Time is of lines
And lines are meant to be straight

Because when things are straight
Things are certain

And when things are certain it is good
Boring, but good

Shamans have dreamtime
The Brits, teatime
Nashville has halftime

Till when must I run on borrowed time? 
Like one, charitable glass of wine

Something about Sundays as a whole
Everything glows as though dipped and flamed in wood polish or honey
And my face regains its dreamy nature

Stars in my eyes
Pigeons cooing in my ears

Reading sunny and neck burning in parks
Everything peach flavoured

On the winds raspberry vapor
Time runs in lines and loops

Sunlight, Sunday and wishes by the dozen fluttering on my lashes
I wonder how many dreams it takes to run this city

Do I claim it as mine, eating clementine?
dancing by the river to Cuban jazz

sipping ginger beer at The Gypsy Queen, 
pubs queer

London, love-lorn,
lying in your marshes with shirts off 
Long live our time under the sun

24 to Hampstead
In 3 mins, gotta run

Nine hours 
 Night in 
Night out

Teeth cleaned twice, 
colgate max white 

Mint tea and lymphatic drainage massages in the foggy mirror 
Thousand ten step counts, cardio after weights 
(like im discount tate mcrae)

Protein shake with lunch, 
collagen powder stirred into evening tea

Emails emails 
 reels
 emails 
 
reading under park lights till its dark

Paint, pray, poeticise 
 be a little pathetic, wear jeans high rise 

All this, just so I never think of you 

Sorry, no space 
in the breaks between my tiktok approved wellness days

Well, fuck
Here you are at 7:47 am

Waking me up to visions of what could've been

Visions of gideon
Visions get me giddy then  

Fuck you 
I do far too much for you to pop up in my dreams 

The nerve to show yourself 
when you hadn’t the spine to make this a reality 

Screw you ( my subconscious) and your chiselled face 

Hey siri, 
turn the damn dream filter off 

People can betray you 
                 people can change 
         people are clouds being moved by winds unseen,
 motives unheard of

People are malleable
Brick and mortar isn't

I want a home 
I long and pine for it

I’ll feed the walls my love and the soil my prayers 
my soul will thrumm and vibrate through the crystal
my shadow falls over a sleeping dog  

Mine. 
       My woods
             My house
                  My dogs
                        My lake

Because in life up until now, 
Everything from lovers to lofts has been someone else’s toy lent to me

Someone's son loved me for a bit
I stayed at someone's place
Studied somewhere cold

I want my own somewhere
I want to turn somewhere into here with my love

I will raise tomatoes and grow lemon balm, thyme & cilantro

Plant shrubs and build bug hotels 
leave bushes wild so foxes can hide in them
Buy handblown glassware, dry flowers in the kitchen 
and hang up my own art

The poet is a little god and I, the little prince

I want my volcanoes and my baobabs
  a rose that gets sad when I leave

I WANT SOMETHING TO WANT ME
 AND WAIT FOR ME TO COME BACK WITH OPEN ARMS

Something that isn't God or my mom 

Some things soft
You want to gently guide over
They must be stabbed.

And some things hard,
You want to pierce the flesh of
must be lovingly rolled

like a truculent olive
onto a slim silver fork

The lawns are green again

We summoned shorts
and then the cycle ride
And now this dip.

Can’t seem to summon
a lover to stay, though

It’s like a revolving door
at Kensington Palace

Except it’s not Kensington
or the Serpentine Lido

It’s this wretched
heart-mind of mine

Olive shorts.
White linen shirt
Pimentos in my teeth
As I lean in to kiss you

We’ll sit on the sidewalk
with our legs crossed

Pretend we’ve been lovers
for as long as the day’s done

Pretend I know
How to spell your name

You taste like a jam doughnut, dear.

You smell like Lucky Strikes
dunked in Dior.

We’re now in the reeds
having taken off the lids,

groping in dark nosebleeds
because you like the matinee

Was this worth the Lime ride?

Was it worth the salt rim?

Was it worth spending £60
On shorts and a shirt,
 when these days last barely a month?

