If Ever There Were an English Mushaira...

If ever there were an English mushaira,

it wouldn’t begin with applause—

but with a silence that settles like soft dusk upon a tired city.

No spotlight, no raised hand—just a voice,

spilling like warm tea into porcelain twilight.

There’d be no declarations, no stage bravado—

only the gentle unfolding of metaphors,

like a lover untying the knot in a letter

they’ve read too many times to count.

A poet would rise not to perform,

but to confide.

And we would listen—not to respond,

but to remember something we had forgotten

in the bustle of being.

Perhaps someone would speak of grief

not as a tragedy, but a companion—

and another would turn longing into a landscape

where no country has borders, and every silence is sacred.

There’d be no winners. No final round.

Only verses—draped across hearts like shawls in December.

And somewhere in the back,

someone would whisper, “How strange... I’ve never heard English ache like this before.”

A poet without a muse

What is a metaphor without a face to rest upon?

I have built entire worlds of beauty—

soft similes, aching alliterations,

lines that could clothe a soul,

or undress it gently under moonlight.

But there’s no one here

to slip into the language I stitched.

No collarbone to carry my metaphors,

no palm to pour my sonnets into,

no laughter to stretch the meaning of joy,

no silence to sip my metaphysics like warm wine.

I am a poet debarred of purpose,

a candle burning in a room that no one enters.

My ink does not dry—it drowns.

It waits.

I have metaphors of rain,

but no skin to receive it.

I have verses of longing,

but no eyes to read them aloud.

It is a strange exile—

to be full of love,

and yet so utterly

unloved.

And I learnt to live

I was always afraid of love. The thought of falling for someone only to lose her one day terrified me. How could I bear the absence of the one who would bring me my mornings, whose sleepy voice would carry my nights into dreams?

I had seen hearts shatter, dreams dissolve into tears, and every time, I reminded myself—I must not fall in love. I knew love’s beauty, I could feel its purity, but I kept my distance, fearing the inevitable ache that would follow.

Yet, one day, love found me. A love so deep, so all-consuming, that there was nothing beyond it.

Mornings arrived only when she sent a Good Morning with a little heart. The day unfolded over coffee and whispered dreams from the night before. And nights… nights never really came. At three in the morning, I would weave her breath into the moonlight, creating our own jazz music—a rhythm of the days to come.

Even at work, I wasn’t truly there. In my mind, I was walking along the edge of a cemetery, a basket of white lilies in hand. The flowers rustled softly, and as they fell, they left a trail—one that led her back to me by dusk.

But then, one day, the lilies were gone. The sun overslept. The day forgot to rise. The night refused to rest.

She left. My beloved left.

And the very thing I had feared all along happened.

For days, I cried. It felt as though someone had driven a knife straight into my chest—not just left it there, but twisted it every so often, ensuring the wound never closed. The pain was relentless, the bleeding endless. And yet, I did not die. I remained.

Days passed. My phone no longer vibrated. The silence settled into my bones.

Then, one day, I gathered the courage to rise. I opened my diary and began to write—where it all began, where it all ended. I stitched together the dreams I had lived and the ones that never got their chance.

And somewhere between those pages, I

 learnt to live again.

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The Lament of My Heart

 The Lament of My Heart

I have seen love slip through my fingers, not with a storm’s rage, but with the quiet cruelty of fading light. One moment, it was ours; the next, it belonged to only me.

Perhaps this is the greatest tragedy—not that love was impossible, nor that the world conspired against it, but that it ended only for one. I find myself standing in the hollowed-out remains of something once so vast, so consuming, and yet now reduced to a whisper in the corridors of memory. She was here once. Her laughter still lingers in the spaces where silence now reigns. And though she has left, I remain, tethered to what once was, unable—or perhaps unwilling—to step into what comes next.

I wonder if she felt it slipping away, or if love, for her, ended so gently that she never needed to mourn it. Maybe it was not an ending at all, just a quiet closing of a chapter she had already outgrown. I do not resent her for it. Love is not a prison; it must be held freely or not at all. But what does one do with a love unreturned, with words unsaid and tenderness that has no place to go?

They say time heals, that distance dulls the ache. But some loves are not meant to be forgotten; they become woven into the fabric of who we are. And so, I do not fight the memory of her. I let it stay, let it haunt me in the quiet hours, let it remind me that for a moment—however fleeting—I loved and was loved. And if that is all I am left with, then perhaps it is enough.