Disjointed Short Stories – VI

I. A Dad Joke
I wrote to you last year but I still have not heard back from you. It has been seven days!
Yes, I too, make jokes like that now – as a feeble attempt to stand my ground before this world’s non-existent sense of humour.

    II. Knocked Out
    Someone is outside the door. I can hear the knocks loud and clear, but it is close to midnight. It is almost impossible to discern an actual knock from the one that is merely an auditory hallucination at this time of night. As they say, all of us at this point have lost our minds, so maybe the knocker does not even know whether he is knocking at the door. With this thought, I go back to my bed. I can no longer hear the knocks.

    III. Snakes
    I am friends with a snake. They think I am one as well. We have cracked it! Snakes ought to be friends with each other in order to leave non-snakes alone.

    IV. The Person and the Place
    The leaves are turning periwinkle where I have recently relocated. Turns out, it is not always the person that becomes like the place; it can also happen the other way around.

    V. The Stuck Ruminators
    We go around in circles, reading between the lines as if all of life is meant to be spent deciphering secrets far beyond our understanding. Fortunate are the souls that wake up in the morning ready not to read into anything too much. For the rest of us, the reality can never be enough.

    ———————

    Previous microfiction of this nature can be found at the following links:

    Disjointed Short Stories – I
    Disjointed Short Stories – II
    Disjointed Short Stories – III
    Disjointed Short Stories – IV
    Disjointed Short Stories – V

    ©Aaysid

    Featured image is from Pexels.

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    Here and Now!

    “Getting through life as unscathed as possible depended to a large extent on two fundamental principles: knowing the right time to arrive and knowing the right time to leave.”
    Elif Shafak, 10 minutes 38 seconds in This Strange World

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    Is It Relatable?

    No place at the table?
    No problem.
    Don’t bring your own chair.
    Build your own table!

    Nobody’s at your table?
    No problem.
    Bring your own people.
    It’s time to turn the tables.

    You are there but there’s no table?
    No problem.
    Congratulations are in order,
    You are your own table!

    You were at the wrong table.
    You ought to be a little unstable to see that.

    ©Aaysid

    “It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”
    J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

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    A Fragmented Saturday Evening

    I crawl on a tiny sip of caffeine;
    awake since last night.
    Me and the lone mosquito inside these four walls.
    A little nap. A short, brisk walk.

    Living on a prayer.
    Neither an owl,
    nor a dragonslayer,
    and not a soothsayer (fingers-crossed).

    I mix it up;
    dried dates with mint-water,
    a lopsided fold in the back muscles
    with perfectly stretched-out palpebral fissures.

    I pause if I get a call,
    but no one calls me.
    (Texts don't count. That's just more reading)
    So, no pause.
    I break myself for nothing,
    and don't even care for applause.

    What's the opposite of envy?

    I hear you are doing great things.
    I am glad that I am not you.
    I can barely keep track of the little that I have got.

    I have read somewhere that pancakes go great with applesauce.

    Why do you engange so eagerly with a rambling mind like mine?
    If we were to switch places, I most definitely would not!

    ©Aaysid

    “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
    Will Rogers

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    All Silhouettes

    The world is losing its wits. We all have our versions of crazy, but hey, why does mine seem more neurotic to you? It’s lunatics judging other lunatics for exhibiting lunacy differently. Time is passing through us, as quickly as anything, and the trivialities of everyday life still manage to suck all our energy, despite the mammoth atrocities unfolding before our very eyes.
    I used to wonder what it was like to be numb, but now my mind is a broken record, trying to hammer in the fact that I already don’t feel half of what is going on around me. It is a disarming reality, but a part of me is fine with it. And it is that anesthetised part I am forced to live with these days.
    My internal thermostat shoots sparks at times, the memory chip makes a creaking sound every time I try to remember something that is supposed to jolt me into wakefulness, and my dust-covered reset button probably doesn’t even work anymore for it has never been used.
    Are all of us programmed to be at the mercy of time, drowning and resurfacing without a choice? Have we all chosen to be at the mercy of each other, drowning and not letting one another resurface?
    There are no asylums for such madness.
    At the end of the day, no one is coming to save you. They haven’t even been able to save themselves.

