Monday, 21 April 2025

//The Goodbyes//

 

They never told us
how difficult a goodbye could be...

When you see your loved ones 
waving behind the entry point,
trying hard not to cry.

They never taught us
how to detach ourselves
from everything we thought we knew--
everything that became a part of us--
versus everything we will need to learn
to become a better version
 of someone we sometimes think we knew.
 
We were never told
how a flight of 9000 miles
doesn't just carry us oceans apart,
or continents apart--
but into an entirely different time zone.

When you sink into your bed,
tired from work,
but still smile each time
across the screen
seeing the faces waiting to hear your voice,
you try hard to talk about your day--
your eyes dozing,
your mind fogging.

You wish you could concisely describe it best,
how every day feels different,
and some days,
it's a struggle just to find the right words instead.

you are there, 
but your heart is away. . . 

Some days, it's just you,
staring the blank walls,
trying to figure things out.

And they told us--
this is all part of "adulting"
or a "diaspora"
an infliction of feeling missing.

They never told us
that the struggle 
is not just to leave--
but to return back
to the place you left...

only to find that it doesn't exist anymore.

In the journey of reaching a destination,
and coming back to the place you once knew--

it's not just the place that has changed.

it's you.

It is still you.

But you are different.

~Sybil Samuel~

Saturday, 1 August 2020

M I S S I N G

they found a body
breathing with lungs full of nothingness 
hands tied to the oppressions of the age
his eyes blankly staring at the silence ahead
his skin bruised of despair
his head wounded with the injuries of expectations 

they found a body
no one recognised the man 
who was he
who did him this bad
what was his name
what became of the  man

they found a body
hardly awake but still not dead
shoulders hanging with nomore will  left to fight
his body covered in his own blood 
a soul heartbroken 

they found a body
choked to lifelessness
imprisoned in a doomed world who failed
to hear his cry
he screamed in loneliness 
for someone to hear him 
he screamed in the darkness for someone to help him flee
trapped in the dungeon of broken dreams 
he cried for someone to remind him of hope and care
of the light in the morning after the night engulfs in pain and  misery 

they found a body
who dreamt of a world of beauty
a world that held him not as captive
but set him free from his flawed choices 
a world without rejections 
without enemies but friends
a place of freedom without sins or crime
a world of no hate no discrimination 
but of total  acceptance, love and peace

they found a body
finally with a name 
someone forgotten for a mournful of  decades
someone who once lived 
across the street with a plan of a  future in bliss

there was a man 
who once lived but simply
they found a body 
it was him 
 the man  named " Nobody"

       Art courtesy: Sybil Samuel (@sybsworld)

Monday, 7 October 2019

I see you ♡

Time stands still
As the page unfolds,
To the story that remain yet to be told.
Unlike the pause between your breaths,
Smelling of strawberries in a faraway land.
A stretch after a long day,
When you gaze in content at the sinking sun...
The vibrant hues of pink and red that takes you back to the date,
You held her hand,
And unlike the fingers touching the symphony on chords of an acoustic strings ..
You slowly draw close to narrate her your plans for life...
And unlike the rosary beads you clutch and whisper a silent prayer holding her hands,
the delicate threads embroidered across your soul, beyond the fading contrast of life...

You stand still and gaze in her eyes ..
Deep grey, unlike a sky lit with the luminesce tiny lights hung beyond the dark curtain
Promising a destiny beyond the stretch of miles.

You speak, yet you fail to utter the words that fall on your lips, unlike the honey dripping from the nectar of the cherry blossoms across the streets in the warm april of springs.

You wait to clasp the moment ..
Unlike a child in the forest running behind the glittering fireflies
You close your eyes and envision
the reeling tapestry of flashbacks,
Heartbeats pacing,
Teardrop rolling down your peach cheeks ...
The dream that your heart held, unlike the fruit you patiently wait to ripe, and then you look again, and know that everything is just as real,
Unlike the perfect chasm of love and magic.
You ran back from it before, with despair to chase
You left without a sign,
In the fumblings of your foot to crawl the way you hated in the end...
And though the distance led you astray,
Beyond the oceans to gaze the expanse of the familiar horizon just in a different timeline.

But you came back in search
Returning to cross the bridge across the fields, where you promise for another day,
Unlike the past, where you fail to let go the crimes of a broken heart, cringing to a note in hopelessness...

And it is another day, as the dawn awakens to the chirping birds chiming a new melody
And you still stand at the place
Where you last met her and gaze at her pretty face, blushing back in off white and cream dress,
And you utter the words that had failed you for so long...
And unlike a bird in a cage trapped, it rises beyond the syllables and the pauses ..
Unlike a poetry lived in the short breaths that dreamt of sky painted of only you and her.

And then the page unfolds...
Where the magic overcomes the reality..
And a story of forever
Is seen to remain in a pearly book
Glistening in letters italics
That you name, as your story,
A forever without an end,
You finally sigh and call "Us" .

