"My heart must be *this* tiny", she said, holding her fingers a centimetre or two apart.

Double Bed

When two people get married or cohabitate, or even spend the night together; how do they decide who takes which side of the bed? I never figured out how my parents chose and I've been wondering ever since. 

Bitter

Like the smell of coffee, residual memories cling to everything and everyone; faint reminders of all the things we're trying to forget.

Inane

I'm distracted from scrutinising the lines on my face by the pigeon outside our bathroom window. He watches me strangely, cocking his head this way and that, examining my dental hygiene routine with his discerning eyes.

And then finally, he asks:
What are you doing?

I'm brushing my teeth, it's something we do.

He's unimpressed:
Why?

Well, we like to keep clean.

That's rubbish, he smirks and leaves me to wonder if he was talking about social constructs or...

Epilogue

Shy strains of morning, I mistake the milk swirling into my coffee for the blood that rushes your veins and I think for a moment that I might miss you, I just might. And yet dawn is hours away; three and a half to be precise.

Watching the patterns the tears made as they ran down her cheeks, the little tin soldier thought about how, even in her sadness, the little doll was so pretty.

Awkward

Pretty dresses hang in a shop window, and people duck in as it begins to pour. The girl in the dressing room emerges to a room full of spectators, and blushes the shade of her dress. Then quickly she turns to the nearest woman and begs, "Would you zip me up, please?"

Where I’m From

I am from the kitchen
From the sweet smell of carrot cake
From my mother's perfect buter curls
From the worst sense of humour on earth
And from being denied brinjal and chane ka atta, am I

I am from scrathes and itches and marks of volition
I am from forests of trees and spiders and birds and light
I am from roads, or rather the sides of them; I am the hours spent waiting to cross, I am the fear of crossing

I am the daughter of confusion, betrayal and willpower
From the dust of bookshelves, the fur of dogs and goofy pants that weren't mine, I am
I am from dicipline and learning not to mess with dust, not to play with dogs and not to goof around with other people's pants

I am from blood and pus
I am from cotton and cloth
From 3 baths a day, while we played with tea cups,
I had 40 tiny ones, and a bathtub
I am from topical steriods

--
This is after a poem by George Ella Lyon. That I discovered from Amna Ahmad's blog, when I was on Natasha Badhwar's blog. I'd like to know where you're from too =)

The age where, to have a heart, is to hide it.

Fading

She licks the colour
As she speaks and the lipstick
Fades, fades, fades lighter.

How sadly, we are

Drawn, to the charm of sadness 

Like moths, to a flame

Ms. Taken

"Do you remember that time?", he said, excited like a child, a sparkle in his eye and mischief in his smile. "That time when I grabbed your hand, and we ran beneath the flicker of lamplight; to that little place, a corner in the dark alley we know so well?"

"No", she says, coolly, "You did that with someone else; I'm married, you see. Clearly, you're mistaken."

All I want is to fold into you like flour into cake batter.

Very Shaggy

That weird couple and their shaggy dog took a walk at midnight. Beneath the trees they walked and up on a hill and past sleeping windows and droopy street lamps. And out past the kittens and birdies and baby button mushrooms all asleep, they walked. They walked till their feet hurt, they walked till their sneakers were ripping at the seams, they walked till their shaggy dog panted. They walked and walked and walked, and then they stopped when they got to the little drug store on the hill.

It was a fabulous cup of coffee.

Except for the honey bee at the end.

To be alive is to keep adding names to the list of people you'll never see again.

When I realised that the smell he associated with me was that of the soap I used, I wasn't sure whether to be amused or offended. Eventually I figured that he was just being honest and reporting things exactly as he finds them. Sign me up for that, I'll take reality over fiction any day.

Raindrops grace our porch
As violently we work, on
Demon black laptops.

He lay on his bed, turning her words over in his mind. He turned them over and over, and over again till they'd lost all meaning - they became syllables, devoid of semantic. What could she have meant?

One last time, he let her words slip across his mind.

Glaring at him coolly, the last thing she'd said was, "You over think everything."

She left her scarf behind the other day, and with it the scent of her perfume and the sweat of her neck.