Grace in Irreversibility

After all is said and done...

You know the feeling, the slight tingling in your bones, your thoughts frozen, of an ache to press the undo button, to rewind the reel of experience, as if it's a cassette you saved to revisit, and snip off wrong turns, wrong interpretations, and wrong investment of your devotion.

Rivers never return to their old courses. Trees do not reclaim the leaves they have shed. Words, once spoken, can never be taken back. 

Yet they always find the sea. Yet each spring they will bloom again. Yet the silence that follows holds expiation.

Do we answer to respond, or respond to answer?

This has been playing at the back of my mind almost since 2021.

I think I remember what sparked this question and led me to spiral into questioning my own sanity. (If my memory is being kind, it usually isn’t unless there’s a lunar eclipse.) I’d asked someone a very simple question. The kind that begs a Yes or No, followed by, maybe, a three-word explanation. But instead, I was rewarded with a 48-minute “Welcome to my TED Talk…” kind of conversation, err, speech. I remember the duration vividly, simply not because it was really insightful and has bestowed me with a once-in-a-lifetime sort of wisdom, but because:

(1) Every second felt like death.
(2) I had important work right after that meeting.
(3) I was catastrophically sleep-deprived (coffee has stopped keeping me awake!).

And the kicker, you ask? My question remained unanswered.

I replayed that conversation in my head later and realized only to realize what absolute tomfoolery!

It kept happening. Like yesterday dressed up as today, especially in work emails. But not just emails, in face-to-face conversations too. With people I know inside out. People I even like! People who claim to be great communicators (and occasionally flex their narcissistic flair. UGH!). I ask something simple, and suddenly I’m an audience member in a one-woman/woman/man show I clearly never signed up for.

Tiny Beak and Big Chaos

 *Xfpdfkdooo*

Every morning my home bursts into life when he returns, crawls into my bed, and showers me with a flurry of pecks. And the chaos begins. He’s a whirlwind—screaming, throwing tantrums worthy of a drama queen (of course, he takes after me!), and turning the house upside down if I’m out of sight. I’m on an emotional rollercoaster—laughing, missing him when he’s gone, and eagerly awaiting his return. He has my world wrapped around his tiny beak!

Then there’s his endless babbling...God save my ears! Through him, I’ve truly understood: If you love something, set it free.

Of Wings and Wishes...

That evening, I whispered a wish into the wind, unaware if the sky would keep it or carry it along. Time passed—long enough for a flicker of hope to soften at the edges but not quite fade away. And then—like a story writing itself—he appeared. Not a dream, nor a trick of my memory, but real—feathers ruffled by the very wind that once carried him away. Perhaps the world is a circle, or perhaps some wishes have wings. 

Maybe it was the love I sent into the vast unknown that has finally found its way home.

A Love Letter to Spring

I was dutifully tending to my plants. I had forgotten the art of pruning and fertilizing them. I had moved them from the living room to the brightest afternoon spot in my window (sadly, I moved my indoor plants to my window and my peace lily is was suicidal). On a Monday morning in February steeped in weariness, I noticed a slender stem emerging from the heart of the spider plant. At first, I dismissed it as an impromptu guest in my green sanctuary, born out of some seeds my mother might have just dumped in my planters.

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At times, she looks at him as if

he is a pastiche of galaxies.

Cold—oh! so cold—on the surface,

constantly undergoing a shift.

His eyes hold clusters of stars,

catastrophically beautiful, made

with all these colours she cannot spell.

Celestial Lovers

Written in 2018.


Such bright lights rest
within these stars; will
his eyes ever contain all
the radiance? His frenzied

fingers run through

her curious hair.

How did he find the

sunlight-condensed

dark hues melted
in her locks? She unlocked
the doors of her mind
in silence. He drifted in,

And it doesn't matter...

Sometimes you listen to a song on a loop till you no longer want to listen to it, yet you never memorise the lyrics; you find a comforting familiarity with its tune. There comes a point when you forget about it, until one fine day, it accidentally begins playing on autoplay from the playlist you saved that year, rekindling your once-surfaced affinity towards it.

Sometimes you visit a place, probably a place that gives you joy, yet the route to it consistently slips from your memory. While landmarks have made your memory their home, you fail to attend to the intricate details of the road. You arrive at a juncture where you start searching for a familiar place, not in the physical world, but in a person.

2023

If I have to sum up my 2023 in six words: reflecting on the poignancy of time.

My year in six pictures.

Van Gogh 360. A Sunday spent well with L.

Wishful Thinking

I live in the pause between the consciousness of the present and the far edge of wishful thinking. Sometimes picking up the thoughts floating on the surface of my mind, only to put them back. Sleeping on disbelief only to wake up finding I've mistaken it for misbelief, realising it is not torment, or even agony, but cruel fate.