How terrifying it is
To be lost
In the dark,
And yet be aware
Of the shadows
That chase us
And the shadows
That don’t.
©Aaysid
The Shadows
To Be Found
If no one asks about your distant gaze
You can calmly keep staring off into space,
And stay wherever you have wandered off to;
Without a sound, in peace for days,
But it does not hurt to have someone
To tenderly invade your breathing space
So that you can safely resurface,
And bask in the joy of being found for sometime
Before you lose yourself again in that place!
©Aaysid
“I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.”
Arundhati Roy
The Yes Man
He self-destructs sometimes
By joining a crowd
That is praying for clouds
In spite of being
A puddle already!
©Aaysid
“Some people are kept righteous by their not being courageous.”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay
Atypical
You are the periwinkle
In black and white,
A rounded soul amongst
The solid lines,
A silhouette against
The well-defined,
An idealist living large
In a city of cynics;
You proudly stand out,
Yet, you blend in fine.
©Aaysid
Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay
Brain Fog
I see you,
But I can’t see you.
It’s the brain fog,
It is one of those days.
You make a good point,
But I woke up
On the wrong side
Of the floor today,
Can you make it again
Any other day?
It looks like yesterday,
And like the day before,
And the day before it too.
Everything’s ablur,
But I am giving myself
Points for being here anyway;
I am sitting at your desk,
Mistyping passwords,
And I brought
Herbal tea on a black coffee
Kind of day.
I wish I could
Restart this day,
But I am also not up for
Reliving today today.
©Aaysid
Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels
A Choice
I order myself
To disappear, every time
I misappear
In front of someone
Or something that appears
Out of nowhere,
But it never gets to
The point
Of a grand reappearance-
The one I could
Rebelliously sit out.
©Aaysid
“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”
Shannon L. Alder
Image by sergei akulich from Pixabay
Disjointed, Short Stories – Part – III
I. A Beeping Reminder
Oh, how the beeping was fainting every day! Presbycusis was catching up with him. It was always 22:30, it seemed. A timer for something. He no longer remembers what he had set it up for.
22:30. The last time he had heard from his parents. Many years ago.
II. Hush up!
There is a stranger in the hallway. I have not talked to anyone today. They tell me that I go about deflating other people. I don’t know what that means. What if this stranger is actually looking for someone to talk to? Besides, his coat looks too big for his body. I should tell him.
III. Missing
I was enraged. All the A’s were missing from my cereal bowl. How I loved them! It is strange, but the A’s taste the best. I let my mother know about the missing A’s. She shows me my biology report card instead. There is a C there.
IV. Different
He works six days a week, goes on educational trips, attends seminars, and reads in his free time. He tells them that he has made it. He asks them to not waste a single minute of their lives.
He is her favourite motivational speaker. She listens to him while washing the dishes. Three times a day, for three hours. There are fifteen people in her house, and not enough money for a dishwasher.
V. Changing
My older brother has the best taste in movies. Every Sunday, I call him to get recommendations. However, I had not anticipated how different everything was going to be this weekend. I call him, and he suggests a documentary! My brother had his thirtieth birthday two days ago.
————–
©Aaysid
I felt like taking a break from poetry, and then I thought about writing flash fiction. I have shared such stories before as well. The previous ones can be found here and here. 😊
Image by Roman Grac from Pixabay
Quietened
We could stay quiet
but we seldom do.
We are like fine dust
that exudes invisibly
from the seasonal crops
during the nights
of the Harvest Moon,
triggering old asthmas.
©Aaysid
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Photo by Pierre Sudre from Pexels
Unsure
To be entirely here is absence
from somewhere else,
and a thought this daunting
keeps me from being here
completely at times,
and I often wonder
if somewhere else wants me there
or if this place right here
could use my absence?
©Aaysid
“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don’t want to be sane.”
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
Photo by Anni Roenkae from Pexels
Sleepy-eyed
I love what sleep
Does to the eyes;
Melts the brown in them,
And defrosts the white,
The red tendrils lost
Behind a dreamy sleeve,
The eyelids but a slit
To let in just the night
That proclaims that things
Are all right for a while.
©Aaysid
Unconnected
I.
You are found
In the spam folders,
Haunting the news feed,
Chirping like a blue jay
On the world wide web;
You are too virtual
To make sense.
II.
I hope we are never treated
Like a telephone number;
Hurriedly, illegibly scribbled
On the back of someone’s hand-
Too random to be remembered,
Too inconsequential to be saved.
©Aaysid
Out of a Dream
I dream of a place
where dreams
are more real
than reality
could ever be,
and I am as real
as one could ever be
living out of a dream
that could never be
lived out otherwise.
©Aaysid
“We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.”
Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses
The Pep Talk
You are going about
Your usual day,
“Don’t cry, don’t cry,”
You say to yourself
As you step onto
One of the many
Stones in your way,
And the bounce
In your step
Just wouldn’t stay,
But as the day continues
That bounce isn’t the only
Thing that you lose…
“I am fine, it’s all right,”
You lie to yourself,
While you secretly hope
That one of these days
The world shall choose
To step out
Of your way, but for now,
It’s okay.