Sticky fingers

Licked lips

Sneakers hitting shin-graze

Bluebirds, Jameson and Fireballs

Always sad
by the sixth of each month

Men.

What an interesting subspecies of humankind.

Before I go any further, I feel like I should let you know I’m one of them, and although I won’t apologise for being one, I will recognise the aeons worth of utter bullsh*t we have caused.

Right, so where were we?

Ah, men.

In the tumultuous years of 2020-22, as a high school senior studying sociology, I first analysed and critically engaged with masculinity as an academic concept.

Horizons? Widened.

Songs? ruined.

The subcontinental film industry had me mouthing some really filthy, objectifying lyrics, jeez. My exploration of masculinity focused on “the effects of multimedia on the concept of masculinity.” In short, a first draft of the Manosphere documentary and a warning against tweens consuming Andrew Tate’s content. But the world rarely ever gives a 17-year-old his flowers. I’m not saying I did it first, but I will go so far as to position myself among the early whistleblowers.

Now that I’m older, less hormonal and somewhat wiser, it only feels right to revisit this in a Substack essay as a man myself, albeit one with rings and 4+ tote bags.

This is a preview of a long culture essay that may turn into a longer-form series. I don’t think I can say all I want to say about masculinity as a lived experience AND as an academic concept in ONE essay.

What I will say here, is this.

Boys and girls, we all start well.

Up until the age of 9, my closest friends were a very healthy mix of girls and boys.

Two sisters, and then a brother-sister combo and me. And until I turned 9, we never really saw the girls as different from us.

If we played house, the boys also played, and ever the metrosexual, I gallantly offered to stay home and make mud-based food as the girls foraged for non-existent berries in my backyard. If the boys were racing to see who’s fastest, the girls would compete too.

I’m not denying the existence of gender roles, of course, the toys I got and the ones the girls on their birthdays were obviously oceans apart, coded pink and blue. What I’m saying is that we, as participants, were not aware of this indoctrination. Their Barbies often hung out with my Iron Man action figure in her Malibu house.

Apart from the playroom, another place I first observed gender performances was my parents’. My mother remains and has always been an exceptionally strong woman. Sometimes, stronger than my dad both emotionally and physically. She has balanced work, a marriage, me, stunning gardens, an active interest in meditation, horse riding, and shooting.

My dad was always the planner of the two. If she was the doer, he was the strategist. And in times of crisis, you could rely on him to be the calm, somewhat cold, but efficiently analytical and reliable one. He was and remains handsome, strong and kind. He used to paint and write poems like me, and loved to play badminton after work. I also have this memory of being 4 and plonking myself on the bouncy ball while he was at the gym, and then at 17 when we started going to the gym together again.

( He outlasted me, y’all. I gave up in exactly one week)

Around this same time, I also began to piece together that, though riddled with flaws as any human was, my dad wasn’t like other dads and husbands.

Mom didn’t have to “ask” to speak at dinners we hosted or for an allowance. He never ‘told’ her what to do, where to go, how much to spend; all signs of something we now rightly call, the bare minimum.

They butted heads with equal ferocity, arguing frequently (lol) as equals and colleagues, never as man against woman or vice versa.

I’m aware that up until now, it sounds like I’m saying,

“ I won the genetic lottery, and my parents are absolute baddies”

They are, but

I am, or at least I was, deeply critical of my dad as a husband and a father.

Just ask my friends, lol, they’ll tell you how I’ve mourned the woman my mother could have been had my father been more this and a little less that, but I’m not here to air my family’s dirty laundry.

The essence of that narrative is that I grew up with a marital dynamic at home, which, though not perfect, was a lot more egalitarian and equal than most. That shaped me, and my rather rosy-tinted outlook on things.

That obviously, as I was saying earlier, wasn’t true for all my friends and the people we visited. I always wondered why some uncles were the way they were. After all, it doesn’t cost anything to be respectful and nice to the person you chose to spend your life with… right?

But boy was I wrong….

Now, a few disclaimers!