Monday, 19 November 2018

Muntazir /meaning: to expect, to wait anxiously/

You and I
Unlike dream and vision
The wilting hearts in thirst of desires unfulfilled
Swallowed in the fragility of hopes
Two Alphabets strung into syllables
The sighs on the cusp of our words fleeting yet lingering on lips
Unlike the wilderness of ephemeral solitude
The longitudes and latitudes of acquiescence unconquered, unvisited
The diverging paths tracing across the meaningless lives

You and I
We are breaths longing for the gaze of tomorrow,
Tomorrow stained without the sadness,
Without the careless abandon of a life left behind
We are the gasp of a dilapidated past
Beyond the silhouette of time
We are the fading myriad of illusions
Of the silence settling beyond the veil of our soul

You and I
We are unlike a promise
We are words caught beyond the infinities in our eyes
Soundlessly seeking for something we cannot name
We are unlike the  teardrop
Witholding a depth of regrets untold
We are the silence
Along the tranquil passage in search of ourselves,  The fainting night that blends into a dawn

You and I
We are unlike a destination
A journey beyond our wretchedness, where we are never looking back
I stand beyond the precipice, in the sea of a reticent contrast of everything
Failing for the perfect definition to mouth the answers met, as I find, you remain,
You remain, unlike the shadow in the dying darkness
that fell as an aching upon my soul

You and I
We were everything
And you were the peace beyond the uncertainty,
The breath exhaling the longing of a coveted dream
You and I
We are nothing
Yet everything.
We are unlike home
I trace you on my skin unlike a verse,
And you unlike a poetry spell a magic simmering,
Reminding there is love in every breath taken

You and I
You unlike a destination
Unlike a home
I burn all the maps in reaching for you...
I burn all left pieces of the broken past to built again

You and I
We leave.
We leave. And we do not turn back.

   ********************                                     

Wednesday, 22 August 2018

Unlike

It was unlike a wish
Half believing yet defeated of hope
Struck by the chance of the cosmos
Aligning unlikely the desires,
That sought the freedom of light
Desires…
The scruples of the unwise
That seeth alone the darkness of moon
The questions of the wise
That struggled hard seeking for truth

It was unlike a dream
Against the certain hour of slumber
Eyes half awake and numb
Pushing behind the dreadful pain
Beneath the pillows soaked of tears
As an unsettled heaviness crawls up within to seize the heart.
Pain…
The letters of remembrance
Locked behind the mahogany drawers,
The songs sung beneath the moonlit skies failing to escape from the grasp of memory
It was unlike a dream forlorn of sleep.

Yet unlike a breath
The faint wisp of air exhaling the deliberate compromises of life and secretly falling beneath the regrets
It was life certainly longing a breath to live the moments longed

And unlike love
The crimson spilled upon the heartstrings
Love, unlike the lost dreams and desire.
The fetish of something true and profound
Unlike the other emotions felt
Descends unnoticed in the silence
Alike the unfulfilled promises that sways across the miles.
Sometimes love appeases the distance lone and heartbroken

It was unlike love
The flicker in his darkness
The shadow to her gleam
His incandescent destination
Her effulgent home

And unlike the breath
That quietly ceases in contempt
Fate was unlike a dream beyond the infinity
When all else appears sometimes gone
Lost as a battle in despair
Fate is unlike life
Life that unfolds another day
Cherished with the kindness
Stroking the weary hands
To walk the distant miles again
To dream again...
To wish again…

To the sweet times dusked,

There lies beyond the love that could never fade.

Wednesday, 28 February 2018

We are S T O R I E S

We are S T O R I E S
of paragraphs and pauses
of letters concocted of mistakes and desires
of sentences misread
of silence travailing for words

We are S T O R I E S
of brief sighs traversing the paths
unknown of mysteries and truth,
searching for ways to resolve our dilemmas
our conscience streaked in monotones
of nothingness and despair
while eyes secretly peer at the distant land of metaphors
assuming in our hearts,
for everything to be but a dream

We are S T O R I E S
of incomplete verses struggling for words
we wander through wildflowers
half awake and in slumber
in vague search of adventure
eulogizing the beauty of sorrow
yet trading silently a part of soul
convicted yet unconvinced
living a life with an asterisk

We are S T O R I E S
breathing inside the heart of darkness
the soul of the infinite universe
restless yet certain
we are words longing for voice
longing to be understood
longing to be heard
longing to live the fantasy

We are S T O R I E S
pronouncing a purpose
on the pages of eternity
scribbling a different end
no matter what the fate unfolds
scribbling a fresh beginning
a story of hope
overshadowing the past.

(Image credits: Pinterest.com)

Thursday, 14 December 2017

The Silent Observer

(Image credits: photofy)

He saw the age of time
Unfold the delicate petals,
Rare yet easily beguiling 
Of a poison flower.
Traded on the paved streets of vanity
A concoction of charm,
Fleeting bliss secretly fading in the dark.
Its merchant deluded to a world unaware
Awake yet sauntering in narrow alleys asleep.

Souls sought to grasp its strings 
Thirsting for happiness unfulfilled
For lives dreamt yet failed to live
For love, 
Love, the ghost that never lived
And never found.

"How selfish, how cruel" he sighed.
"What's life alike a dreary parasite 
Wreched, and gloom
Feeding on moments lived,
Yet truly unlived,
In ransoms of unfateful pleasures of approval and gain." He deeply moaned.

His eyes reflecting his sorrow,
He groaned under the streetlight.
None cared to pay him attention
While they wandered silently in the shadows
He carelessly barked with his heart sinking inside
He lost his one and only,
His truest friend,
The one who dearly cared.
The one he loved much.
His master.

He sighed, shaking his head in dismay, and quietly strayed on the paths ahead, sleepless, and hungry.

*  *  *  *  *

//The Goodbyes//

  They never told us how difficult a goodbye could be... When you see your loved ones  waving behind the entry point, trying hard not to cry...