©Aaysid
A Summer’s Day
It has been terribly hot here since a few weeks, and I have a lot of work to do this weekend, so I took some time out to imagine the kind of summer day I would like to have one day. Maybe I will, but not for the next two months though. Anyway, I am grateful for a mind that lets me find sanctuary in imagination. 😊
I made a to-do list today
On a piece of paper
And tore it to shreds!
I could no longer feel
The knots in my stomach,
And the grey clouds fled.
I have been reading all day,
Taking in the sky’s blue
And the sun’s mighty red!
©Aaysid
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.“
John Lubbock
Image by Aleksey Kutsar from Pixabay
Teleported
Some of your stories
feel strangely familiar,
and my heart rejoices
even if it gets to
live one out
in non-real-time.
I wonder why some part
of me drifts away
and finds homes
in the old coffee houses
that I know only
from the pictures
you have shown me?
©Aaysid
“Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.”
Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot
Individuality
She leaves behind the past,
And some memories
She unwittingly drags along.
Her house overlooks the sea,
With a foreboding-
She does not belong.
Her life was a musical,
But there was
Never an opening song.
People like her are exquisite,
Still other people
Get them all wrong.
©Aaysid
Image by GIOVANNI_MARCELLO from Pixabay
Bookish
I.
We.
One book.
Separate pages.
Distinct contexts.
Bookmarked.
Dog-eared.
At different times.
II.
She checks herself out
From her personal library,
Based only on what she sees;
For she was not like a cover,
But more of a book jacket,
Comfortable and beautiful.
III.
He always buys books
From the wandering peddlers;
There is more than one town
On his nightstand.
©Aaysid
The Hope for Better Days
I shall drink out
of my favourite vase
without throwing
the wilted flowers away,
and I shall poke
the lonesome cloud
above my foggy head
with a stick that I shall fashion
out of every thing
I should have thrown away
a long time ago.
I might sing myself to sleep,
but I shall not sleep a wink,
and I shall beat
some eggs and feel bad
for the whites,
and the bright yellows
outside my window
that I can see, but cannot
touch for a while,
and this thought shall bring
an offhand smile
that I shall not smile
in hopes of it growing
into a big grin one day!
©Aaysid
Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
Pablo Neruda
The Rain Dance
The meteorologists are confident that our part of the world is going to see some rain soon. I hope they are right. I hope there are no floods this year, and the rainy season arrives as a blessing for everyone.
Well, our lives had slowed down,
Waddled like a baby duck
Through the hottest days of June.
A quiet, weakly pulsating, hollow,
Yet palpable stretch of time,
With no promise to end soon.
We slowly let the air in,
And gently breathe it out
To get into the rhythm of monsoon.
©Aaysid
Those We Knew
As we grow older, losing friends becomes inevitable because we are people after all and that is what we do. We lose each other.
Before
I think I am greater
than the sum of my parts
but I am not sure what that entails.
There is nothing like a quiet
afternoon in the Fall
but you already know the details.
Orange is your colour
and I remember telling you that
in one of my protracted emails.
Now
You abandoned all pretense
at politeness and told me
to take you out of my second-rate art.
I erased a few dozen words,
emptied out the sent items folder
and that seemed like only a start.
There is a hole where the world
used to make sense before
but now everything has fallen apart.
©Aaysid
Photo by Maizal Najmi from Pexels
Resetting
I was feeling weary,
And it took me
A few moments before
I could talk myself out of it,
But I also knew that you, too,
Were feeling blue,
And that your reset button
Was malfunctioning,
So I got strong
Because you could not,
And one of us
Always has to be it
To get through what we
Go through!
©Aaysid
*I think I may have posted this one before, but I’ve been reminded by an app that today’s the one-year anniversary of this poem, so I felt like celebrating the occasion by reposting it. 🙂
Image by Aleksey Kutsar from Pixabay
Reflecting
Not friends with vanity any more,
I might as well become my own mirror;
I’ll ignore the smudged fingerprints,
And I shall not fix the minor cracks,
and shall not wipe off
the permanent misty tracks.
I’ll stand back to embrace the parallax,
And my reflection’s imperfections!
©Aaysid
Photo by Mariana Blue from Pexels
Twisted
It seldom worked.
Disagreement.
Felt real;
Made peace with.
Thoughts set free.
Recompensed.
Too late.
Grim words penned;
Misspelled.
Made sense;
Left at that.
Every you knows
Someone like me.
A small world.
©Aaysid
Image by Darkmoon_Art from Pixabay
Escapism
When everyday life overwhelms me a bit,
I find myself fixating on quiet, little (un)happenings,
Beautiful despite their apparent insignificance.
Such as spaces between the words in a book,
Post-lunch dip on the busiest of workdays,
A longing for solitude even when in good company,
And daydreams about being anywhere
But wherever you find yourself at the moment;
The little somethings that may not be nothing after all.
©Aaysid
Drunk
Inside the depths
Of their rational minds,
In the dark, forsaken cellars,
A few unruly thoughts ferment,
But they might choose
To feign indifference
When all their sober ideas
Begin to break under the influence!
©Aaysid
“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
Image by Игорь Левченко from Pixabay
Outrageously Erratic 