In my own words.

Unrestraint.

Something I had written and forgotten about -

The roads were starting to empty, yet the city stood majestic in its neon lights and buzzing movement on both sides of the freeway. I had just learned to drive, so speed hadn’t quite lost its novelty yet. I rolled down my windows, and even though the noise of movement filled my car, I felt like I had the whole sky’s worth of room to breathe. The Citadel Outlet on the 5 was the last landmark of familiarity I noticed. But I kept going. That night, I crossed boundaries I hadn’t considered confining before. 

As I transitioned from the 5 to the 101, I rolled up my windows and turned my music louder. The route got narrower, then wider, then narrower again. Everything but the road was a blur. The lights of Los Angeles had bid me farewell as I crossed over to the next city. It was too dark to take in the sites of the sky and cliffs that would astonish me on my return trip the next morning. My buzz had become a pulsing realization of myself. I could only hear the music I had selected; the roads were lit by but a handful of cars. Darkness flooded all my space and for an in-between moment where I could see no roadsigns, I had no idea where I was. I was alone. It was more night than it had ever been. But I wasn’t lost. I was alright. I felt disconnected, like I wasn’t being watched or heard or felt. A sense of unrestraint. As if I had all the allowance for movement, all the freedom for action. For a few dark moments, I felt like I was entering a limbo. As if anything I did here would hold no weight, would have no meaning. 

Testing the waters, I rolled down my windows again and turned my music as loud as it went. When it couldn’t go any louder, I screamed. My scream was drowned out by Rise Against’s Savior, but it felt like a knot untied. That moment of utter freedom, in all its silliness, has stayed with me. 

As the road faded and I entered the home of my host, a whole new storm awaited me. An enticing conversation, an unexpected connection. Even still, it’s that singular moment of freedom that overshadows, and in a whole other sense, foreshadows, the events of that Spring night. 

1

Today at the most radiant point in the afternoon, 

when I lay, uncluttered,

wiggling my toes under the blanket,

I missed laughing in your arms,

naked,

and it made me glow. 

2

07/30

I woke up at four in the morning,

realizing I hadn’t bothered to finish a conversation.

The way I left it probably made me sound really dense.

But it was actually only missing context.

You must have walked away,

because pointing out my own carelessness to me,

or slow walking me to an epiphany

must have seemed too tedious and unnecessary.

I woke up at four in the morning,

realizing I had been trying to fit a square tile

through a circular hole

for so long,

the way we all do sometimes.

Because when I washed the Red-stained paintbrush in water,

and watched it turn the water red,

I must have been convinced,

this was my destiny.

So I kept trying. 

1

06/30

Heavy eyelids, the glow of morning;

one foot in this world, one in another.

Am I creating, or recreating?

Am I smiling, are you real?

You’re neon today, I’m white, and I pray that you color me

till I’m blind. 

3

05/30

Stimulation is an open road;

a question answered with a question

that swiftly unravels your argument.

Stimulation is being tempted by

feelings outside of your range of emotions,

and words which express 

all those precious experiences

you never understood enough to label.

Stimulation is the second last sentence in a conversation,

the one preceding “Goodbye”,

the too-short, too-layered, too-ambiguous

thought that keeps you up 

the rest of the night.

Stimulation is being 

unveiled, and aware of it.

Stimulation is more you, less me,

You,

inside me. 

4

04/30

My chamomile tea smile,

two dimples, bright eyes,

She always has all the answers,

or may be sometimes 

I just have to hear myself talk,

and have her nod along,

To know.

Now I see my open road.

8

03/30

Blue-gray eyes liven up that tired face, still.

They belong to an imaginative child, 

with the body and mind of a wizened soul,

Still my outrageously comforting oxymoron.

When distant, not quite distant,

when present, not quite present.

The corners of those cuticles still chewed up,

That left leg shakes nervously, still.

Still an indoorsy comfort like a blanket, that embrace

and still something meaningful about a spoken sentence,

punctuated by a silent gaze.

As we sit close by an exhausted flame,

I’m too unaware to understand

whether or not I’m warmed.

But at a point where I know only my today,

and I don’t have anything figured out, but my integrity,

it feels like everything is changing, or everything has changed;

but you’re still the same.

and it’s nice. 

1

2/30

Sometimes I like to play psychic,

and find patterns in my yesterday,

to figure out tomorrow.

In hindsight, all of our now

seems to have been derived from some 

simple textbook equation,

we had willingly ignored. 

If I make myself aware of the equation,

and place faith in the consistency of my behavior,

Can’t I plug in “now” in place of “ the past”

to calculate the value of “future”?

Mathematician or psychologist?

Pessimist or idealist?

1

1/30

You satiate my hunger for the sun,

for flight, for movement, for breathlessness.

When I’m falling into the depths of gray,

I use wisps of your effect to color my heart a raw red.

I remind myself of the emptiness in this,

the transience, the uncertainty, the risk.

When I’m a void too temperate, too unmoved,

I use emotion to throw rationality out of whack.

Deliberately.

It’s National Poetry Month!

All you poets and poets in the making, challenge yourselves to produce one poem everyday for the 30 days in April. Share some of your work, if you’re willing. I’m going to try and do the same. 

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For us dreamers, the unsettled, the brave, the insane, there lies an inherent lure in destruction. The chaos of wrong isn’t fulfilling, it’s tempting. We are aware of its harm; this isn’t masochism. We don’t take pleasure in the storm that will inevitably follow. It’s an itch. The consequences are secondary to the primary need to fuck up something orderly. 

“I wanted to destroy something beautiful”. 

6

With A Rolling “R” Sound.

