I fear that time closes in;
It moves faster and faster.
A broken heart, a broken mind,
My life is a disaster.

I'd hoped that time wasn't done.
There's still much for me to do,
But the night bandit creeps up on me
As I wave goodbye to you.

I wonder what it will be like,
If eternal life exists;
All these questions cloud my thoughts
Like the spring's morning mist.

It pains me so that I must go,
But I know it's out of my hands.
There's something larger than I,
And it's all according to His plan.

The light escaped barely through the cold morning.
I found you broken—and I was too,
You healed me more than I could heal you,
I wiped the tear rolling down your cheek,
Your last word escaped the brim of your lips
So weak, so fragile;
And our love grew boundless.

My soul turned a desert.
I can't grow a rose anymore.
I can't seek the red petals.
For, they have fallen for you
mourning for all the hope
that turned into nothing
but love deprived thorns.

I never fully understood the meaning of the  word “mourn” until this year -
To truly feel the loss of another concentrated in its purest form.

I never believed when others would say
“I miss you more, in  each and every day” or
“There’s not an hour goes by, without a thought of you on my mind”
As if Loss is an unforgotten constant in the trails of the trivial,
We are only human after all.

But I was naive, through and through.
Loss never leaves your side once you meet
Loss is a friend for life.
The kind that shows their face in the most unpredictable moments,
Who never fades away or falls out,
Becoming more aquatinted as we go through life.

Loss is selfish, wanting our undivided attention,
Expecting us to indulge in its deep dark thoughts with strong pretension.

Loss is harsh, not hiding nor sugarcoating any enemy attack,
Facing us with the reality of control and just how much we lack.

Loss is bitter, Loss is unkind
Loss is a thief, stealing our piece of mind.

Loss is jealous, Loss is sly.
Is it absent of Love,
Or has Love left it’s side?

My father's name means
'one who doesn't mourn'.

But  I  have seen him
Grieving for  his
Grim childhood, broken
Home, fading away of
His own father after
Prolonged sickness, his
widowed mother of
Twenty years and his
Four year old self.

Maybe sometimes your
Name isn't something
You are, but something
You should be.

-Sayali Parkar

I'm starting to not remember how you looked.
But I remember little things,
like how you'd fold half the page to dogear
your place in a book.
The smell of old canvas
which you stretched when you were manic,
and watched it turn whiter
as you grew depressed thinking of how to paint it.

The grinding of your teeth in your sleep, ******* it
it drove me up the wall. Still does, because
as I sit here writing it from memory I shuddered.

The smell of your shampoo whose brand name I forgot.
Because if I could I'd have a case of it.
Just to be nearer to you.

You used to smile when I'd read you something I wrote.
Now I've found a website where I can post.
You always told me I had some type of talent to capture
moments nobody noticed,
a photographer with words instead of apertures.
But aren't they meant to be worth a thousand more than mine?
I think you held for me a little bias.

You told me I'd end up as a paragraph in an essay
of some American Literature student's midterm grade.
She'd ace it, and I loved where you placed me.
In the middle of everything better than I was,
in this future of whimsy where I kept writing
just because.

I can't tell you what you gave me for those years, as short as they were.
All I can do is tell other people that any confidence or talent is all due to her.