इश्क़

I mistook your daggers as smiles

इश्क तेरी आंखों में लिखा, पढने दे ज़रा,

हमको भी गालिब होना है,

इन गज़लों सी आँखों में खोना है,

Ishq Teri Aankhon Mein Likha, Padhne De Zaraa

Humko Bhi Ghalib Hona Hai

Inn Gazal’on Si Aankhon Mein Khona Hai

Just awoken

From a three hour nap

Feeling wasted days

Drip away

Longing to keep wasting

Exhaustion taking

Over what’s left of

Late fall daylight

Lazing away

A chilly fall haze

Searching to remember

To be

In feeling

Waiting to want

To do

Anything

Even a pile of long over due

Doing nothing

As I sit

In my bed

Under warm heavy blankets

Warming cold hands

With thoughts

Of dreaming

Away the rest of my day

I make time to write

To settle my mind

Perhaps it needs startled

Out of looping time

My days have doubled

With a three hour nap

I might never arise

Out of morning glazes

Under warm heavy blankets

I want to be craving

I often sleep to avoid my feelings

Because night time is my worst time

And 2am is getting dangerous.

— Anne Sexton, Elegy in the Classroom

We pretend we don't exist anymore.

We aren't "us" now

Enomoto Seifu-Jo, tr. by Kenneth Rexroth, from Written on the Sky; Poems from the Japanese

“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”

— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naïvely think that with their love they can change the men they love.

“Please do smack me if this is out of line, but you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen in my life, and I would like to procure for you the most lavish drink in this establishment if you will let me.”

“You’re a charmer,” June says, smiling indulgently.

“And you are a goddess.”

—Red, white and royal blue