My Body is a Letter to God

my body is a letter to god,
on days, when i write to her,
she snoozes her mailbox
and sends back unlearned
birdsongs to sing, when i
mess up the rhythm of the
songs, my body hibernates
like god for several seasons.
after my autumn and spring
pass by, leaving only melancholy,
leaving for my body – ideas
of how it should have looked
but how much shame, it is
different, my letter wakes
god up and she sings back-
prayers do not recover the
bodies that have been abandoned
by their souls, god wept as
she traced my body vein by
vein, “your spirit is a temple
of sentiments and stories,
your body is religion – hollow.”
i crumbled my letter and dug
it deep in my fist, as i touched
my blemished, fat, unloved,
untouched, abjured body,
it bloomed and goosebumps
like flowers rose with a desire:
“make love more often, aren’t
you home finally?”

~ P

Her Skin is Not Who She Is

Before you judge a woman for her colour or her scars, maybe you must remember the skin of your own mother, her love, her smile, her wounds, her cries, her sacrifices, her surrendering moments were all so vast that probably for most of us, she’s the first woman who was perfect in her flaws.
The girl you judge might be for you a moment, a passage of time, a life that doesn’t matter but the same girl, the same girl cried several nights trying to find her own soul and check whether it has a light or it too is a lie.
The same girl let the tap in the basin make louder noise than the cries of her heart just because she was scared of being judged a little more.
The same girl might have fought unknown battles against something she deserved to fall in love with.
Before you judge a girl for her skin or her face, would you not like to fall in love with the thought that her face had galaxies resting upon it, maybe she knows it and maybe she doesn’t.
Would you not like to fall in love with the thought that she too might break every nerve visible through her skin into laughter one day when serenity touches her and sets her a little more free.
Would you not like to fall in love with the thought that despite her flaws, she too is a journey through her own valleys and rivers, she too is a map to somewhere inside her soul.
Would you not like to fall in love with a thought that when each one of us stop looking at just a face, we would start reading the wholeness of a soul beneath it.

~ There’s a lot more than you can see on the surface

Curves of my body

When did any of our body part become a commodity to be compared to or felt conscious about? All those scoundrel eyes that judge,  rape, harass or humiliate, I’ve seen women coiling all of it around their bodies and as if years after years they have detached completely from it. As if their soul and their flesh are two different people. As if it’s their mistake.
Why? Why do we forget to make love to our own hands and feet. Why can’t we sit in front of the mirrors making faces and loving every inch of our skin with devotion so overwhelming.  Why can’t we decorate our bodies with our touch and fragrance like our home. Imagine what heaven would it be to feel this body as the only cover that uplifts its bird, the soul inside. Why can’t we touch ourselves up to toe and feel like we’re butterflies out of our cocoons. Why can’t we dance with our flesh in the air drooling and swaying like lunatics and never feel the need to hold someone else’s hand or waist to feel complete. Why can’t we make love to ourselves drunk over our own bodies so much that it’s unnecessary to think of other’s flesh.
~P

Photo by Kansuke Yamamoto