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.