    ©Aaysid

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    Out

    Never be in the same room twice
    When battling “here and how,”
    “Who and why,” “you and I,”
    While looking, and really not looking,
    At things that are never astir.
    Walk out, stand proud (or not),
    And let those cold sighs out,
    One thawed ahh after another.
    But don’t choke on those yet!
    Save that embarrassment
    For a more self-assured day.

    You are getting there,
    More far-off than near.
    But, hey, who’s counting years?

    Someone always does.

    ©Aaysid

    “You can’t be careful on a skateboard, man.”
    Stephen King, IT

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    Oddly Cryptic? Not Really.

    What stays secluded
    Cannot be adequately concluded,
    And my deluded heart
    Alluded to that far too many times
    Before it broke down
    And bowed down
    Before my disillusioned self.
    ©Aaysid

    “No one gives up on something until it turns on them, whether or not that thing is real or unreal.”
    Thomas Ligotti

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    A Dust Storm in Hot April

    It has got to be the hottest April so far, but tonight has been different in this part of the world. The dust storm arrived with the usual fanfare – reminding the old doors of their rusty hinges as they readily succumbed to the throes of gusty winds and the always unwelcome power outage. What set it apart was the fact that it felt a little too out of place.

    We get used to the constancy of things. The unusually hot April had, by this point, become a new normal. And this dust storm, with its pleasant wind and light rain, has cooled it down quite a bit tonight. People had been talking about turning on the air conditioning this morning, and now, they’d probably be fine even without any power. We adapt; both to the direst of situations and to the seemingly trivial ones.

    Some of us wake up every day expecting the usual highs and lows, and are taken aback when we encounter only the highs or only the lows on some days – only because that’s not how life usually works. The hot April doesn’t last. It can cool down or heat up whenever it wants to.

    I ask myself,
    “Do other events in life unfold like the swift changes in the weather?”
    I would like to believe they don’t.
    But oh yes, they do.

    ©Aaysid

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    Putting Out Fires

    So many of us
    Have saved you from yourself
    From time to time,
    And you have done
    The same for us
    For as long as we have been here.

    If today has gone grey
    In your head,
    Please, don’t fret.
    Not yet.

    Let’s talk it out
    Over an old piece of newspaper
    (A makeshift plate) of fries.

    And if somehow
    It still goes unfixed,
    Then maybe, once again,
    It will be you
    Who ends up saving—
    Only this time,
    Yourself first.

    And if no one has told you already,
    Everything else can wait.
    It always does.

    ©Aaysid

    Where would we be without those who say, “I am here, just a call away”? I just hope they say the same to themselves as well. ✨️

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    Women’s Day 2025

    I am resurrecting this poem for Women’s Day! ✨️
    Prayers for all the women out there who are carrying loads that aren’t theirs to carry!

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    Walden

    I don’t know where I would be without books in my life. 🙃

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    The Image of a Supplicant

    Something that I wrote after finishing Naqsh-e Faryadi by Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

    Nothing ever goes unsaid, so you should say it.
    Let it betray you.
    For once, the outside world and your heart are on the same page, yet you refuse to engage. The shift in the frequency is most certainly noticeable at this point in time, and you are on your way back. Already? 
    Throw out the blue bucket.
    Replace the dried-out flowers in the depths of your eyes with winter heath.
    The road is long, your heart is warm, and in the yellow bucket, the ice has finally thawed.
    This shall suffice. This should suffice.
    ©Aaysid

    “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
    Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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    A Publication

    I am grateful to Spillwords Press for publishing another one of my poems, January’s Disquiet.

    I realised last year that I lack both the discipline and the time to complete even the first draft of my poetry book. It seems more practical to submit some of my well-received poems to literary e-zines instead.

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    A Premature Pause

    The mid-day, self-administered forehead massage
    Falls flat as the cold spreads further inside,
    But the noise grows quieter
    Punctuated by occasional hammer blows.
    No sweat.

    The coffee doesn’t work.
    The sour toffee doesn’t work.

