Young Writers Society

I counted with delight until nineteen
now birthdays are reluctant, the cake is
just a sweet mound of cream and sugar
and I fear diabetes

this season's prophecy: I will be stuck in a traffic-jam in April
the summer's first sweat
will take away my morning freshness, hours later I
will enter the lecture hall with bloodshot eyes, sunburns, my
shirt soaked near the armpits, and classmates
I don't even know will ask me 'how
are you feeling today?'

remember this moment in all its resplendence
a blur, a transience nothing could capture
an instant of breathless rapture, remember
this moment

I ran out of poetry the other day, my inkwell coughing
up dry clots of old blue, crumpled up pages
piling up in front of me - mute foothills of blankness

I searched for words under the desk, took a walk outside
hoping for imagery, my stroll a succession
of rapid steps, my legs quick, cutting the streets
like a pair of scissors

there weren't any metaphors and similies
at the grocery store, I came back screaming epithets
in free verse, hurling stanzas at the wall
like cuss words

au revoir, khuda hafiz, farewell
separation is its own language - eternal tongue
its script spans everything

each syllable leaves us waiting
on two different ends of eternity