Murano, Venice

At 5 pm, the streetlights birthed themselves into existence, each one a testimony to a certain survival, one that had gone on for a time seemingly immemorial. At the same time, the town bell’s song faded like stories untold on a grandmother’s knee. The drizzle held its ground, relentless and unyielding. Silence reclaimed the air when the bells alarm ceased. As I walked, I felt the earth—not just beneath my feet, but the real earth. The earth beneath the cloth covering my toes, beneath the rubber soles, beneath the layers of dirt and stone. The earth of which we are said to come and to which we shall return.

I felt the tap, tap, tap of rain, its weight heavy with the push of the wind. Each drop reinstating life—vibrating in sync with the glow of TVs in lit rooms, the flush of toilets, the scraping of the stubbornness left on frying pans. I could feel the tap, tap, tap tap tap as a large-gloved boy dashed across the cobblestones, in front of what one would think was a ghost, so quick that all my eyes registered was light—life distilled into pure motion. For the first time, I felt life outside myself. Not a body, but life itself.

The ocean, like blue silk and infinite, gliding against itself in perpetual motion, turning white as angels before retreating back to blue. It received and gave, received and gave, much like a mother calling her sweaty children inside after the first flash of lightning. It took more than the rain; it took from me. My soul, my ears, my foes, my joys, my sorrows, my love, my tame and my wild, my prized possession—my ego. And in return, it delivered peace. A peace so intimate and familiar, I could have mistaken myself for fluidity itself.

As the colors of the setting sun fractured through thick clouds—white spilling into yellows, merging with pinks and blues in violent pastels—I found direction. I followed its call to the canal I had crossed not long before. I arrived on the other side just after 5 pm, as windows were being latched and men stood at gates, ready to present their finds of the day.

The woman beneath the black umbrella strode with purpose, her feet blessing the bridge with each deliberate step, writing history into stone. The canal waters below moved dark and knowing, singing hymns for lonely hearts in this foreign corner of Venice. From a distance, across the street, I regretted that I could only watch her through a viewfinder, a connection fleeting and incomplete. But contentment found me as I captured a slow disappearance. She left without a glance sideways, without a goodbye. And once again, I found myself, alone , accompanied only by the sound left behind of my soles tapping puddles, and the reflections of my solitude in the canals of such a quiet town.

Sound and Sea

I remember the cold sand beneath my feet,

I remember grating my toes,

Gloves snug hugging my fingers,

Debating my view—

Sky, clouds, seas, sand,

The Footsteps that track in roes.

The pulse beneath my feet moved like breath,

This vast thing, this form, endless, alive.

I am torn—

Between the saxophone weaving stories in my ears,

The restless fists of waves battling the shore,

And aeroplanes carving the sky above.

A child’s song floating between them all:

This is familiar.

Ashes

Running, barefoot on memories,

Chasing whispers of red lips,

Your laughter would linger like dawn’s first light,

Soft promises, moments we held too close.

I believed in belief, in the ways

You touched my hair, sealing dreams,

Our laughter filling empty rooms,

Breakfasts left half-eaten, salutations briefly deep,

“There’s no one like you,” you’d say. A lie, or a truth

Today is colder, weighted with loss,

I burned our photos, watched the ashes fall,

Stainless bins filled with blazing echoes;

Echoes no flame can erase; they rise,

Embers of what we couldn’t keep.

Water scalds, but can’t wash away

What’s buried underneath —the ache that remains,

Webs of a love, care, loosened, abstracted.

“What have I done?” I asked silence,

Surprised at a silent response,

Heavy,

Its tears mirroring my own.

Where have you, gone, cold, to a love undone.

Atoms

All I wanted in that moment was your love under my arms,

The heaven that’s beneath your cave.

To journey through holy landscapes,

To bring to me all you are;

To let me care to see.

Last night, we lost it all to the atoms left between us,

Spinning in rage, round and round,

Whisked like honey and jam.

The love I’ve had for you—

Swept, washed away, wept, like a rainy day.

Could this be it?

Could this mean end?

Does this mean our demise has come too soon?

I heard the whispers.

I dreamed them out loud

That black turned to white,

Yet fear has raced us here.

Ghost

Upon my skin, where fingers once crossed,

Electricity hum memories lost,

For reasons buried deep,

For reasonings forgotten.

When the summer birds sing for remembrance,

To beacon from the abyss, a failed romance,

A memory floats back:

A winter night—

Cozy socks, a blank shirt, pants coloured black,

A purple dress.

I felt your pulse beneath my touch—

Your wrist, your neck—I felt too much.

And as my lips departed into yours,

My heart faded into a bleeding sun.

Now, when the winters approach,

Reds and yellows recede,

And trees stand barren as the last leaf concedes,

Shadows whisper to the wind, to the skies

Of summers dressed in loved little lies.

And when the cool night’s breeze finds my skin,

The abyss of failed romances call out within.

For where your fingers had crossed and stayed,

The ghosts of our sunken past return to play.