#38: Pasting pasts together

What's known is known

And you've probably begun to sink

(Your teeth) into depths I couldn't

Have known- it's known.

And you've probably never

Looked at the time and wanted to make it stop

Or looked at me (you've never seen me, and that's okay) and wanted to ask me to stay,

And that's okay.

And I remember trying to answer

Questions before they existed. I

Remember looking at you and trying to

Predict how this night would go.

I still didn't know.

And I guess I'll always

Ask myself if you knew

And tell myself, after all

It's better not to know at all.

Our breaths tightening over our skin stretch the thin paleness

Of wisps of whispers over mouths that never met. Would you

With your are-you-hurt-yet,

And your hurt, help me roll

This husk of a million probabilities

Into its final sinkhole?

It doesn't matter when it is unknown.

This will have to be enough, 

So you can safely theorize

Over love and longing and then

You laugh your laugh,

And my nightmares feel heavy again.

#37: Sestina for Remembering

It is nothing that hasn't happened before,
Yet every time we hold out hope;
We wake up, hold ashes in our mouths,
Lying in bed till the day breaks
And forces the sun to rise red,
Over a country that refuses to stay still.

This land is our witness, and still,
They say that we were mistaken before;
"What stories you heard, lies you read!"
The blind eye of justice extinguishes hope.
Three decades ago, masjid and law breaks,
And a birthplace was born from a million mouths.

To shut a state in, they barricade its mouths,
And for over a year Kashmir has stayed still.
The voice of dissent weakens and breaks,
In streets, and villages, and colleges before;
Our jails raise the klaxon sound of hope
As saffron hues bleed into red.

Can you look away and not see red?
I bite my tongue as you silence a million mouths.
How dare you seek to dream and hope
For a tranquil state, calm and still?
Gagged silences never lasted before,
A million rise for every spine you break.

Every system falls, every institution breaks
And leaves a wake of truth untold, unread.
The fourth pillar bows and bends before
Lives, and lies traded for by word-of-mouth
Turn immolations into funerals, and still
You smile at the end of the month, and say there's hope.

The voices you stifle continue to hope
To be heard some day, even as they break.
But you ask the courts and cameras to stay still,
While they scream to be heard, tongues bleeding red.
Caste and rape are dirty words in your mouth,
'Equality thrives', you say, 'like never before.'

Where do we seek hope, when streets run red
With the laws you break to silence our mouths?
We stand still, and vow to remember, just as we did before.