Shake it Off/shakeitoff

The healer touched my arm and said
she is giving you permission.

You Kimi,
the pup asleep , long chain, on the warm sand
the fierce street-mom guarding the alley,
the wild, besotted vessel
for a whole neighborhood’s stray love.
You, who belonged to no one
and everyone,
trotting through the monsoon rain,
shaking the street-water from your back.
I can see you doing it now.
I can hear the wet snap of your skin.

I give you permission,
she sings through the healer’s lips.
I am gone to my next skin,
so do what I did every dawn
on the concrete.
Rattle the ribs.
Snap the spine.
Twist the muscle until the heavy, wet yesterday
flies off your coat like sparks.

And because it was you asking,
I tried.
I stood up and imitated your ghost.
I gave my shoulders a hard, violent twist
to rattle the sorrow loose.
I physically threw the air from my lungs.
I forced the release.

And the horror is—
it worked.
The weight actually left my chest.
The monsoon water dried.
The pavement cleared.

I am walking ahead now.
My breath is coming easier.
I am surviving the day without choking.
But God,
this light, unburdened spine feels like a betrayal.
Feeling better feels like abandoning you in the dirt.
I am healed by your hall pass,
but I walk forward without the damp comfort of grief
so much
poorer.

The Social Stutterfly

I’ve become a well-thumbed paperback,
spine-creased and slightly coffee-stained,
the same good bits read out in gentle company,
earning laughter like a modest wage.

Each anecdote, a little coin I polish,
tendered with practiced timing.
“Have I told you about the time in Lisbon?”
No? Good. Here comes the weather,
the wrong turn, the improbable kindness—
‘you’d never believe what then happened”,

all fresh paint on a story I’ve told seven times,
still drying for you,
already chipped for me.

My close friends have memorized my repertoire;
I catch them mouthing the punchlines, gracious,
their eyes going soft with the effort
of not saying we’ve heard this one.
I love them for it. (And I shrink a little each time.)

When did I curate myself into this
pleasant artefact, this reliable narrator
who’s never without a warming tale?
The well isn’t just drying—
I’m too indolent to dig deeper,
too charming to need to,
wagging each memory like a favorite toy,
still squeaking, barely.

There was a time stories came raw,
unvetted, possibly unflattering,
not yet sanded into dinner-party shape.
Now I deal in smooth stones,
and my riverbed is almost bare.

Tonight I told the Lisbon one again.
The stranger across the table bloomed with delight—
a gift, I suppose, once, twice, endless,
until I’m not the teller
but a looping recording
set in a comfortable chair,
glass in hand,
fading to an echo.

The Social SToryteller+Butterfly (+ The Social Stutterfly)

The Quiet Materia of Absence

It has returned, the single, perfect, arrested second.
Not water, not air, but the sudden, cold material
of a photograph that shines from the mobile,
a flat sun where the world of 2020 still breathes.

You are there, my JD, dog of shadow and silvered fur,
a creature made of velvet night and rain-slicked stone,
sitting upon the common, yielding throne of the sofa.
I remember the breath held in the lung, the slow
withdrawal of my own body—one step backward,
to frame the perfection of your posture, that good boy
who carried the sun’s full weight in his small, trusting heart.

You look out from that paper prison, your eyes
a confusion of dark amber, asking the simple, furious question:
Why the distance? Why did you leave the circumference of my heart?
I see the love, raw and terrestrial, and the puzzled geometry
of your canine soul, accepting the impossible condition:
Here I am, a devotion fixed in place, and there you are,
a universe away, holding the light that will take me.

That moment was nothing. It was every day,
the simple bread and wine of our companionship.
But now, it is everything. It is your afterlife,
the charcoal legend mounted on the mantel, the one true
document of your spirit.

And now, the iPhone, that casually cruel mirror, returns it.
The picture frame on the table, it holds your gaze—
a brief, still moment of your entire soul visible.
And then, the soundless shock: the pit of the stomach
emptied of its gravity, the world shearing clean away.

He is not here.
Not in the copper bowl, not in the quiet corner of the rug,
not in the heavy, warm fabric of the pillow beside me.
Not here. Not here. Not here.

What happened? How did we pass through that gate?
I am a clock broken between the flash of light
and this enormous, unforgiving present of empty air.

You will be ever loved, my little boy, a raw, persistent evocation
of all that is good in the brief life of a person.
But you are also the terrible, iron, clean-striking hammer
that rises up from the earth to break me with your total, absolute absence.
I accept the blow.

Memory Trip to the Cantonment

I.

Today was a memory day.
I walked the Lines again,
past the MEG’s stiff gates,
the Officers Mess, the Museum’s stories—
a revenant in my own past.

I am Priya, of many worlds,
a city’s creature now,
but the cantonment air still sticks—
the scent of OG starch,
French fries, ketchup thick,
Fanta sucked through straws.

II.

Here, the pool still blue,
the swing’s old scar—
(that wooden board’s revenge,
the taste of blood and ice).
The long room’s parquet gleams,
badminton echoes hollow.

And there—my father,
white shorts, Ray-Bans,
cigarette dangling,
his blazer slung on shoulders
like a victory flag at Regatta.
My mother, silk and pearls,
laughing by the bandstand
where the brass played Jai Hind
and I, in jeans stepped
into a life already leaving.

III.

