.

Too bad they don't go by their own mantra

Their fluid judgements restrain you. Tie up your tongue in knots that grow bigger and bigger until your tongue vanishes in a mist of flames. You're wrong, they say. Closing off their iron gates bringing a barrier of intolerance ready to strike at the drop of a bowling ball. They preach tolerance but flood your mind with mocking that continues to beat in their chests like hypocrites swimming in a life which they feel is superior and desired by all. Don't judge, they say yet they stray away from the other calling them names cutting them out of their lives like women cutting locks of hair into a disappearing black hole. Live and let live, they say. Too bad they don't go by their own mantra.

Galaxies

The galaxies of my mind are filled with twinkling thoughts and everlasting rings that fall softer onto paper that flows trickling into untouched holes like water streamlining down a mountain. When I open my mouth to voice what's inside, it fogs up like the dreary dew hanging on branches on a winter morning. That's okay. I pick up a sword instead, cutting through the inky fog like a pen grazing on paper. I write down my thoughts about Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons onto the crumbling wood, engraving my initials into it until it continues to blink brightly even in the darkest hour.

Flowered Roots

When I was younger I used to walk through the flowered fields and chase the patterns of the roots that were ingrained in the soil. I used to blow on a rose and watch the bloodied pink petals flow into the aquamarine sky creating a tornado of dust and sickly sweet rose odour. When I was younger I traced the patterns on my body wondering where the veins led to, aching to burst them open and explore inside. My mind was filled with dreams of adulthood and legality; dreams that were too bright for a child. Now I am older and I sit and watch the roots of flowers pass through me, stretching me longer curving through each other until I begin to wish I was younger. Now I am older and my dreams are impossible realities with mountains and earthquakes blocking them until I am too blinded to see them anymore. I am older and I watch life pick at my petals, drowning them in a succulent swirl of chocolate and fire until the the daisies cease to grow. Now I am older and the moment I turn over, I see the roots that I tracked when I was a child grow out of my back to form those sweet roses I blew away.

You laughed at something that was ingrained in my vocal cords

You used to sit in class and laugh at me. When I got up and spoke you giggled and exchanged mocking looks that pierced through the back of my head and into my mind. Digging into the sinuses of my brain your looks cast their seeds, rootedly growing each time you smirked at me tripping over my words. I put a stoplight at the front of each word, not because I wanted to but because I had no choice. I stumbled and sped and slowed down and suffocated under word formations and mouth challenges and tongue misbehaviour but all you did was cackle uncontrollably and whisper poison among yourselves. I didn't even need you to mock me, I did it very well myself. I tortured myself I was ashamed I was angry I was cruel to my tongue and my mind I wanted to cut it out of me and fling it out the window. Too bad that it is ingrained in my vocal cords and my bloodstreams.

Sometimes I like playing with fire

I like playing with fire sometimes. Twirling the colourful crackling paper until it burns my fingers, chipping them off one by one. They tell me not to. I light the matches one at a time dropping them all around me surrounding myself with tinges of fierce blue and orange until it envelopes me high enough so I can swallow it. My mama told me not to waste matches and not to play with fire. I tell her that I only watch the ballerinas dancing in my deepening pupils until they creep inside me lighting my heart. I tell her that she doesn't need to worry, it's only fire.

Written in response to the mob killing of Mashal Khan. He was attacked because allegations of blasphemy were made against him.

You lie here thinking about the sinking inside your brain of the death and destruction. Continuous hands pulling you down, claws ripping into your heart, scratching at your liberal heart, dragging you down to a dark abyss where people like you are burnt and tortured. Beaten and killed. Dragged along the road while shouts of religious and cultural extremism ring in your ears, clapping loud in a foreboding fervour. Repeated repetition. You do not belong you do not belong you do not belong.
Then
white noise your eyes are bloody your veins are lilac and burnt blue. Draining a piercing red, the same pierces as the weapons and the words and the wounds. Alive or dead no one cares about you. They care about their version of their culture of their version of their religion of their version of their society of their mindset of their of their of their Only theirs. Never yours. Never ours. Blind hate blind fear blinding anger until we are all blind until we have violence engraved in our bloodstreams, in our arteries in the tiny spaghettis of our brains. We kill in that violence we kill in that intolerance in that hatred that we think is right until we don't know who we are anymore, until we have lost ourselves in that quicksand of anger. We are soaking....suffocating...sinking...sinking. Save yourselves, save us, save each other before there's no one to save anymore.