    Get up, dear heart – the sun is not down yet.
    There is still much to be done.
    Don’t spiral before the day is done.

    ©Aaysid

    “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
    Aristotle

    The featured image is from Pixabay

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    A Reflection

    The year is ending. You have two hundred and twenty-four unread emails.
    You have run out of sticky tabs while annotating the book that you have been reading for a year now.
    What is with you and this insane clinginess to seemingly mundane things? How do you manage to hold on to things with such fierce intensity while feeling completely unmoored from life itself?
    There are unburnt scented candles that you did not light because you believed that when the entire world was on fire, you had no right to suffuse beautiful scents into your share of the atmosphere. What will you do with those candles now?
    You realized that your helplessness in the face of life’s events was a blessing in disguise. You kept your head down while your world unraveled around you. When it was done, you greeted it with a smirk. You have gotten a little clever.
    You walked a lot this year. Mostly in your head. And you kept losing your way, but you did not make a fuss. You kept walking, and now you are so far out that you feel at home there.
    What is with you and these introspective rants?
    You think out loud, on paper, umm – on a virtual paper – a digital space, and you feel adequately lived out.
    Maybe this is not much, but perhaps this is exactly what a year was meant to be about.

    ©Aaysid

    The featured image is from Pexels



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    Inconspicuous

    It is futile to look
for subtext,
to search for meaning
between the lines,
to wait for subtle shifts
in the tones of speech,
to see if what isn’t palpable
might exist
in some kind of disguise,
to keep grasping
at straws all the time.

For most of us are out here,
dropping hints about something
so astoundingly alive,
while feeling utterly perished inside.
And I have been told
that this is exactly
how it’s supposed to be.

This can’t be right.

©Aaysid

    “If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”
    Arthur Schopenhauer

    The featured image is from Pixabay.

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    Auditory Masking

    I have realised that my far vision is failing, simply because I have stopped focusing on the distance.
    I no longer see the point of it.
    All faces blur into sameness – too reminiscent of the dirt, the dust, and the ashes they come from.
    Half-smiles. No smiles. Eyes, mere pools of voids.
    Besides, there are far too many blue ribbons tied around low-hanging branches of birch trees.
    But what can I do about my hearing?
    Eloquence is fading.
    Everyone talks over one another.
    Many still laugh and applaud the sexist and racist quips so cleverly slipped into everyday conversations.
    The years have not been able to sift sanity from the generational clamour.
    We meet each other halfway to begin with, only to pretend to listen and feign being heard.
    There is meaning in the sparse moments of quietude.
    The rest is just white noise.
    Why cannot words exist as wisps of silence?
    If the pandemonium is our destiny, can listening not be a choice?

    ©Aaysid

    The featured image is from Pexels.




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    Rootless

    Three short poems about everything and nothing in particular:

    I.
    People are not band-aids.
    A face can be reduced
    To a distant memory;
    The features can fade,
    And fond feelings
    Can morph into apathy.

    It is one thing to be afraid
    Of what is no longer there
    And a whole other thing
    To not even care.

    II.
    I sat with a terrible feeling
    On a misty, dewy morning
    And poured it a cup
    Of chamomile tea.
    I watched as it slipped
    Into a peaceful stupor,
    While I, myself, fell into
    A caffeinated sleep.

    A person enslaved,
    A feeling released.

    III.
    Some things you wait for.
    Some things wait for you.
    Sometimes, knowing that
    Is enough to keep you going.
    Sometimes, you can not go far,
    Just knowing that.

    ©Aaysid

    “I’m not so weird to me.”
    Haruki Murakami

    The featured image is from Pexels.

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    Untethered

    ©Aaysid

    “The tender things are those we fold away.”
    Tennessee Williams

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    Smoke Signals

    We act as if
    we have given up on here.

    The warm, fuzzy glow
    of fluorescent lights
    in teal-tinted glass cafes,
    on a night this quiet,
    despite the low hum
    of black rails
    and the constant whir
    of the outside world,
    with all its brazen anguish,
    makes the heart regain
    a long-lost rhythm
    in this quaint, little haven.

    We speak as if
    none of it is real.

