Pratyusha

“The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong

“You’d wait in the orchard for hours
to watch a deer
break from the shadows.

You said it was like lifting a cello
out of its black case.”
― Eduardo C. Corral

“Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.”
― Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 100 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Fiza

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient