The wind on the flow
to all directions south and north
paints on the lotus blooms on the sea
down the sky in lapis lazuli blue.
My daughter Zubeda Maya
asks me on the go
did you capture this fabulous mo?

Oh, where shall I start to roll
the Red Sea in Hurghada Egypt
puts on thousand and one show!

Is what I think of poker chips colliding
Across the rosewood furniture so smoothly they can’t breathe

Orange
A autumnal of gothic branches
Which bring back Massachusetts, blocking every passing beam

Green
The fuzzy wilted leaf in your incisors
Which you found with rising horror on the night of our first date

Blue
A file containing years of conversation
Tucked away from memory to not be read again.

The fault with seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is that we do not know when to stop.

When the lights at the crossroads flicker red, all we see is light, not colour.

We run, we hide in nostalgia’s walls, playing with the toys we grew out of, talking to the skeletons in our closet.

“Life is so strange,” we say, as though we are no stranger ourselves.

Romanticise, don’t realise
love is like hate
passion like anger, anxiety
and blood, just another fluid

Roses, red all the same

Wine, flows through oesophagus like water flowing like tears of the child’s sighs at night yearning for a relief of the pain of a

strange life

being no stranger ourselves

seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses

not knowing when to stop.

What opportunity you were to me
You were a lesson I thought was luck
Allowed to dip myself into your sweet honey
Not realizing that I would be even more stuck.

The pain I’ve gained by playing your games
Had me come out knowing better, real from fake.
I had been too willing to please you
Wanting you to say “I need you”

Because otherwise how was I to prove I’m worthy
Before I realized you’re not meant to be my trophy.

I felt lucky to have you,
Because it felt good to have something
Until I realized the hurt isn't worth
Losing all of me over simply nothing.

I believed the red flags were tests
To prove myself more capable than the rest
Learned love should not be a battle
With my suffering a requisite

Tell me you don’t want this,
And I will let go so quickly,
That you won’t even miss me.

(The prospect of your eyes hidden behind the hair-
style of a just-woke-up darling looking square
at these words pushes me to devise, with utmost care,
the following lines in as debonair
a fashion I can conjure.
Forgive me, if you wish, for any chair-
leaving phrases I might've missed.)

Bathed in red beneath a blood moon glare
and strung in stockings for all they're aware,
a picnic with cherries ensued elsewhere
between two dove birds in love-locked stare:
within the upper grounds of a certain lair
only veteran heart-thieves would ever dare
break in, much else was thrown in share
besides the cherries
of a picnic love affair.

A few blows of endearment amidst a midair
smoke thirty thousand feet in rare-
fied air, and an exchange of where-
abouts within the massive grounds of a nightly fair--
glamour and energy had brewed with a potent flair
of sweet and spicy that forgoes prayer
alongside the scarlet nights of puppy love. There
exists a frightening tug
even hugs themselves cannot compare.

Alas, when the ice had melted and the air
was hung with hanging puffs, hands paired
in woven resolve, all either cared
to have was the mere company of their sweet beloved
beneath the fiery glare
of a searing blood moon.

("I love you"
"I love you too")