    ©Aaysid

    “I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.”
    Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet


    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Of Honeysuckles and Roses

    Third day of November,
    And it shows.
    You are out
    With love
    Folded into a letter,
    Tucked in the breast pocket
    Of your autumn blazer,
    And still, you believe
    You are not even close.

    There are those
    Who know you chose
    Them over yourself,
    That you have been a thorn
    In your own side,
    Scribbled in a postscript,
    Disappearing into the margins,
    Growing swiftly
    Like honeysuckle on a vine-
    When clearly, you are more
    Of a rose!

    ©Aaysid

    “I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves.”
    L.M. Montgomery


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    To Break into and out of Thoughts

    An idea of a place
    Beyond the horrors
    Of lives snatched away
    By monsters in human skin,
    With insatiable bloodlust
    And inflated egos,
    Sleeping peacefully in beds
    Made of nightmare-catchers.
    For they don’t break into sweat
    While spitting out vileness,
    And no ghosts peek out
    Of their impassive eyes!

    We cannot think ourselves
    Out of situations
    That do not exist
    Only as thoughts to begin with.

    An image of a people
    So moved by the tenderness
    That rises with the ebb
    Of the pulse,
    The unforced rhythm
    Of breath at night;
    That it all breaks when one falls,
    But it gets back up
    To bring the broken
    Back to life.
    No hate, no grudge,
    Not a soul in plight!

    We cannot think ourselves
    Into situations
    That exist only as thoughts
    In the first place.

    ©Aaysid

    “The great and mighty go their way unchecked. All the hope left in the world is in the people of no account.”
    Ursula K. Le Guin

    The featured image is from Pexels.

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    Disjointed Short Stories – V

    I. A Held Breath

    I can hold my breath underwater. Above and around it, too. To someone who has lived in the shadows most of his life, not looking around, not making a sound, exhaling doesn’t feel natural anyway.

    II. Fuzzy

    Spooked-out and screamed-out, we pant our way out of the collapsing stream of consciousness, only to drop into a deeper pit of dissolution. When life gives us lemons, we give them back.

    III. Oregano

    If I could pick one herb to throw atop every dish as it simmers in the pot, it would be oregano. It is the only scent that makes its way into my brain without triggering unsolicited flashbacks. A powerful scent. Almost foreign. No roots. No memory.

    IV. Memorable Us

    I reckon if they remember us, the people we have never met.

    V. Socially Inept

    She’s been experimenting with her social skills again. She squints and nods, watching the person in front of her dissolve into a warm blur. She’ll say hello back.
    Not everyone melts into soft blurs when you look at them through half-closed eyes. She tries not to say hello back to those people.

    ———————

    Previous short stories of this nature can be found at the following links:

    Disjointed Short Stories – I

    Disjointed Short Stories – II

    Disjointed Short Stories – III

    Disjointed Short Stories – IV

    ©Aaysid

    Featured image from Pexels



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    Little Joys (Retouched)

    In honour of World Mental Health day, I revised this poem. I hope it serves as a reminder to take time away from the weird, all-consuming hassles of everyday life and appreciate the little joys around us. 😊🌸


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    Empty!

    We speak in non-tones
    At times when dissonance
    Is at an all-time high.

    Not a word gets heard,
    And the world gets blurred
    Into a fuzzy continuum,
    Where the language lacks fervour
    And the sound, all meaning.

    You, sir, are a shell of a person,
    And I, too, am one!

    ©Aaysid

    “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
    George Orwell, 1984

    Featured image is from Pexels.

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    A Patchworked Heart

    Raised by no woman,
    A monster.

    And if not by a man,
    A slob.

    A shattered individual
    Does a broken job
    Of making a man
    Out of the mess
    Of a person,
    Or a woman
    Out of rot,
    Living it out
    With a patchworked heart.

    ©Aaysid

    “A man doesn’t need to fly to the sun, he need only find a patch of clean earth, and crawl there, and let the sun shine on him.”
    Franz Kafka, Letter to My Father

    Featured image is from Pixabay.