Mom claims that she and Dad seemed to be living one gynecologist appointment at a time, and with each one that went well, they heaved a sigh of relief. Considering names was out of the question, as if they would be jinxing their good luck so far. Fortunately, I came out perfectly healthy, which to this day, Mom calls a miracle, despite what Dad and the doctors tell her. The celebration of having crossed that hurdle lasted too long, and I was unnamed for months. Mom says I had ebony curls and big, round eyes so some relative started calling me “gudiya” which means doll in Hindi.

I was “gudiya” until one day Dad, the Speech Pathologist said I needed a name I would be able to pronounce in my early stages of speech development. He was very specific about his requirements. The name was to be no longer than two syllables and it had to be easily pronounced by people all over the world because he knew he wanted to live and work in multiple countries throughout his life.

Grandma had requirements too, but hers were of a whole different train of thought. She needed the name to start with the letters “R” or “T” because according to Hindu astrology and her orthodox family priest, those letters would bring me good luck and prosperity.

Auntie Neeru, the fashionista, didn’t want much. She wanted a name that sounded nice. Something hip and unique.

Mom, the writer, wanted a name with a meaning that resonated with her. Being the only doer amongst all those thinkers, she brought home a Hindi dictionary one day. Oh yeah, by the way, my name was picked out of a dictionary, not a book of Baby Names.

Mom opened her black leather-bound journal and wrote down how she felt about me. She listed words she associated with my birth, and her nine month long arduous journey of worry, prayers, and hope. She flipped to the “R” and “T” sections, looking up definitions and synonyms for all the words she came up with. While looking up variations of determination and desire under the “T” section , she came across it. “Trisha” . It was listed as a synonym for a common Hindi word used to describe a strong, unwavering desire. Trisha, with a rolling “R” sound. Two syllables long, beginning with the letter “T”, sweet sounding and almost unheard of as a Hindi name, and spelled T-R-I-S-H-A, to be pronounced as a shortened version of Patricia, a common name around the world. It fit everyone’s requirements. It was perfect.

Sadly, I didn’t think so. Growing up, I never liked my name. As a child, I was a total girl and I wanted a name that sounded like royalty. Something long that curled around my tongue and had a fancy letter such as “z” in it. Like Jazmine, or Elizabeth. It didn’t help that most people shortened my name to “Trish” which sounded too tomboyish for my taste. In middle school, I read Cisnero’s House on Mango Street and fell in love with the name Esperanza. I was appalled that the character hated her perfect, exotic name.

For years, Mom never objected to my feelings regarding my name. After one of her trips back home to India, she told me she had brought back a very special gift for me. From her suitcase, she took out her black leather-bound journal.

“I started writing in this when I was only a few years older than you are now. This has parts of me since before your birth,” Mom said.

“It ends somewhere after you learnt to speak your first few words”. “Should I be reading this?” I asked, warily.

“You understand enough now,” she told me with affectionate eyes. “It’ll help you”.

Through that black, leather-bound journal, I discovered the sweet secrets of my parents’ love story, of how they met and how they got married. I read her guilt over my conception, I absorbed her worry and fear over my health. I heard my first laugh and smiled at the way I would suck my thumb all the time. I discovered “Trisha” before I knew her, through Mom’s eyes. Trisha, with the rolling “R” sound. I read about my name and the meticulous process through which it was conceived, and how in its creator’s eyes and the eyes of my creator, it was perfect and precious.

I have grown to love my name, even the variation “Trish”. But sometimes, when I’m attentive enough, I try to correct people. “It’s Trisha, actually. With a rolling “r” sound”.

5

Muse.

Found,

hidden in my own pages, coated in sweet irony. 

Something I wish I could articulate better, and share.

But not really. Something too mine, too difficult to make sense of. 

But know this, I got out of bed today. I leapt out, at a thought,

and I wrote. Unabashed. 

Muse, found. 

I had a free morning today, and part of the afternoon. I didn’t have to be at work till 3. I should have gotten ahead in my reading for school, I should have worked on that paper. I should have cleaned my car, or my room, or planned next week’s schedule. I should have deposited those checks and written that thank-you note. May be they’d label me “escapist”. But I just wanted to breathe. Some time in the last few months, I signed up for everything I could overflow my schedule with. Not to run away, no, but to do something; to fill up, to produce, to create, to move. I have my time invested in everything, my heart in nothing. And today, I shut it all out. I wanted to move. I wanted to do. I wanted to be productive, and then be satisfied and proud of myself in all too superficial a sense. With a few good nights of sleep in me, my battery was fully-charged, too. 

But the quiet has an irresistible allure. I spent all afternoon on my balcony, wrapped up in a sweet nothingness. It could easily have been a California summer day, the way the sun shone with all its might. The sky was a soft blue like the eyes of a boy I loved years ago. I even appreciated the creak of the insufficiently-oiled hinges of my swing set for their consistent rhythm. When the swing lost momentum and quieted down, I’d hear the soft chirps of sparrows and the wind chime that hangs in my balcony. 

Everything made sense, as I lay in my hours of quietness. Every conflict seemed distant and small. Insignificant. Yet, the thought of any deadline, even months down the road, seemed smothering. I don’t think I’m meant for organized movement. I’m meant to appreciate. In my own chaotic way, I like things slow and poignant, if that makes any sense. 

At some point, I closed my eyes and fell asleep, the sun kissing my forehead and eyelids. It was wonderful, necessary, and all too short. 

1

Food for thought.

This idea was brought to my attention in a conversation with a close friend tonight. My argument was: in figuring out the steps to a mishap, we can prevent the mishap from recurring in the future. The sense of resolve that comes with having understood why something happened, exists only because we feel equipped to handle things better in the future.

It is a universally applicable philosophy to be discussed. I am open to both sides of the argument; my loyalty varies from situation to situation. Regardless, I feel that the discussion has helped me make some decisions for which I was on the fence. It’s an interesting way to look at things. 

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