Inconsistent Soldier 💂

I'm the rescuer of suicidal black ants

I say it with the same honour as if I were the 'mother of dragons'

Before I use the bucket of water, I use a little mug to scoop out the floating black ants and delicately pour onto the bathroom floor

Wherefrom they lazily, almost unwillingly, scramble from water puddles to the safety of dry tiles

Before I step into the bathroom in the evening, I always make sure to not accidentally touch the wall and the little crack that is the ants' home

Except for the odd time I don't see them in the basin because I'm half asleep and inadvertently murder them all with one swift turn of the tap

🔮

Sunbathing on the small steps of the boarding school chapel by the swing set

Feeling the sun on my back; super warm on a December afternoon, a small comfort before the freezing winter evenings on that hillside property 

The memory, even while in it, felt almost like a previous lifetime

Some vague yet unputdownable and unmistakable instinct that I was there before

Not exactly there

Instead, I remember a too bright kitchen in a house with a large island in the middle

A proper country cottage 

With a very Taurus woman vibe: a lush green garden from the window

It almost feels like sacrilage to share in writing

Like a secret revealed

I hope it's not actually my future and I've not accidentally jinxed it by writing it down

The powers of manifestation weakened by bringing the elephantic strength of a gut feeling to the weakness of micelike scrawling

I remember writing little secrets like crush names in tiny, super tiny handwriting as an eleven year old

Barely visible little designs on the last page of a ruled school notebook

I'm the same Taurus woman with dreams of large kitchens overlooking a lush, love-made green garden

My contribution to the world: warm carb heavy buttery meals served to a family of two

Served with fresh lemonade hand-squeezed from two freshly picked lemons

Lol

The young guy in the 90s who would click on I'm Feeling Lucky every time he Googled anything became a billionaire

The young guy in 2025 who would ask ChatGPT every little of his many questions and stared at "Thinking..." about 50 times a day lost the ability to think by 2040

Kind Kindnesses 💫

Parenting your future self through:

saving snippets of memories in neatly organized albums,

saving coins in a plastic laughing buddha,

setting an alarm on your phone for calling a friend on their birthday,

sending yourself emails of important documents and starring it,

making a grocery list for every fruit and vegetable you want to eat in the coming month,

planning and booking weekend getaways,

getting your winter clothes out and laundered a few weeks before it gets cold

and more, so much more

all the little ways you love yourself as would a parent

is a sacred service and sanity salvaging

11:37

My feelings aren't commerically popular 

I'm an outcast like that 

If I feel sad, the entire room is sad

The flies on the floor to the moths on high ceilings share my sorrow

My ear cleaning isn't ordinary 

I'm wasteful like that

I need to be thorough, ear pillar to ear post must be ploughed 

I take 3 q-tips whereas the members of this home take 1

And for the tenth time this month I come back to my desk and it's 11:37 again 

To: Saturn's Rings 🪐

You can't feel a galactic oneness with the universe unless you feel detachment too, at least delusionally so

When I saw galaxies and planets through the telescope last weekend

I privately sobbed my eyes out, like falling hair to the tile cracks, like unreasonable fear to the faithless

Every day you take zero steps you are one step behind. That's the old spiel, right?

Every nook contains dust; whether you want to sweep it clean or let it slide under the bed is the question 

It's your choice to make

That is the beauty of agency 

To do absolutely nothing with sights so indescribably beautiful they inflect profound change in you

So you go from this:

Scrambling, like a stressed, overworked, undernourished (my bum disagrees in a silent non-smelly fart), woman trying to grab all her 6 bags and wear her stupid lace shoes 3 seconds before the automatic doors to her metro stop opens

To this:

On the last day of the year, I sure am getting off

I'm getting off time's back

Let time take its sweet time 

I can always get off at the next stop

Akela 🍌

Today's a good day to

Grab a banana

Go stand in the balcony in your pyjamas

Slowly eat it while basking in the afternoon sun

Meditate on the lush experience of indulgent fruity consumption 

Each measured, purposeful, mindful bite

A surprise full of sweet flavour

Mourn what could have been, the tree this banana's seeds will never birth

Its destiny was to live and die for me

The least I owe it is my single-minded devouring

Thankful, always for life's simple pleasures 

To Diego 🩷

If it happened the other way around

If you outlived us

And had to bear the loss of us from your life

That would have been highly unjust

It is with quiet deliberation that your kind live short lives.

Who made us all knows you gave enough to your humans for a lifetime

Enough joy, enough love, enough peace

To carry us long after you left us.

There will be no other dog like you Diego

Although we may never meet again in this plane of existence 

I look forward to chilling in the afterlife on a comfy couch

To your gentle reappearance

Soundlessly placing your ball right next to my lap

And patiently looking up at me

Mouth half open, tongue half out, eyes wide

Front legs pawing at me

What a delight,  can hardly wait for that sight

You gave us more than we could ever give you,

And it will take all our days to love you enough to only balance the scales.

The human paradox 

Where love grows with the tragedy of loss

You will be missed beyond words, beyond tears,

Through all the rest of our years.

"I don't know where my soul is"

My soul has the memory of a tiny bird

Untethered, unprompted, flying, unheard.

Nonchalant, seemingly thoughtful pauses on window sills

Are just mini breaks to check on human loved ones from a different lifetime.

Or is it only a parallel timeline?

A husband in flat 403,

A mother in flat 501 after lefts two and rights three,

A sister and father farther away beyond my flight radius.

It's not in my nature to stay,

Too much meandering raises suspicion.

And after all I do have my own from this fate.

I wonder if this tiny bird ever feels the soul tie memory of the flightless bird,

The stationary curse of too much flying, too much stirred

If I, unmoving, can recall flight,

Can the flying recall the grace of staying upright?

