Sundays that stretch like lazy cats on a tepid day.
Crossaint and black coffee by the pool,
Relishing a silence that denounces weekday veneers.
Mynas bathe on the edge of the water. Dip and shudder.
We read while menacing clouds above enveloped the precious monsoon sunshine.
*
The four weddings have come and gone.
Slide shows of besotted moments chronicled,
Caricatured smiles that masked ambivalence.
Pretty dresses and champagne aside,
They were mostly beautiful affairs.
Polka dots in early spring, disco mania in a gallery, rock anthems in a chapel.
*
The rose quartz still sits on my finger.
In times when honesty, self-condemnation, and history fail us,
There's nothing to do but construct a new dimension.
*
The christmas lights have suddenly appeared again.
It's been a year,
Of monumental moves.
I long for window frames lined by fairy lights, balmy sorbet days, and daffodils in porcelain.
*

Clash of prides.
When words lunge out;
When the injured recoil.
Lightning flashed and lit up the tangerine sky.
Cars passed,
And so did time.
*
Walking on without looking back.
It's a hard thing to do
When every corner you turn is littered with memories.
*
Sometime between then and now
I learnt to cower in someone else's bravado.
Dream big dreams;
Let the moment take you where you've never been.
Take it slow, make it
Before the pivot shifts.
*
They lay side by side.
All those years ago
They shared some kind of a stoic understanding.
Someone else's photograph held up by a fridge magnet,
Someone else's mistake had brought her there,
And now, someone else's mistake had brought him back.
They met and parted with three wrongs.
Three rights make a relationship - person, time, place.
The revelation that came too late.
*
You are a hopeless romantic.
I am a hopeless cynic.
You find beauty in the most unusual places.
I look for sadness in people's eyes.
And as I tapped and sang away to the band's evergreen repertoire
(Like a kid in a candy store, that's how you described it)
You looked on with eyes lit with real happiness that drowned me in a fervent, beer-fuelled elation.
*
I dream of Milo and terracotta tiles. I dream of repetition and white picket fences.
*

A split second.
That's how long someone tells me it takes for two people to fall in love.
*
Perpectives that find you when you're in bed with a 39+ temperature.
I don't want to die alone.
*
I spent the first fourteen days chronicling everything.
There was a euphoric blindness that overtook the need to wallow in deep thought.
The first sip of sangria in tropical heat.
If nervousness could be measured, the tension that filled the gaps between the block of parmesan and my clammy fingertips would have come in at a good 9.6.
I wore pink shoes that night.
*
You can't hurry time.
You could sit by the side of the road and wait.
Or you could lose yourself in its festivities.
It's a wait only when you're aware of time;
And awareness only when you're not having fun.
I'm rambling, I realise.
*