With(out) You

Everyday I come home
I forget your absence
I open the door
To an empty shell
Which reminds me of
Your presence

There are no hugs
And deep sighs
The couch is cold
Without you on it
Smiling your
Come to me smile

My words are meaningless
For they aren’t answering
Your endless questions;
My jokes are bereft of
Your scandalized chiding
And my walls are silent
Without your echoing laughter

My city of a decade
Seems alien without you
The roads are barren
With snow and without you
Even the river isn’t flowing
Without your love

Within a year you’ve become
So much more to me
The magic of my days
The reason behind my work
The answer to my prayers
The life in my life
And in these days away
From you
I am but a memory of
You and me

Ice gone dry

A bag full of words were never enough

To fill the lines of my notebook

I need to know the secrets of stifled laughter

The tears that flee at the brush of a hand

The voices that ring with fervour

And the anger that burnt an entire city bare

 

These words I have lack in flesh and blood

I’d like to discard them, but 

Not even the vultures will seek them

I need a device to pump life into them

To drill their reluctant innards 

To scoop their filth and fill them with 

An overflowing light.

Light that is smoky like ice gone dry

So cold, that they burn a hole 

Through the minds that read them.