Starlight and Moonshine

 father, your warmth burns my wings. you name it humility, I call it restraint  The women in my house learnt to bury their graves with their fidelity. They smell of death and misery.  I have died a hundred deaths, my mother a thousand. Perhaps these are the deaths women die every day before they're truly dead. my mother's love faded through the ends of time, she lost herself and became a graven statuette of an ideal woman. There are times she lets me in, where her nostalgia has built its own cities and towns, where the day no longer breaks and the night never settles. I look for my mother but instead, I find only a mirror. tired and trembling. lost in uncharted destinies and beggings of belief. who were you mother before you birthed me? before your heart made mine? before your split yourself open for another? women are their mother's daughters with smiles that unfold revolutions and end wars.  ~ Who was your mother before she was your mother?  - Arshia 

~excerpts~ i. There are forgotten pasts in me whose corpse chokes my throat till my mouth tastes of iron and ash. My bones feel hollow without you breathing your name down my spine. How do you let go of someone who refuses to leave? ii. The women in my house learnt to bury their graves with their fidelity. They smell of death and misery. iii. There are pieces in me of the people I've loved and lost. I can only find them in my dreams now as I look for excuses to think about them a little more, to steal dainty moments with them. I wonder if they dream of me too; if I became the muse to their poetry or the afflatus to their songs.  iv.  On days like these when the sun refuses to shine and the cold feeds on your miseries, I hope there are people, and cities and nights that make you fall in love with life again v. I sit with a heavy heart brimming with regrets and a mind dripping in memories. Look how we've grown old friend. Are you still there? Will you still listen when I tell yo...