Tomorrow

I keep waking up
Thinking I've rolled over and accidentally killed you
Killed my future
My little invention
I keep dreaming up
All these wonderful parallel lives
The Prime Minister of the biggest nation
The CEO of the greatest firm
The Partner to someone wonderful
Who knows what institutions will drive the world
If you will believe in those institutions
If you will have different boundaries
Different horizons
The only thing I can know
Is that every tree will grow new leaves
Every monsoon it will rain
And every day the sun will rise
Bringing with it
The promise of you
Building
My bloodline
My pride
And my legacy

Learn

I want to be a sponge.
Take everything around me and imprint my soul.

The play of lights, the shadows, the stories they tell
The lone star, blinded by the city's pollution
The incessant horns, the distant rhythmic melody of trains
The water puddles I skip over
The number of steps to the river bank
The bucket list I painstakingly make, with the knowledge that I will revisit it a year later
With a wry smile
The hunger to learn something new, to do something new
To become auto-didactic.

A pause...

...wondering if some days are meant to remain undocumented
Some moments are meant to be uneventful
Some lives are meant to be unmemorable.

Light brown eyes

She feels the chokehold, getting tighter
She is struggling to breathe, struggling
To be alive
Then, a flicker of a memory
Floods her thoughts, A voice
His gaze upon her naked body, his eyes
Upon her, and an honest, "you're beautiful"

Again, tighter, willing the life out of her
His menacing eyes
They were not the same person. His eyes
Were a lighter brown.
And in that moment, she knew,
She had died a long time ago.

Fleeting

Eyes, look away, blink back tears
Holding back hurtful words
Hurting, wounded
Wishing
Wondering
If the promise of the life she'd dreamed of
Would ever unfold.
Glimpses each day of a world that could be,
Fleeting moments
A world that never really was, may never be.

Blank

Blank paper stared back, waiting for words

There's a drop at the corner of the page

A sign of the times, the mood of the day

A teardrop says more than words ever can.