This essay is very obviously in its early stages. I have to revisit the works of Raewyn Connell, make some notes and grapple with the fact that no matter how objective I’ll try to be, as a man writing about men, there will be some subconscious bias at play which I’ll have to constantly challenge because after all, what man will readily accept that he’s absolute shit? Maybe the incels

I’m going to try my best to be clinical about this, but this will be as much about my lived experiences with masculinity as an abstraction as it will be sociological. While I don’t have all my chapters fleshed out yet, I can promise you won’t find one titled

“ Not all men ( no, really)”

Lots of love and learning,

P

Blood is a funny thing
Secret red rivers running deep in me

I had blood on my thumb
from clutching tightly the cross I bought in montparnasse 

𓆩♱𓆪
I like the ministry of jesus, I like what he stood for 
I fear they’d crucify me too 
if they had their way 
even though im no messiah 𓆩♱𓆪
                                                 
I had blood on my thumb, as I was saying
And I anointed your idol with it 

Hoping that’d be the thing to appease you,
Hoping that it’d be the catalyst to jump start my life again

A rosary isnt too different from jumper cables if you really think about it 

Which god do I go to
For whom must I fall on my knees to set this right 

I know the answer is within, I know the answer is me
I dont wanna accept that burden 


After all, it’s so much easier to blame the man on the cross 
or our lady in the sky 

Subscribe now

Before a concert in the London summer, the artist performing that evening has invited a handful of fans to an exclusive pottery workshop. No backstage passes, no champagne receptions, no VIP bottle services to buy; instead, guests spent an afternoon throwing ceramic plates, painting them by hand and leaving them to get glazed.

Looking around the studio as I leave, I noticed that beginner classes start at around £50 while curated experiences cost considerably more. It seems curious that in the age of algorithmic machine-made perfection, people are more than ready to spend a pretty penny to produce objects visibly less perfect than the bowls lining the shelves at John Lewis or Oliver Bonas.

Perhaps that is precisely the point

Luxury is arguably only truly validated by scarcity. For centuries, wealth was signalled by owning objects that required extraordinary skill, time or resources to obtain. Purple dyes, fine porcelain, precision watches and polished silverware were desirable because very few people possessed either the capital to procure them or the craftsmanship to produce them.

The industrial revolution transformed these equations, with factories making precision fast and abundant, as flawless manufacturing became a mark of progress rather than privilege. Today, the AI boom is redefining what luxury is by changing the parameters of scarcity.

Artificial intelligence generates polished illustrations, logos and photographs in seconds. Computer-controlled manufacturing and 3D printing produce near-perfect ceramics, furniture and textiles with astonishing speed. Techniques once tied to particular regions and communities can increasingly be reproduced almost anywhere. The cost of technical perfection continues to fall.

As the villain Syndrome observes in The Incredibles, “When everyone’s super, no one will be.” The same logic increasingly applies to luxury. As flawless products become commonplace, filtering down to your local TJMaxx and Primark, they cease to distinguish their owners. Markets rarely reward abundance for long.

Instead, consumers are beginning to value something technology struggles to manufacture convincingly: the visible trace of another person’s time.

This shift is visible well beyond pottery studios. On a recent Hampstead Heath date, I learned that hand-stitched clothing has quietly become a luxury in its own right. The appeal was not simply craftsmanship, but the guarantee that a slight variation in the stitching meant no two garments could ever be identical. In a market saturated with standardised fashion, uniqueness itself had become the product.

The ceramic plate from that afternoon would never compete with factory-made tableware on technical grounds. Its edges were uneven. The glaze pooled unpredictably. A faint thumbprint remained beneath the paint. Yet those apparent flaws were exactly what made it worth keeping. It was not perfect. It was unmistakably mine.

This same logic appears elsewhere. Artisan bakeries proudly display loaves with uneven crusts that testify to hours of fermentation rather than industrial consistency. Film photography, visible mending, handwoven textiles and lino-printed cards all celebrate qualities that factories once sought to eliminate.

The value thus now lies not in imperfection itself, but in what those traces reveal. A fingerprint pressed into drying clay, the subtle variation of a hand-stitched seam or an irregular glaze no longer signals inferior craftsmanship. It signals something increasingly scarce: that another human being was here.