Stranger now. The walls stare—
no recognition, only ghosts.
They do not know I bled here,
loved here, was small here.
The child who skipped, cycled these lanes
is a guest now, peering in
through time’s thick glass.

IV.

This was home. This is not.
The clingfilm of memory
wraps it tight—
crisp uniforms, salutes,
a cigarette’s lazy curl,
the hammock’s sudden sting.
I carry it all, a tea brewed
from roots I cannot drink.

V.

The road bends away.
A catch in the throat.
A home that remembers me
only when I dream.

---

Hum Unseen

Glass shatters mid-air,

silence chews the hollow space,

time forgets to breathe.

Stillness isn’t always gentle.

Waiting isn’t always patient.

Emptiness isn’t always void.

Sometimes, they hum

with something unseen

Still, still..

Silent breath lingers,

shadows stretch across the dusk,

echoes wait—unheard.

Glass shatters mid-air,

silence chews the hollow space,

time forgets to breathe.

Emptiness isn’t always a void.

Embrace, Embrace.That Empty Space

The Empty Haven
I turn the key— the door, now lighter than the weight I carry, swings wide.
No breath of fur to greet, no shuffle of shoes in the corners of the quiet.
The leash hangs, slack and questioning. Empty—the curve, the pull, the sigh, a rhythm gone.
Memories bloom like fields, soft edges of green that tease the sun—
until a shadow slips through, and the meadow is gone, a cliff beneath my feet.
I try not to tumble. Steady, steady.
The lightning surge of hurt—a crack I must not hear again. I hold my breath;
I still my thoughts. Stillness feels safer than the storm.
Who would I tell, anyway? Who can share the memory of his laugh without my voice breaking?
Or the way his nose nudged the door without my breath catching?
I cross the street when grief walks toward me, eyes lowered.
The house waits. A question, an answer: I am here, for now.

Gage Opdenbrow Studio

Ah JD, Just Dog..

The key turns, a small sound in the hush,
and the door sighs open on a silence so deep
it drinks the light. No rush of fur, no bark
to cleave the quiet. Just the waiting air,
thick with what isn’t there.

The leash hangs loose, a forgotten thread,
its end unburdened, no hopeful strain,
no small insistent tug that spoke of joy,
of shared paths, of a world seen paw step by step.
Now, just the leather, still and cold.

And the door, unpushed, remains a frame
around an absence. No snuffling nose,
no thump and sigh of settling down beside,
a warm weight anchoring the lonely room.
The quiet breathes, a hollow lung.

Memories bloom, a sudden field of green,
his chuckle echoing, the dog’s bright gaze.
A chance to smile, a fragile, lifted thing.
But who to tell it to, this blossoming?
The fear of tears, a shadow on the wing.

So I stay still, a small mouse in the corner,
letting the moment pass, uncatalogued.
No thought to stir the dust of what has been.
Sometimes, the quiet holding, the unthinking,
is the only path across this barren ground.

This emptiness, a shape I learn by heart,
a curve that rises, falls, and levels out.
A steady hum, until the lightning cracks,
a sudden jolt of what will never be.
Steady, I whisper, steady now.

The door stands open on the echoing space.
Each memory a twinge, a sharp, quick pain.
And I, approaching, hold my breath and wonder:
is this the meadow where the heart can graze,
or just the cliff edge, waiting for the fall?

I cannot know. So I duck my head and hurry,
crossing the road when the familiar shape appears,
the looming shadow of what used to be,
lest the bright meadow turn, too swiftly,
to a precipice of tears.

Crumbling castle

If you told me î couldwould be old

I would laugh in your face.

Throw back my head and laugh bubble

When creaks moved from funny to regular

When names dont come when called

And the stairs are a surly enemy

When a morning stretch is a discovery of ill fitting body parts

Teeth enamel wears , tongue explores crevices

When grey hair now matches a grey cast of face

And by default the mouth turns down in repose.

Eyelids droop, the forehead furrow is a farm

A smile so hard, the stone frown so easily set

Oh those are the saddest.

Anger flash at an uncooperative mind and body.

Yet slowly an increasing fear, repressed.

I wouid laugh in your face

I can never be old.

I cannot even be middle aged.

Unless it happened when my back was turned

Im 60 and a now milestone away from death.

Im not old.

Perhaps im just not young anymore.

I would laugh in your face

Because im still me , the me i know

Im me, even i inhabit a crumbling castle.

The Encroaching Pillow

The Pillow’s Drift
A silent siege, the pillow creeps,
A soft assault while slumber sleeps.
It slides, it shifts, a gentle tide,
Where love and space forever reside.

One turns away, a lunar face,
While dreams in shadows find their place.
The other, drawn by warmth’s embrace,
A pillow-bridge, a soft-winged chase.
A subtle push, a yielding sigh,
As personal space begins to die.

The encroaching form, a tender plea,
For closeness born of intimacy.
A comfortable squeeze, a stolen hold,
A story whispered, ages old.

The bed, a canvas, shifts and sighs,
As partners turn, beneath the skies.
But ever present, that insistent drift,
The pillow’s pull, a whispered gift.

A tugging force, a gentle claim,
A constant yearning, a whispered name.
For even when the tides reverse,
And arms encircle, love’s intense,

That pillow lingers, a silent plea,
A reminder of spontaneity.
A symbol bold, of love’s embrace,
A gentle push, a yielding space.

The encroaching pillow, soft and deep,
Where love and longing sighingly sleep.