Lost Summer

I haven’t had a chance
To stitch my heart together
In a long time,
There’s been no mend
To the pieces of me
Cluttered in my backyard,
I haven’t reached out
For the warmth
Of a loving hand
In all the winter nights gone by,
My home now reminds me
Of a gelid chamber
Of frosting walls,
The sun sometimes
Peeps reluctantly
Through my window
Only to be frozen
Behind the glass panes.

I don’t remember summers anymore,
My skin can’t recall
How the touch of
Morning beams feel like,
For I am only treasured with the nights
That you carefully left for me
Behind the olive curtains,
And a condensed blue moon
That still rests inside your closet.

All I do now
Is wait for you
To bring back
My lost summer.

~ Chhaya

The Static

The pepper night hues
seasoned with
turmeric lights
that we savoured together
are now recipes of
insipid vacuous gloom
plattered with pain
and despodency
the mothballed sleeps
yield no dreams anymore
and clock only drags
with a cumbrous weight
“time never felt as heavy
when you were here”

the only thing motile
left in me now
are my thoughts
peripatetic, wayfaring
vagrant and itinerant
rest I am all static
quiescent
and almost torpid
like the sky
with its immutable latency

yes, I know
I could have counted
my breaths too
the alter in my chest
from high to low then high
with every inhale and exhale
which follows
but let’s not be deceived
for I hope you know
it’s been fairly long
that I disowned them
and what I snort now
are only borrowed gasps
from the remains of
exanimated life
that you left me with.

~ Chhaya

 

 

Degeneration

Dry like a
parched shrub
succumbing to
its own weight
I feel crushed
under the mass
of dessicated hopes
and shriveled expectations
pounding, grinding
and triturating within
I sometimes also watch
the flakes of my skin
the flesh and the bones
turn into pulverized
remains of
a cremated corpse

the palliative touch
of my hands
have lost their potence
the coerce palms
don’t soothe anymore
once they used to allay
the most gruelling strains
now they pierce
deep through my pores
like bad memories
like lonely nights
like unsated desires
like your lingering touch

the eyes fake
of rosy nights
invalidating
the traces of
inveterate insomnia
as the mind
gets afflicted
by malignant thoughts
of doomed past
feigning to be
a venomous vitalic
to endure pain
of caustic breaths
the achromic sights
blind my vision
like cimmerian cloak
leaving me just with
your apparitions
hallucinations.

~ Chhaya

 

The Healing Sun

I breathe the sun
from the naked pores
of my scabrous skin
inhaling
the warmth
and exhaling
the algor
deep from
the frozen marrows
of my glacial bones

the pain
attempts to exude
from the tip
of my frailing limbs
as congealed claret
in my capillaries
thaw
in the balsamic aurora
to gush
with the vigour
it had always been
devoid of

the tan in brown
amalgamates
on my frame
with the pastels of
frigid hopes
the serraphic affiliation
adorning my body
like golden desires
embellishing
amorous embraces of
impassioned lovers
meeting after
a long time.

~ Chhaya

 

Cessation

This lull
is a tacit pain
an enduring constant
like cracked bones
which make no sound
like death
like rotations
and revolutions
of an astir orb
like seasons
like scars on my body
like a stubborn wall

my putrid feet
remind me
of decaying life
deterioration
degeneration
all a culmination of
what I thought
was only a beginning
of my nascent breaths
prowling through
animated existence

the memoirs of a mortal
caution me
of the vanishing time
of validities and verities
of fading complexions
and waning sapience
the sinking heart
beats silent throbs
reverbarations
palpitations
giving way to
debilitation

and once more
I sing your song
with aphonic mouth
as silentious eyes
intone the unsaid
from the engraved
sonnet on my back
carved by your
versed kisses
satisfaction
exhiliration
as I transit to
annihilation.

~ Chhaya

Of Promises

I will never hide
the stories
I have piled
beneath my skin
and the pain
I have stashed
under my bones
or the longing
that I breathe
with bruised nostrils
only if you promise
you will never tire of
peeling off the layers
that residues of past
have accumulated
on my body
like rotting scabs.

~ Chhaya

 

 

 

Gluey Memories

Immersed deep in the darkness
of mucid glutinous nights
imbued with the resin of
viscous gluey memories
I adhere
to fading thoughts of you
like an old peeling affiche
lingering on a crumbling wall
heedless of its ensuing collapse.

~ Chhaya

 

Timbered Hopes

Rubbing my hands
on the scabrous blanket
enveloping the frigid night
I kindle timbered hopes
torpid as they stood
like redundant clapboards
waiting to be disposed of
before they are nibbled by the termites
the charred tips of my fingers
oozing salve to becalm
the blistered sores
of lingering desires
the pungent fumes
of combusting yearnings
the only anodyne
to allay my perturbed mind.

~ Chhaya

 

 

Silent Verse

I am a silent verse
calling out your name
with the flutter of my lips
and the cadence of my breath
from the hollowness rooted
deep inside my gut
and the wide emptiness
oozing out of my heart
and I raise up a timbre
with gush of lumbering gore
and the throbs emanating
from dark pit on my core
to gently release
in a rumbling sonance
the cricks that reside
in the contour of my frame
and the spasms that linger
in the pith of my bone.

~ Chhaya

The Wait

Sun kissed mornings
steal my nights
those savoured
in your fragrance
leaving me aghast
unfathomed and agap
in deep dark patches
of blazing days
charred into cinders
by the furnace of despair
and a molten me
strives hard
to be viscous enough
to flow with the time
where days turn into nights
so I can find you again
until dawn drifts us away.

~Chhaya