Consumers are buying the story of production as much as the product itself.

That story carries economic value because it represents something genuinely scarce: time, attention and human craft. Brands increasingly celebrate individual craftspeople, workshops and creative processes. The visible trace of a maker’s hand is worth its weight in gold.

It is no coincidence that some of the world’s largest technology companies are investing not only in artificial intelligence but also in businesses whose appeal rests on creative distinctiveness and cultural credibility. As technology makes polished production easier than ever, ownership of what still feels unmistakably human becomes more valuable.

The future of luxury may therefore be less about flawless products than about convincing proof of origin. Consumers may increasingly pay for objects, experiences and brands that can demonstrate not simply where something was made, but whose hands, imagination and time shaped it.

In an economy saturated with machine-generated perfection, authenticity itself may become the scarcest commodity of all.

Summer is a house with yellow and white walls

A hot afternoon when all the curtains are drawn

When white hot sun glows behind flapping gauze curtains; everything has a glow

Summer is best experienced with your eyes closed and turned up at heaven ࣪ ִֶָ☾.࣪࿐

🥭

Summer is mangos in buckets of ice

Palm leaf fans and block print linen worn loose dyed indigo

☀️🌞☀️

Summer is citrus

Summer is lemongrass,

no, citronella

Summer is stuffed green olives and spirulina extract in my juice 🍸

࣪ ִֶָ☾.࣪࿐

summer is what makes her eyes sea glass green

And mine, pools of amber & honey

🍯

Summer is sweltering,

love creasing cotton and somewhat suffocating

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Summer is the shimmer of a melting sun at 5:45 when I glow like a rock salt lamp

Summer is waking up to pale baby blue skies with cotton candy pink clouds stretched across it

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Summer is going to sleep with no shirt on,

Dancing in our underwear feet bare with cocktails sloshing

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Summer is cucumber based skincare, bright brick walls and 5” inseam short shorts

⋆˚꩜｡

Summer is you

Summer is me

⋆˚꩜｡

Summer is what sets the animal inside our ribs free

☀️🍸🥭🌞🐋⛱️🩲🌞☀️

It’s a been a while since ive written on here, in any capacity.

I haven’t given up the writerly life, not to worry I’ve just…. been in the backrooms, emotionally speaking

I am also, typing this out on my phone while i lounge around on my bed at a jaunty angle in my jeans listening to slow jazz, so please excuse any and all melodrama.

( Lorde mention)

As I was saying, it’s been a weird couple of weeks recently.

I’ve been in a reluctant yet tireless pursuit of a summer job. I’m not particularly enthused by the prospect of being employed, but I chase it anyway, and perhaps that’s why I haven’t landed anything yet because deep down I’m not sure I want it in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I like paycheques as much as the next penny wise college student, but to me summers have always been the time to lament, languish, lie down and dramatically stare at the sky.

not necessarily the most employable months but then I make that argument during winter as well so don’t take my word for it.

It’s a bit odd, really. I like having a purpose to my day I do, but I don’t know if that purpose is… being an intern

I was speaking to a friend recently, ( we shall call her miss Wall Street) about not having things to do during the summer and though we’re very alike in our minds on most things, she truly was positively itching at not having anything to do meanwhile I could detect a tone of suppressed glee in my own voice at being oh so free.

Again, I am bummed out at not getting a summer internship but then again

…. Am I really?

It’s weird that I feel so shameful and guilty having an unemployed summer all to myself but anyway, enough about that.

My friend and I made a painting recently, which was quite a joy. Summer is the season to be an artist. Atleast for me it is.

Every summer at home I’d drape our sunroom in old sheets and tarpaulins, set up my dad’s old easel and declare it my “studio”. Functional only between the months of May through September.

It’s my first full summer away from home, and you’d think at 21 having lived alone and away from home for half a decade I would be fine with this, but maybe somewhere secretly I’m….not.

Summer was always such a delicate special time for me. London Summer has been lovely too, don’t get me wrong.

