A Farewell Tribute

You have  done well. That you sag now stands testimony for the way you have served me, for you sag, having borne the weight of my words, having served as the bowl to carry what I poured out.

Your every tiny feature rests in my heart, be it a tiny misalignment of the frame that holds you in place or a creak on the wood at your back that faces the wall behind you, and I love you whole - I may boldly say so, for I have truly known you.

You might not possess a mouth to speak from, but they way you lay in my arms when I held you alongside my marker pen speaks more words than I could ever write upon you.. And what better way to show your love for me than retaining stains of marker ink that are ghosts of poetry that I wrote, photographed and forgot countless times.

I prepare to leave this haven now, in search of another, but will I ever find a companion such as you? And yet I turn away, fighting to hold the tears that brim in my eyes, with an image of your cleaned face that refuses to let go of the faded ink that adores it - a critter which is no longer untouched, for it has known the touch of my love. And I smile to myself, for I know now, that I have paid you my return in full, for your image shall shine clearer in my head and heart than my words have ever shone upon you. Perhaps love of the most intimate kind is a contest where each hopes to love the other more. And the greatest joy comes from losing. I digress, but don't you know it is an attempt to ease the pain that fills me? To gulp down the lump that fills my throat and hold my shaking self, in a vain attempt to contain my grief?

I may have had many a muse, but without you, would it have had any use?

You were my mother, my brother, a true friend who made me speak endlessly at times when I've felt to choked to be able to utter any word. You saw through me in a way I never could see through you, and proved a true support to my ailing shoulder on my darkest nights.

And you did even more. You let me see my own thoughts in ways I could never have, but for you. You lay out my life in a way that only you could have, ridding me of the most complex difficulties of my life, suggesting solutions with such clarity that I could have never come up with, in solitude. You filled my day and reminded me of those tiny details that even I didn't care for, pointing out to me, time and again, that my life was more important than I'd ever considered it to be.

My poetry began in this campus, and might end here, and you have perhaps seen the last of it, cradling its heavy head upon your large lap, supporting it with your even larger heart as it breathed its last words, coughing them up on your heavenly self, while I lay like a fool, oblivious to the misfortune that fell upon my pen.

I now look away, my spirit as blank as I see you to be from this distance, for where can words come, when you cease to exist in my life?

11:01pm, 28.6.2017.

A goodbye to the whiteboard in my hostel room.

Without Words

The words that once filled my soul've deserted me,
Now spilled onto my sheets of paper, that lie before thee,
Or forgotten by my blessed memory -
Lock'd in that keyless chamber where some thoughts might still lie,
Waiting in vain until they die,
Thoughts that once broke my heart, slipping away before I could note them down,
Hiding deep within my head, while I sought them in vain,
Ones I craved to see, and thought hard,
But whose faces I no longer remember,

And today I smile, for I can drink a scene in quiet,
Letting its beauty quench my pain, flowing unhampered,
Stopp'd not by that filter within, that collects the residue of words,
Letting the rest flow within, while I jealously note these,
Blots of ink that dimly capture the moment,
That others might enjoy, and praise and applaud,
While I sit, freed from the compulsion to write,
And from remorse of losing the sight,

I now see the moon, a white orb in the sky,
A sight, full in itself, not hindered by a thought astray,
I shall sit here, drenched in this scene,
Drinking it in with my every sense,

Filling my every socket with this,
On and on, 'til my stomach hurts,
For I know for sure, that this won't last long,
That something shall come up, perhaps a noisy throng,
Or the plague of words might rise, moving my wrist,
Or a dumbfounding problem that makes me leave in haste,
And I search within for a means to return,
A way to come back to this refuge, this zone,

Before I know, my insides shift,
Morphing themselves into a brush, swift,
Rendering this moment, with the paint of thoughts,
So I can revisit it again, when I choose,
I see, now, that time's a river that flows*,
That if I seek to return to this instant,
I must pick a means to capture and pin it,
That if it's not a poem, it's another art form,
And if I must truly be in the present, I must learn,
To let it go.

Written between 9:30pm and 9:40pm on 9.6.2017
Final edits by 6:33pm on 10.6.2017

*This line is inspired by what my father told me about writing. He said, "Time is like a river, and writing is an attempt to capture a frame of its flow." He proceeded to tell me about how much one's writing can influence someone else, since I'd never know who would be reading it and how they would connect to it. For that reason, he said that I must always provide a positive solution to life's problems, and to give hope that there is a way out of even the darkest corners of life.