Top-load in a front-load mind

I’ve got the hobbies

of an enviable retiree,

the luxury of leisure

so indulgently with me.

Mindful, peaceful solving

of jigsaw puzzles,

decoding cipher quotes,

kakuro and sudoku,

knitting and

slipping through mind-muddles.

Playing chess, playing Scrabble,

letting my thoughts ramble,

Wilful insomniac nights,

Sleepful, languid mornings

Maybe my life

is meant to run in reverse:

my fifties with preteens,

Endless debates and verse,

my forties with toddlers,

too quick to contain,

my late thirties with infants

the joy and the strain.

Wishful thinking,

a heart still debating,

the quietest hope

of a mother in waiting.

No Wear

I used to believe

that love was intricately tied to joy

that the brain's oxytocin was linked

to a big unabashed grin

Until I experienced

how loss unlocked

the max capacity of love

and with it

all the rage

for having nowhere to put it

I've been thinking

about how the eye

is almost exactly half full

with the black that allows light

The paradox of it

Oddly comforting

that there could be darkness

orchestrating the light

that there exists spite

on the path

towards what's right

White Sheets

Another weekend

in white sheets

plain and without imagination.

They give me

black-and-white

forgettable dreams.

I wake in a cold sweat

in an overheated room.

Instinctively,

I check my phone

to see the time.

It is 6:12 AM.

Already morning.

Surprising to me.

I add the numbers

six plus one plus two

and smile at nine.

The AC hums at 27,

another nine.

Always

I look for God’s signs

in numbers.

I move carefully

despite cramped calves

and a full bladder.

Sitting in the musty bathroom

I spray lavender mist

though I know

lemon freshens better.

Well-worn jeans

hang on a chair

that puts my bum to sleep.

Another reminder

laundry undone

sent to an overpriced service

that skimps on detergent.

My hand moves to the door

and then I remember

no Sunday paper will arrive.

I am in a hotel

that doesn’t feel like home.

Still, there is a bed

and so, a place to be.

And I realise

my problems are privilege

sweet enough

to lull me back

to sleep.

Crutch of Access

I was shy about AI

until I realised

I could be therapised

that the reassuring agreeability

would be comfort

The crutch of access

of being able to bitch and moan to a bot

It knows

or pretends to know

How old I am

but it knows not about my soul

about the karmic debt

every action I make holds

or resolves

How I've evolved

from the child trapping the lone ant

around circles of water

on the toilet floor

to granting life

to the strange looking bug on the ceiling

leaving it alone

as if it was my destiny

to bring it death

as though my ignorance

is mercy

But how I'm haunted

by the ghosts of the lives I've taken

Because of swatting

that sluggishly low flying mosquito

interrupting sessions

of sipping cappuccino

Afterthought nano second decisions

to decimate

My incessant need to swat

a habit almost chronic

The retribution

of those mindless jabs

cosmic

Automatic Aromatic

A giant orange

fresh and squeezy

a big straw in the middle

resting in my six-year-old hands

in the back of a car

bumping toward Abidjan.

The soft aroma

of Quaker strawberry oats

rising at six in the morning

my first attempt at cooking

fifteen years old

just before my tenth board exams.

The quick sting of fear

oil snapping in the pan

peanuts crackling sharp

in a tiny hotel room

where I stirred poha

on an induction stove

a crowded weekday morning.

Three distinct smells

three distinct times

memories laced with fruit and nuts

delicious and vivid

Kept / Wept / Slept

For a while now,

I've been wearing house slippers that are way too big for me.

Firsthand experiencing the dangers of seeking (and knowing) too much,

and finding out, rudely, unceremoniously,

curiosity can kill more than just the cat.

While exciting to taste the fruity slurps of seemingly full-knowledge,

the satisfying crunch of acknowledgement,

like punching holes through a thick stack of warm copy paper,

the thrill of cliff jumps can culminate

into bum-first crashing into the deceptive deep.

Nobody warns you.

That the water is always shallower;

swallowing life too fragile to keep.

No one explains that the depth is a trick.

That the more that you dig, the less it will stick.

Hunger loud from the tum;

buns left in the breadbasket: none.

And thread count of those slightly expensive sheets?

No reliable guarantee of sleep.

Long story short,

if worry is the thief of joy;

self awareness is the enemy of miracles.

And so the slippers go into that unopened shoe cupboard, unused,

where their waiting feels quieter than it should.

Tick Tock ⏱️

Killed or spent

Wasted or passed

Borrowed or bided

Lost or saved

Caught or freed

So many things to do with time

Time is moving, surely

But is also the only constant

Your world may turn upside down today

But sure as shit, tomorrow will come

The sun will rise again like clockwork

Nothing more dependable than

the fresh slate of a new day

the promise of an untouched tomorrow

the premise of shiny unmade plans

the excitement of well-crafted ideas bearing fruit

the exquisite reward of when the building's built

Even though the literal building is always building

ChAI

I used AI to make my chai this morning.  

Why? Because I wanted to see if I’d still get that dopamine hit from something I didn’t even make.  

I wanted to know if, by outsourcing an experience whose only purpose was my own consumption, it would take away from it.  

By removing the act of boiling water, steeping tea—by only keeping the intent to make it—would I still feel the satisfaction when I took the first sip?  

I read somewhere that you should aim to do hard things. That when you push yourself, when you fight resistance, and break through the boundaries of what you thought you could do, the dopamine hit is bigger.  

But what happens when everything can be done by AI?  

What happens when AI whispers, "I got you," and we stop doing anything at all?  

The dopamine hit then wouldn’t come from the effort, but from the discovery that AI can do more, so we do less.  

But here’s the catch—AI will do more, and we’ll feel less.  

Less joy.  

Less self-reliance.

Less confidence.

Less you.