On some days,
My sadness is small ;
As small as a teardrop rolling down my cheek.
And on the others,
It's too huge to fit into my hands.
It stretches, it expands
And becomes a giant monster.
It visits me on lonely nights
With lilies and chocolates.
It slits my skin
And pulls out my veins
Like guitar strings
And plays a strange rhythm.
It sings gloomy songs to me
And makes me eat bitter memories for dinner.
On some days,
It hides inside my pocket like a baby bird;
And on others,
It holds my hand
Like my lover
And we go out for a walk.
It makes love to me every night
We blend into each other;
So perfectly that
We become indistinguishable.
But when I try to leave,
It screams,
Groans,
Cries,
Howls like a wolf.
It throws the crockery at me
And cuts my skin with a knife.
It bites me
And strangles me until I'm out of breath.

~ Dishita Kaushik

We are words,
Made up of consonants and vowels,
Strangled by the synonyms of heartbreaks
Rolled up in fantasies of love,
Which are squeezing us constantly,
Until we are gasping for breath.
We are the kings of darkness
Quenching the thirst of other souls,
With the fire of our heart.
We are flowers,
Which blossomed
On the branches of love in the season of spring;
But fell down
And went deeper into the earth,
In the summer of agony.
We are the stars,
You see above in the sky,
Bright and beautiful;
But from inside,
Just like stars,
We've set ourselves on fire.
We are the old books,
Kept in the last shelf of your book-rack,
Which you never throw,
Because the fragrance of our pages,
Reminds you of your old lover.
We are the pages of your diary,
On which you bleed through your pen
Every time you get hurt.
You use the ink
Made from your smiles and tears,
Your sweat and your blood,
And we hold on to them dearly,
Because your secrets are sacred to us.

When my eyes refuse to recognize light
And I start measuring distance in footsteps
Five steps to reach kitchen from the couch
Fourteen from the kitchen to reach bedroom
Don't look at me with sympathy filled eyes
Instead
Hold my hand and guide me
To the highest peak of the city
And then let me go
Let me wander recklessly
Let me fall and rise up all by myself
Even when I cry for your help
Do not come
Sit
With your knees pressed against your chest and rest your head on them
Look at me
Falling, rising
And in the evening
When the moon lazily crawls into night's lap
When I'm too tired of falling
And I rest my head on your shoulder
Whisper to me
Darling
There are no heights which you cannot climb
You don't need a stick by your side
Even when your eyes refuse to recognize light
And you start measuring distance in footsteps.

~ Dishita Kaushik

Dear you
Who stands in front of me every night
And sheds off her clothes
Dear you
Who counts the number of bruises on her thighs and
Picks up a blade to multiply them
Dear you
If I could let my voice out
Through the cracks in me
I would tell you to shed off your skin too
Dear you
I would tell you to stand completely naked in front of me
Wearing only your soul
Dear you
If I could let my voice out
Through the cracks in me
I would tell you that the beauty you search for on your skin
Resides beneath it.
-Your mirror

- Dishita Kaushik

The old birds lie in their nests,
Curled up like question marks.
The sky today is mourning for my mother,
And the ground is tired of collecting its tears
In her bellybutton and crevices
Which emerge from its edges;
Waiting for disaster and sorrow,
To make them whole again.
The mountains are beating their chests,
And earthquakes shiver with their horror.
My mother has turned into the darkest shade of death,
Her ears have forgotten what they are meant to do;
And her eyes refuse to open.
Even the undone dishes and
Mismatched socks are unable to wake her up.
As I wash the dishes she left behind,
I observe that they make more noises today;
The water falls fiercely over them,
Screaming on the top of its voice
As if mourning for the hands which
Tickled them every day.
My house smells of death,
Instead of alcohol and an old woman's tears;
Today it doesn't watch an alcoholic father
Beating an old woman like a madman
While her child hides behind the curtains,
Pretending to blend in the background.
The walls shrink with each passing second,
Just like my heart;
Even the cemented walls are failing,
To carry the smell of burning bones on their nostrils.

My mom told me that
The day I was born
Two volcanoes in Philippines puked lava,
And the sky turned purple
Like the bruises on her back.
I smelled like gunpowder, she said.
So she named me after the goddess of war;
She named me Ballona.
I was three when I first
Made fireballs out of thin air,
And thrashed the pressure cooker
On my alcoholic father's head,
Who couldn't stop turning my mother
Into an exhibition of scars and miseries.
My mother believed that I was fire,
So she started calling me Hestia;
The Greek goddess of fire.
When I was six,
My teacher made me stand outside the classroom
Because I spelled fear as fire,
Bend as burn,
Woman as warrior,
Scars as power.
Even sixteen years later,
I still spell bend as burn,
Woman as warrior.
My hands carry the maps of cities
I have burned and men I have enslaved.
I keep their ashes inside my pockets,
And they keep my burn marks
On the edges of their shoulders.
They told me that love is spelled as sacrifice
And sacrifice as women,
So I tore their dictionaries,
And gifted them mine.
Every night when the moon sings lullaby to the stars,
They tell their daughters
The stories of woman who demolished cities and exhaled disasters,
And wore courage on her sleeves,
Every night with each different story,
Their daughters wish to be able to breathe fire,
Spell woman as warrior
And wish that somewhere someone will tell his daughter their stories.