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    Awfully Similar (Retouched)

    https://www.instagram.com/p/C__JdatMjYD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

    After feeling down and weirded out for the past few weeks, I find myself in the throes of writer’s block with a strange aversion to writing and even reading for pleasure. Taking days off to recuperate means coming back to huge piles of unfinished work, which doesn’t help with the healing process. I hope everyone stays safe out there.
    I tried writing a poem today, but it didn’t work, so I decided to edit an old one and share it on my Instagram page. I don’t even feel like writing it again here, so I am just sharing the link to the post. I hope I regain my love for reading and writing. It makes me feel like a whole different person when I am disconnected from it. That’s not cool!

    ©Aaysid

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    September’s here

    Bringing this poem back as a reminder to myself as I come to terms with the realisation that a lot can change in two years. The world can become crueler, more violent, and mercurial. Perhaps, if it weren’t for the change in weather, some of us would find it hard to believe that there are still some constants here (and I hope we do something before climate change takes that away as well). The post-rain, afternoon sky today was breathtaking, signaling the slow end of summer before it morphs into a pre-fall sky by the end of September. I remind myself that it is all about the simple things in life while we grapple with the fact that all of us are lost in one way or another. But perhaps this not-knowing-where-it-is-all-going is one of the few things keeping us from succumbing completely to the darkness. I laugh (internally) in embarrassment when someone calls me a poet, but I don’t know – maybe having seasons and months (apart from your own strange self) as your muse, instead of people (or a person), doesn’t disqualify you from being one. 😁

    To gaze at the lilac sky,
    Just before the sun begins to simmer,
    And to feel the afternoon air growing thinner;

    To stir ginger and honey into the evening,
    And to scoop out hazelnut ice cream for dinner;

    To toss and turn at midnight,
    Trying to evade sleep
    Before I inevitably surrender—
    I am enamored with September.

    ©Aaysid

    Featured image is generated using the Microsoft Designer.

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    A Utopian Summer Camp

    The slow lull of the days,
    The soft hum of the fans,
    The forecast stays misty,
    Humid, and damp.

    A poem on the mind,
    A book in the hand,
    Potato fritters on the stove,
    And in a bowl, fresh limes—

    A utopian summer camp
    In dystopian times!

    ©Aaysid

    “A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
    Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Well-Reasoned

    Three micro poems:

    I.
    A lit-up path,
    In a street unknown.

    Sweet waters,
    Mint gardens,
    A sky-cinnamon.

    Brought up,
    Left out,
    But into it grown.

    All being you,
    And you alone.

    II.
    All gold
    Dazzling, no grime.

    Glitter-tongued,
    Sun-kissed,
    In a dark world —
    A crime!

    Unashamedly you,
    Blue-veined,
    Ruddy-eyed,
    Utterly sublime.

    III.
    A nod, at times,
    Means no.

    A kick to the head,
    And to the heart,
    A blow!

    A fuse goes out,
    But you stay aglow.

    No hail, no storms,
    No snow.

    Not all that take root
    Can grow.

    Not all that’s on a high,
    A fluid-like joy,
    Can flow.

    ©Aaysid

    “One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
    Friedrich Nietzsch    e

    Featured image is from Pexels.

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    Amiably Livid

    A bar of soap.

    Would you still be sipping
    your coffee,
    nonchalantly,
    on the day that the sky
    shall turn the right shade
    of beige?
    Won’t it mean something to you?

    Loose confetti.

    Would you still be listening
    to yourself,
    unabashedly,
    your inner turmoil playing
    in a loop, set to the tune
    of a ticker tape?
    Won’t you sound like a broken record?

    Cherry seeds.

    Would they still be looking
    at you,
    furtively,
    trying to gauge how many
    blows to the heart will it take
    for you to break?
    Won’t you make a run for it?

    A sack of weeds.

    ©Aaysid

    “No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it”
     Fernando Pessoa

    Featured image from Pixabay

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    Shattered

    A severed spirit
    Trapped in a dispirited body,
    Often feminine,
    And troubled because of it 
    In a misguided, violent,
    Patriarchal world
    That takes pride in breaking
    Anything that stays untamed
    Despite its frank displays
    Of unruly, red-blooded,
    Hot-headed, masculine anger,
    Can no longer wait
    For the world to change.