I’ve been dangling off tree branches in the heath while reading books and chomping down juicy strawberries, but in doing so, I miss having a home to saunter back to, sunkissed and a little tanned.

I always miss the material comforta of a proper home. The cutlery, the curtains the thousands of cushions and trays, many rooms all to call my own.

Perhaps it’s also the absence of peers that makes summer at home truly so enjoyable.

Peers, not friends. I like my friends a lot. I do however wish I could whisk them away to a large summer house somewhere in the countryside, preferably by a river.

Matchbox dorm living does indeed a monster of my mental health make

I keep a wonderful room though, given all my constraints. Egyptian linen duvet covers, a console table by the door to prop my canvases and lamps again, a pretty glass bowl in which I carelessly drop my keys and all my coins

But, it’s never going to be home, is it?

Maybe a townhouse in Chelsea or a mansion in Surrey Hills would feel more home, although I fear no amount of rooms and pools ( yes, pools plural) would make me feel at home.

A hug and my mom’s shoulder to whine and rest on though, now that would and has, made even a doctor’s waiting room feel cosy.

Yeah, boohoo, the big climax of this whole spiel is that I miss my mom.

I miss her walking in and commenting on my paintings, straightening my shirt collar and drawing little smileys with her fingers on my canvas.

She’s not dead or anything, by the way. I’ll see her in September for my graduation ceremony.

Oh yeah, that happened too. I’m done with undergrad. Wild.

I’ll be starting a postgraduate program this fall, and I already feel so old.

It’s been a bit of a struggle to find a purpose for the languid summer days, but surely a beautiful one.

I’ve become a professional picnic-er, if that’s a word. I’ve learnt 2 new songs on the piano.

Today evening I actually dared to play tunes on the big grand piano we have in our dorm conservatory. Not the small ones in the practice rooms, no this was the big one that echoes through the building.

It was a big deal for me okay? Im still vaguely haunted by my awkward adolescent self who wasn’t the most confident person in the room, although now he has no trouble wearing teeny tiny denim cutoffs and form fitting wranglers that highlight the booty.

Small, non linear wins I guess.

Atleast the Knicks are in the finals, Godspeed to them.

Anyways, I’ll be here when the leaves turn orange, re-reading my favourite books and eating cherries grown by Artemios in Greece.

( Yes, I took that as a sign from the Goddess herself)

I wish had a slightly more eloquent ending paragraph, but I don’t. Instead I’ll end this by telling you about the fun things I saw throughout my day:

• A girl dressed like Carrie Bradshaw, denim capris, red rouched blouse, chunky black kitten heels and all

• A couple hitting the Titanic T-pose but on a Lime scooter

• A lady wearning leopard leggings and multicoloured shoes

oh wait, HAPPY PRIDE MONTH <3 🏳️‍🌈

Alrighty, ciao

Your favourite overthinking lawyer-poet

Its been over an year tonight has already, too many ghosts

and that wound is still so gaping and fresh and bloody

the star shaped stitches ive sown around it shiver with every breath and sob

and theres dried blood on all my shirts because god as my witness your ghost hasnt left my system and i fear it because it may never leave and it wont

because you loved a sad suicidal boy into the summer of his life and then left on solstice night.

No, Were made to. Snatched away.

Evil, evil step mother

fairy tale no more; no fair

🪽

So its summer

So its suicide

So I’m on my bedroom floor sobbing

So siken says

🪽

and its stays because you were crush

All pages cover and back

And I’ll never love again or atleast not for the forseeable future because like a bullet to the brain

you lodged yourself and your stupid, perfect love your caring ways close to my heart and soul

I hate you for how well you loved me you directly held the hurt little boy that no one ever sees and now you’re gone

and im building cardboard castles in silence again

Maybe this time I’ll stand inside as struck matches hit the floor

My tears ricochet to fill the moat

blood and tears,

over and out

Forever yours, my dear

What came first? The boy or the garden?

We’ve always had a garden, from as early on as I can remember. There was a garden, and there was a boy. Me.

It’s almost as though the garden has been a sibling to me. In the metaphorical sense, that is, because we have switched roles often and made many buildings into homes. We’ve also always made a garden, in some shape or form, be it terraced or zen.

