Ask,
or, simply watch
a hungry child
reaches not for shame;
but for a mother's breast.

Before it was judged,
it was nourishment.
Before it was looked at,
it was life.

Now,
every feeding
must pass through;
a hundred staring eyes.
Some turn away.
Some stare too long.
The child cries only for milk.

The rest of us
brings hunger.

Naked Heart

I've kept my heart without a veil,
not because it knows no fear;
rather, I'm weary to hide it again.

It belongs to me
before it belongs;
to someone else.

I've nurtured it,
through the season of doubtsm
Pulled out the weeds
that grew from the borrowed voices,
and left a little room;
for it to breath.

And then,
some things must remain;
within the house itself.

Let your world
defines me as you wish.
Let it measure,
the rhythm of my becoming;rather than counting my silence and scars.

I'll still listen
to the beating;
beneath my ribs.

Neither perfect, entirely,
nor untouched or unholy.

~And perhaps,
that's enough.

After Us

We cling to grudges
like leaves refusing to fall.
Mistaking pride;
for something that will remain.

Our bodies, once certain,
return to ash at the burning ghat.
The names we carved
fade sooner than stone.

We build, we toil,
we gather what time can't erase
and when the river takes it;
what truly remains?

Not the houses,
not the names,
neither the pride we carried;
until our final breath.

Perhaps, only the love we gave
and the memories;
someone still carries.

We are woven threads
in a river's endless passage.
Briefly here;
then gone.

The Old Refrain

He loved,
with everything a heart could carry.
Until love returned;
wearing another face.

Now memory sits beside him
quiet as an old room,
repeating what once was;
and what could never be.

They tell him,
You've lost yourself.”
They speak of illness,
of reason gone astray.

But who measures
the ruins of a heart
after it has loved too deeply?

His eyes remember
what his hands couldn't hold.
His smile arrives late,
if at all.

Still, somewhere within him,
the old refrain survives
not quite love;
not quite grief,
but the tender ache
of something
that once made him whole.

And perhaps that is the cruelest part:
he did not stop loving.

He's only learned
that some part;
have nowhere left to go.