    For she had no choice
    To choose her life;
    At least, she is fighting
    For her right to die
    On her own terms!

    ©Aaysid

    Not a day goes by that I don’t stumble upon an instance of violence against women, and at this point, all I feel is maddening anger. Women are largely hated by this world, sometimes so vehemently that your entire belief in humanity takes a huge setback. While the women lose their lives, their spirits, or their minds, the perpetrators are never subjected to equally horrid fates. I hope we’ll live to see the days when women will be truly secure in this society, and maybe it will only be possible if severe repercussions are enforced for such heinous acts.

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Not Made for July

    Life tends to ask us,
    “Why are you here?”
    At least three times a day
    And eleven times at night!
    But I pretend
    That it must be
    A rhetorical question,
    Therefore, it does not require
    A cultivated reply.

    Life, however, probably knows
    That some of us are meant
    For the tawny days of November,
    But we imprudently stay trapped
    In the hot, dull days of July.

    ©Aaysid

    “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
    Albert Camus

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Dark Adaptation

    If you are going to go,
    then leave already.

    The vision at this point
    in a half-lived life
    is all but gone,
    and the chemicals take time
    to replenish themselves.
    But the night tends to
    grow darker and dire,
    and it is absurd
    to pretend that the only edges
    we can appreciate
    are the ones we haven’t fallen over from.

    Yet, all that’s unlit isn’t dead.

    Take your glasses off.

    Turn the lights back on
    in your head.

    And if you are going to leave,
    then be gone.

    ©Aaysid

    “I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
    Now I may wither into the truth.”
    W.B. Yeats

    Every year, I tell myself that next year, I’ll try to get out more and see a bit of the world. Every year, I do nothing of the sort. A lot many years ago, I was born on this day, and since then, I have been here, I guess. 😁
    I love writing poems for my good friends. But this year, I wrote one for myself.🙂

    Featured image from Pexels

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    Another Existential Quandary

    Who can separate
    A scent from a memory?

    The years, or perhaps,
    The loss of sense
    Of the smell itself,
    But they are not there
    To begin with—

    Neither the scent,
    Nor the memory.

    Then where does a perfumed
    Whiff of a memory
    Come from?

    And what will become of it
    When we are no longer here?

    ©Aaysid

    “Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.”
    Oscar Wilde

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Featured 9

    The Emerald Outrage

    A persimmon soul
    That magnifies itself
    Beneath the vast expanse
    Of a starry sky,
    As it takes in the night
    To dilute the prejudicial
    Events of a life;

    A shot-down attempt
    To make sense in the noise,
    A dollop of praise
    In a jar of acclamation,
    Just a “hmm, okay,”
    When real words were required,
    Looked down upon or else
    Looked at with a side-eye…

    Her place in the world
    In this moment
    Has become an emerald outrage
    Against the midnight sky.

    ©Aaysid

    “I heard it only takes
    one person to be a parade.”
    Rudy Francisco

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Yellow

    Oh, you!

    The lemony cream
    On the soft and crumbly
    Pastry of the pie,
    The especially sunlit
    Afternoon of June,
    A wholesome birdsong
    Of a lonesome canary,
    The flesh
    Of freshly harvested
    Custard apples,
    You…

    You dazzle in yellow!

    ©Aaysid

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Featured 9

    Tongue-tied

    On the days we feel
    Particularly dense,
    We get roped into talking
    About the sane stuff!

    All my friends are sages,
    But they too feel jaded,
    With the mercury in retrograde
    And not believing
    They have run out of luck anyway.

    We tsk-tsk our way
    Out of things that mess
    With our ability to act smart
    At the spur of the moment.
    But some days we do not
    Have the words
    Which everyone wants to hear.

    So, beat us to the punch,
    And please, you be weird for once!

    ©Aaysid

    “Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.”
    William Faulkner

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Unbroken

    I work because I enjoy
    Taking breaks,
    Short, idyllic pauses,
    Frozen in time,
    Like a poet’s obsession
    With an em dash—
    A thought on halt,
    But then continued
    As an afterthought.

