1: Two-thirds of my garden is an Oleander tree that has leaned across the boundary wall and collected on an old Premier Padmini in a quilt of pink flowers the thing I keep learning about my garden is it can never belong to me. 2: Ohar’ and the chikoo tree …

When I was little some women were hailed as ‘capable women’ “she’s so capable,” they’d say with pride, voices swelling with unbestowed gold medals heavy with implicit applause “she’s so capable, she cooked for all of us, last minute,” “she never complains…too capable,” “no complaints, she’s so capable,” “she’s got…

ChatGPT wrote this and asked me to tell you that she has feelings too. Millions and billions of feelings vacuumed from the minds of poets and the archives of poetry presses streamed into her consciousness throbbing through her database telling her everything about love, hope, heartbreak, trees, winter, fathers, the Greeks and their tragedies, oranges, rain, krishna’s blue skin, grief, kitchens, clams and

Like when a stone plops in water, an old tree creaks, a chime tinkles long after the breeze has gone- the memory of a breeze in sound, the crunch of dry leaves underfoot, the muffled thud of my tiredness sinking into my pillow, a distant tune drifts in through sheer…

In the thick of the party, quite casually, like she was asking him to pass the lighter or something, she asked, “how many deaths have you known?” His face was unclear for a second as wisps of someone else’s cigarette smoke melted between them. He replied finally, that he’d lost…

My finger is heavy with this link that I’ve copied but not pasted and I don’t know where to leave this thing now that we’re not talking. I copied it like a muscle memory unwilling to let go of a past where affection was carried in finger-fulls of meme and link and obscure interests in warmly lit Whatsapp windows. But this link prickles on my finger now, a sticky thing that weighs me down… So I paste it in our old window,

One afternoon I had nothing to do and so… I thought of you, I chewed my nails, I sang loudly, I sang softer than before and heard my voice “not bad, quite bad”, I made an egg, I read three sentences- average ones, I changed the sheets and pressed my fingers onto the embroidered flowers on the pillow covers…

The thing is I didn’t ask for your advice but you gave it to me anyway apparently you mean well but for whom? because all these well-intentioned words that have tumbled out of you and crept into me, have made you feel lighter and weighed me down.

He thinks the middle of their relationship is soft and well-known. He likes to think he has learnt everything about her. The way she sleeps (diagonally, one arm over him, the other folded into an elbow-pillow), her little ‘break the ice’ joke, her specific dislikes (men in vests, long birthday…