I will tell you about it some time, when the time is right (it is never right)
I have thought of Joni Mitchell, how she tells me to get back to my 'garden'
my garden, the long stretch of emptiness, I left long ago among the clouds
​beckons me with words, with lost notes I can't recall anymore, the sound of fire
fresh in my bones, I can't recollect how rivers turned bloody in the wine glass
or how cutlery took the form of an Acheulean axe shaped with the hurt of distress
my heart is the cleaving of summer buried inside floorboards that reek of rust
people talk of spring, the fragrance of wild roses, in a country that is not my own
I look for summer in basements with sunshine starved in the trauma of stone
depression has synonyms, one sinks in the nightmares of their facelessness
a moment of recklessness, an hour of grotesque, a day entangled in duress
the sky is a catacomb of macabre stars, the earth is a carcanet of endless wars
we look for people, people look for us, in hurricanes of nebulous horrors
the world collapses in an eclipse of unspoken thoughts, trapped behind doors.

~jm

Life is too long to be always happy.  There are moments when we fall and then there are times when we rise.  But all said and done, we are the same person inside. If I have learnt something, it is this- beauty is just a myth. We all carry the torch of our splendid beauty inside our heart and mind. We know our scars, regrets, wounds, worries and trepidations. Time does not heal anything. We heal ourselves. We grow like a rose on an abandoned briar with character, integrity and determination of our own mind.  This is how we live. This is how we survive.

Sometimes there is absolute meaninglessness in finding meaning to things beyond your control. The idea is to move on with the stoic grace of your own positivity because the moment you start to find meaning there is no possibility of snapping out of 'why', 'how' or 'when'.

I saw this woman, a floral print on her cotton dupatta
walking in and out of the maze of the herb garden
for a fleeting moment I thought she was my mother
with her passion for plants, pets and petrichor
its going to rain today, she would say
with her self taught meteorological expertise
she had never been wrong, she would say with ease
the woman came to me and asked with unease
Are you okay? Do you need something?
I wish I could tell her I see my mother in everything.

-jaspreet mann