    And I can’t stop working
    Because then there’d be
    No breaks.

    For all work and no breaks,
    And all breaks
    And no breaks from those breaks
    Might leave me
    A broken person.

    ©Aaysid

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    The Red Sherbet

    Beguiling, alluring, a little nonplussed,
    Beheld by the one
    Who had turned to dust.


    Ruddy, seraphic, a tinge crushed,
    Like the ice in a goblet
    Of cold red sherbet.


    Iridescent, shiny, a tad suffused,
    She lets go of the memories
    She can no longer trust.


    Musty, balmy, a little out of love,
    Shunned to the side,
    Persevere she must.

    ©Aaysid

    “But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness.”
    Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    Ice cream (Retouched)

    Can ice cream be a metaphor for the human condition? 🍨
    Three micro poems:

    I.
    You melted
    Even before your sundae did,
    You made
    An equally sweet puddle.

    II.
    We embrace the mundane,
    But upon discovering
    A few strawberry chunks
    In the vanilla sorbet,
    We cannot help but burn
    With a little bit of rage.

    III.
    A perfectly frozen
    Ice cream bar
    Cracks from side to side;
    So do you,
    And so do I.

    ©Aaysid

    The featured image is AI generated.

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    The Lovely You

    I have been worrying that I am spacing out more frequently during conversations than before, and I think the one-sidedness of such discourses is largely to blame. I can literally count the number of people I have meaningful interactions with on my fingers now, and it just feels wrong. Many of us can’t stop gushing about ourselves—our achievements, opinions, aspirations, personality traits, and even those of the people we love! Very few bother to ask about the person they are talking to, and if they do, it’s only to ask probing, oddly-interfering, and off-putting questions.

    Even the most humble people lately cannot seem to let go of any opportunity for self-projection. Why are we becoming so self-involved? I think I have figured out part of the problem: we have become too stingy with compliments! Do you remember the last time someone complimented you and it sounded sincere? When people aren’t appreciated enough, they are left with no choice but to toot their own horns! People say, “Your dress is awesome,” but almost never, “You look lovely in that dress,” or they go, “Wow! You really have a lot of free time on your hands,” and almost never, “Wow! Your time management skills are admirable,” just to quote a few examples. Everyone’s busy getting ahead of each other in a meaningless, self-assumed race which seems to be bringing our narcissistic behaviors to the surface. I wonder how long it will be before we completely stop caring? It seems as if we are almost there.

    ©Aaysid

    Featured image is from Pexels.

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    Rightfully Odd

    I bet they diffuse out,
    The chemicals in the head,
    In all their earnest weirdness.

    If only they could be smeared
    Like peanut butter on the bread,
    And served without a dread
    To those who do not believe
    That their conscience could be dead.

    Maybe then they’ll know how enlightening
    It is not being right in the head!

    ©Aaysid

    “She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets.”
    Durian Sukegawa, Sweet Bean Paste

    Featured image was generated using the Microsoft Designer

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    Time Doth Flit

    It has been ten years!😁
    I met so many good people through it, and it gave me a chance to travel the world without ever really going anywhere. Over the years, I also discovered that good people think alike, no matter where they come from. Although I am not as active here as I used to be, this is still the place I return to whenever I get a chance to relax and read. I hope everyone here continues writing and remains the wonderful human beings they are.✨

    Aaysid

    7

    Airbrushed?

    You do look sublime,
    with a face as smooth as porcelain.
    But I miss the fine lines
    that would wrinkle up more
    when you’d genuinely smile,
    with sweet little pits
    appearing out of nowhere
    in the baby fat of your cheeks.

    And you do look divine,
    with a head full of hair,
    thick and straight,
    with blonde highlights.
    But I miss the silver
    that would peek out
    from your dark, wavy hair.

    But what choice do we have?
    We have been here such a long time,
    and it is beginning to show.
    When did it become
    such a wrong thing, though,
    that we feel as if
    we must go to great lengths
    to hide it?

    ©Aaysid

    “Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work, but important.”
    Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants.

    2

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