Kaneez Zahera
Poet · Madhya Pradesh · India
Seventeen dews, crimson dusks and frosts.
A writing journey
I was always fond of reading poetries, shayaris and all but it was in my 10th standard when I actually started writing, I've always had the hunger to write. It was my teacher who indirectly inspired me to write. She never knew she was teaching me how to listen to language. She noticed when a sentence carried weight and I wanted her quiet nod of approval. She never told me to become a poet. She never knew she was sharpening my hunger. She taught me that language could be earned. That it could be shaped.
And I write because these twenty-six alphabets tremble in my hands, waiting to spill the ache I once felt. I write because I hunger for words I have never read. And because in writing, I taste what silence cannot offer. I write to let anyone who reads these lines feel exactly what once consumed me..!!
Published writing
Home; Memory— His were both.
When I first met him,
his eyes were the dulcet shade of night—
dark brown, yet ablaze
like embers that refused to die.
I used to think the sun set there,
dolorously,
so the world could rest in.
They were made of
the hush before rain,
a place my soul could rest in.
They looked at me
like I was something worth knowing,
and I—
I believed them, of course.
But now,
those same eyes, once tender,
feel like locked doors—
still beautiful, but unreachable,
like twilight fading beyond the horizon.
In my instant of time,
brown had already fallen to a reverie,
at rest in my eyes.
But in the turn of his gaze,
it was all brown
within my heart
that heretofore lies.
They are no longer
the colour of comfort,
but of remembrance.
I see them
in burnt letters,
in coffee gone cold,
in every twilight
that craves the moon.
His eyes were once
the brown of beginning,
and now they are the place
I can never return to,
evermore.
And yet, even now,
I can't unsee
the way they once looked at me—
as if the whole universe had paused
just to let us begin,
forevermore.
Seasons? Gravé!
The summer has passed, rain has too.
The autumn awaits, and winter's due.
The leaves may fall, the heavens too.
The warmth I lost, the heart I knew.
The serein may unmoored, in twilight's persue.
The seasons ebbs with gales, yet all gravé is you.
Asellan
Ever I write, keep penning the world into poems— tracing beauty in rest but myself, anew whole.
Yet all I've ever wanted was for him to see me as if I'm the poetry carved lone before in his soul.
Roses Incomplete!
My courtyard overflows with endless roses in waning aureole.
Devastatingly proximal— if only he would let you bloom among them.
Every ashen-cold sinking dusk, I would come only to steal your glance.
And in the rising nightfall— I'd vouchsafe my hue to drown within yours.
Sonnet Incomplete!
Shall I lament the remnants of our spring's day?
Thou saidst the bloom was but a dream's temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too cold the rose for heaven's shine,
And often in his silver complexion dimm'd;
And every vow from vow in silence declines,
By chances cruel decree its pulse is dimm'd.
Thou saw the April sun as warmth of nothing,
Yet in thy December night I held everything.
Two blues pretending not to know eachother.
Upon the strand of vesper's dying breath,
The sea and welkin wore one shade of blue;
Yet strange it seem'd they turn'd their eyes away,
Yet naught betray'd what 'twixt the twain e'er drew.
The welkin stoop'd as though 'twould woo the tide,
The tide swell'd high as though to clasp the sky;
Yet still th' horizon, tyrant waxen proud,
Did cleave the twain where all their ardours lie.
And oft methought the sea did chide the shore,
Did teach the winds for bearing what it can't keep;
Whilst heav'n above, all dolorous 'tis heretofore,
Did answer naught, but veil his countenance to weep.
Thus stood the twain beneath one vast decree-
Too like for parting, too far join'd to be.