Trimurti

 

Brahma 

Lotus at the first light -

creation opens slowly

Petal after petal 

Vishnu 

Shesha holds the night

Upon the cosmic ocean 

Dreams will become worlds

Shiva

Ash settles softly

Beneath the silent crescent

No end - only change.

The four Vedas

 

Rig veda
When crimson sun rises
A single hymn lifts the dark-
Agni learns its name. 

Yajur veda
Smoke from the Vedi
hands offer their oblations
to the morning breeze 

Sama Veda
River after rains
Every note remembers how
silence became song.

Atharva Veda
A healing herb blooms;
Its bitter leaves gather a
sweet elixir within.

Flowering

You sat at your desk,

your spine a bare trellis

beneath a cotton sky.

I watered it

with the rain of my tears,

warmed it

with the sunlight of my eyes,

hoping that one day

courage would climb it

like a vine,

self-belief would leaf along it,

and flowers would bloom

from every vertebra—

until you stood,

no longer merely possessing a spine,

but blooming one.

A widow’s song

 At night

it is not your body

that I miss the most.

The years have taught me

that hunger can be endured,

that longing settles eventually

like dust upon forgotten books.

No,

it is the space beside me

that aches.

The place where I would fold myself

into the certainty of your arms

and lay down the burdens

I carried through the day.

Who will listen now

to my small fears

that seem foolish in daylight?

Who will hear me worry

over imagined slights,

over children grown distant,

over wrinkles and ailments

and the thousand little doubts

that visit a woman

when the world grows quiet?

You never laughed.

You would draw me closer,

your hand tracing circles

upon my back,

and somehow

every storm inside me

would lose its thunder.

The nights are the hardest.

The moon spills silver

through the curtains,

but its light no longer soothes.

It enters me

like saline pushed

through a clogged cannula—

meant to heal,

yet burning its slow path

through tender flesh,

each drop carrying

the sting of remembrance.

The darkness still arrives

at the appointed hour,

but there is no one

to gather my scattered thoughts

and hold them gently

until sleep comes.

So I lie awake,

speaking to the silence

as though it were you.

And the moonlight keeps flowing,

cold and merciless,

through veins narrowed by grief,

until every memory of your kindness,

every word you once spoke

to quiet my fears,

returns with that same sharp ache.

And sometimes,

when the silver burning softens,

I almost believe

that if I turn quickly enough,

I will find you there—

waiting,

as you always did,

to listen

all night long.