Author: Kanika

A name
your name
is such an intimate thing.
One that makes me ambitious
to call you with all my might,
with all my rights.
The passion hidden is fiery
like the chimney in my cottage
with the collected heat
touching every part of my being.
A throne, I’d rule half
and half in the vapor of dreams.
A fantasy drawn,
for I am a writer
who has the right
to get down at the wrong station
and vision the bright cheek
in the land of deserts
and kiss all the way.
A mirage of love
and your name as
a new city…

I am facing you,
yet again!

O Dear Summer!
Remember what we promised.

You’d let me
dance on a grass blade
and I will treat you
with ripe mangoes.
You’d let me bathe
in an orange light
on top of a sycamore tree
and I will arouse the
need of staying within you.
You’d sing to a hummingbird
to come and rest on my hand
and I will remove the synonym of
‘burn’ from your name.
You’d not instigate my
fossil memories like winters
and I will carry your mountains
until the Autumn arrives.
You’d touch my flesh
with a light breeze
and I will plant a bunch of Pansies
after naming you Spring’s sister.
When you shall love me
and I shall add you as my
‘things to do’ in all
the days to come in my life.

Remember we promised,
we’d feel each other
and you might burn my cheeks
with too much tenderness.
Remember we promised,
We’d keep each other company
and you might shine one more day
while counting dying breaths.

O Dear Summer!
Let’s meet over the hills.
Let’s meet in the backyard.
Let’s accept that we had been
in cold for far too long.
For,
it’s time for some blushing warmth.

©kanikachugh

She is nothing.
Nothing but a window
to your relatability,
‘cause you know
she leaves a part of herself,
in your jacket’s pocket
so you could keep your
hands warm a little longer.

She likes living on the edge.
A night with some satin dreams
and a drunken Sunday debauchery
dipped in the ink of suffocation
fueling her desire to drown or stay afloat.
It’s her ask that matters.
Like, the one who truly knows Art
has touched the highest level
of ecstasy or have swam in the deepest
oceans of melancholy believing
no one could save them
except maybe art,
maybe her.

She is a girl that deserves
Keanu Reeves of the world
but gets caught up in her head
after Jane Austen whispers
to get Mr. Darcy tattooed
on her collarbones
and then make her wear
buttoned-up, long checkered shirt
and she closes herself
like the last break-up
no one wants to talk about.

She wishes to travel back
to history so bad and become
an inspiration or a revolution
for Renoir’s ‘Impressionism’
or Gogh’s ‘Fauvism’
where the artist would run his
free strokes and strong colors
painting her aesthetic away.

Everything is a rhythmic
downpour of poetry for her.
Open trees passing by
from a train window,
pretty boxes of delivery,
crunchy pages of diaries,
an infant smiling,
green eyes of strangers,
tiniest grass sprouting
in her cemented balcony,
flowers on the sideways
pouting and demanding her
to be clicked. She listens to all.
She looks a little too
deeper in the eyes of her pet
just to understand a world
hidden beneath silent cries.

She can make friends
in a blink of an eye
but can’t handle the
awkwardness of the first meetings,
neither the discomfort of
visible distance with her old people.
So, she keeps jealousy in her side bag
existent but unnoticeable
and laughs louder just to prove
how their silly jokes
means world to her.
And she holds hand
just a bit tighter
announcing to her body
of the crime she’s about to
commit in keeping the ones closer
who are destined to leave.

In a world pressing to be unique
she becomes relatable
with every passing day.
The more she understands herself
the better she sees the human race.
The unprocessed, patchy race
whose thumbnails tell a different story
than they actually are.
In a world full of intellectuals,
she keeps looking for people
she can be silly with.

She dangles, in between
a timid Kdrama girl and
a badass one
not fitting fully in
either of the category well.
In between,
wanting to get on top
of everything and losing interest
in everything around
sitting in front of a fading fireplace
and singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’
in the faintest voice.

She wishes she could
erase the problems of all
When she can’t do
much for her own.

She is nothing special.
And if you will get to know
you will see either she’s nothing
or too special for the world.

Dreams doesn’t have to reside
up in the clouds.
It could be in smiles or pictures,
in tinkling of wind chimes, or guffawing thresholds
that announces the arrival of someone your eyes awaited this long.

And when the great souls die,
they die of diminishing pride
and a meek voice
after being unheard for years.
They die of missing days of splendor
riding along with the wind on their best horses
and the next moment of grief,
by digging graves of their friend.
They die of frustration,
who once always held the steering wheel
now sit at the backseat
whose opinions do not matter anymore.
They die thinking how sunsets are real
and everything goes down because
it’s a beautiful fantasy only
at the peak of life.
They die of unending winter every night
and spring escaping from their clasp
when the sun doesn’t shine the next day.
The great souls die every day
when their madness is killed or curbed
with a ginger-lemon tea in hands
and “washed-up artist” or
“not good enough” stamp on foreheads.
The world says “You are too much”
but they remember what Nietzsche will say
“There is always some madness in Love
But there is also always
some reason in madness.”

They die, while breathing,
after losing their muse who guided
them how to love and live this life.

The blank pages are my sin.
Bookshelves my cemetery
and poetry, the way I die.