Hilly Abyss

Will you take my hand and stare out into the verdant distance? Watching the hills mesh into each other, rolling and drolling until they blend with the clouds, giving birth to freezing sunshine which eclipses the warmth of your hand in mine.
Lets tiptoe closer...
A step or two
Oh wait...
We're at the edge now. Looking down into the twirling and swirling abyss of grey cords growing out of minuscule houses that exist within the green solar system of humans and animals.
If we look a bit further, will you grab me before I fall into the abyss? Or will you take my hand and drag me down until we become a part of it.

The Perfect Woman

"Be thin"
"Thori gori hojao"
"Be tall"
"Aur parhlo thora"
"Be polite"
"Be shy"
"Tameezdaar hojao"
"Khana pakana aana chahiye"
To be someone's bride there is so much more I have to be. To be a stranger's idea of the perfect bride. They are carving their wishes into me, moulding my body to create their ideal clay model of a shy, submissive, slim, fair woman who they find suitable for their not always perfect sons. They want me to be educated, but not enough to work after I say "I do." They want me to be young but only if I'm beautiful. Late 20's and I'm a used paper bag, crumpled and crushed until I am cast aside to be ground into a fine powder by an older man who looks at young models while I sit next to him. Late 20's and I'm too firm too strong-willed too wise too independent. Too not the ideal wife the ideal daughter-in-law the ideal mother. It's the 21st century where women show the world their shine and their headstrong heart but you want to dim my shine with every scrub of a dirty pot and every "jee" that I utter out of fear. Not fear of you but fear of "log kya kaheinge." Fear of your disapproval, afraid of your son's shame because his wife is too talkative too brave too smart...too unlike his friends' quieter wives. So you continue to suffocate me, merging me with your idea of a perfect woman that I don't agree with but everyone else seems to.
I don't agree with it. Your 19th century ideals of a perfect woman. We come in all shapes and sizes and colours and minds, you cannot tell us what is ideal or not. You want us to be perfect according to your shrinking bubble of perfection but why should we be a certain way when your son can be any way he wants and it's okay? Before you point at us mould us change us redress us reshape us, look at who you're changing us for and stop to think if they need changing too. Marriage is a compromise so why do you expect only women to leave themselves lost in a pool of black instructions and critiques while men do as they please? Don't be hypocritical, let everyone create themselves. Whether man or woman or any other, let us form our ideal version of ourselves according to our wishes and dreams. All my life you have said be a certain way, I spit back in your face. I will be educated I will have strong ideas I will be myself. I won't be thin if I can't be, I won't be fair if that's what your version of beauty is because I think all colours are beautiful. Tell you what I will be; Strong
Brave
Kind
Wise
Supportive
Hardworking
Understanding
Accepting
Mature
A good wife a good mother a good daughter-in-law. A good woman but according to both our wishes, not just yours.
In return I wish the same.
So although I might not be society's version of a perfect woman, atleast I'm mine and my family's. And maybe just maybe, it's time for society to change their ideas about men and women and everyone else too.

Searching

Have you found yourself? What if you're swimming in the light forever, drowning in the current of confusion, sinking in the frost of frustration forever? Until it exists no more. Without finding yourself. Without finding people who are your routes out of depression. You're continuously searching. Finding your beats and your thuds, failing again and again and again. Struggling to find yourself. Failing to surround your lost soul with friendly saviours who drag you back to the path with their definite fingers. You don't have any of those? Welcome to my world. We are always searching for people to understand
To see you
To first find themselves
And finally find you again.
But we know there aren't any such people out there. We are alone. You are alone in this deep dark world filled with crushing roots that are wrapped around your legs pulling you down to the deeper ends where you're lost until you don't recognise yourself. Where the bullies wrap their cords around your neck moulding you with their sense of what you should be. It's called life. And no one understands you here.
So I ask again. Can people help you find yourself? Or are you simply swimming in a sweltering pot of unrecognition, loneliness and denial.