026 – element

do you ever see fire burning
in the rings left behind by
coffee mugs?

or the tenacity of water
and the gorge in its wake?

025 – alone

the clouds and i | play hide and seek | and the sun looks on.

024 – sweeping

when you slept, wrapped in blankets,

i stood at gateways,
holding your cobwebs,

sweeping your dreams away
from their corners.

023 – dream of me

red sheets and green walls
and candy apples splayed on door knobs…

…and my white canvas, splattered,
with purple dots.

022 – circles

no more, the drops of blood
or wrenching of hearts –

– my life has brought me
nests to build.

Begging your pardon…

Hi folks,

The title of this post is clue enough to the content. I’m taking a step back from 100 Days this year. Life, around me, has become quite extenuating, and at the moment, it shows no signs of relenting. All the cocooning that I’ve talked about in my poems needs to happen to me right now, because sometimes you just have to take care of yourself and of the immediate.

I’ve struggled with making this decision because I love working with this group and I love being “around” the outpouring of creativity and the quality of work at 100 Days. But this year, I won’t be able to cross the finish line.

Good luck to all of you and keep producing the amazing craft that you do. I’ll try my best to keep up with all the poems and stories and paintings and photographs and sketches, and I’ll pop in to leave comments when I can. Hopefully, if 100 Days is back next year, then I will be too.

Love,

Neha.

021 – circles

how many days have we lived
speaking of stories already spoken

unable, still, to break away

because words are all
we have to ourselves.

020 – tempest

between claps of thunder | only silence | remains.

019 – wood cuts

i saw your words etched and carved
and i saw your lines
drawn into stone –

and i saw years
of silence left
in the stones ground
to dust.

017 – from moments

it’s the black ink, i see,
of yesterday’s skies,

threatening to bleed
into the blue of tomorrow.

for today | a quiet white | will do.