It’s only over the last summer that I really began to be a part of the garden. Sadness led me to seek shelter in foliage; and in a little feral cat I named Rune. It was a very charming trio: a boy, his cat, and his garden (I can say his now, I contributed, okay).

I like to sit or lie among the shrubs, watch the clouds roll by. Sometimes I sing to the plants, probably off-key, but they don’t mind.

As I leave home yet again, I take one last slow walk through our current garden. A two-tiered, wild Himalayan thing. Overlooking vast valleys, with a golden yew tree as its focal point.

I have so many friends in the garden. The lone frog in the pond. The weaver birds making nests in the honeysuckle bush. The rock roses. The sunsets. The light of passing cars reflecting on the glossy yew leaves.

Spring has just arrived in the garden. Buds and blooms aplenty. The cat has gone, sadly. And now, so must the boy.

I don’t want to leave.

I want to watch the skies cycle their blues, and the hills go from brown to blue to black as night falls, and then to copper under the morning sun.

The Old Testament is onto something. Maybe living in a garden is indeed a godly existence.

But there is no Eve in this garden, only Adam. No Steve either, for that matter.

The apple tree is yet to bear fruit.

I do not want to leave.

But I must.

If I leave, I leave with the dream of returning hanging in my eyes. Perhaps I will return to a different house, and a different garden.

So I ate a rose off the bush with my teeth. Crushed some honeysuckle against my neck.

Sat in silence and stared at the few stars visible to my naked eye.

Then I left.

But I will be back, and there will always be a boy, there will always be a garden.

Taste of angels

Headspin, steel wool eyes red like cooling embers

slightly heavy slightly sinking

All my memories hang right under my eyes

white irises storming my horizons

Cosmic churning

beirut burning

hearts running to dust

barely breathing always heaving

count to five and name what you can touch

Carpet burns

fingers taking lighter turns

Volcanic ash on my pillowcase

Tremors across cancer and capricorn

Darkened rooms candle fume

Dance in my boxers against windowpanes

Charli blaring leather creasing forever editing never pleasing

There’s just something about bookstores, isn’t it?

I have a particular favourite and going there always feels like coming home.

London particularly has a plethora of bookstores, there’s about 5 of them in a one mile radius of me and that makes me feel so rich. But not all bookstores are comforting.

Some are rather polished and posh, with neat picture perfect displays and they almost always smell like a fancy hotel lobby. I love ALL bookstores, but these ones make you rethink your outfit a little bit—and what book you’ll approach the till with.

But anyway, back to my favourite bookstore. I’ve been going to it for four years now, and twice ive gone there on a date as well.

For starters, it’s underground. There’s always a slightly stale and bookish smell in the air, and you can never quite tell the time of day once you’re down there.

Its also, extremely quiet. But not in an unnerving way. The lights are still a very warm yellow, untouched by the cold clinical shades of LED strips. If you put your ears to it you can hear the electricity hum.

This bookshop is also, run down in the way a favourite scarf or your dad’s spot on the couch is. Love-worn, as I like to call it.

Some shelves are slanted, others held up with fistfuls of nails and blu-tack

The people who work there leave post-it reviews of the books in every section, and every bare brick wall is covered in either art, poetry, photography or postcards.

In the center of this subterranean haven sits an old piano that probably doesn’t sing anymore. Stacked on top of it are postcards and vinyls. You can grab 5 postcards for £2. Steal!

The bookstore is also every so slightly labyrinthine. The shelves are all sharply angular, creating nooks, crannies and little alcoves where 3 out of the 4 walls around you are books. Scattered between these shelves are various chairs and ottomans where you can sit, read or have an existential crisis. You do you.

I also love how quiet the people working and browsing are. No one watching you on every step, no one loudly exclaiming at seeing the “latest booktok sensation” (gross)

Its almost always quiet, warm yellow and inviting. The books are old and crumbly, while some of them are fresh stiff reprints.

They’ve got everything. No really. From erotica to witchcraft to french law reports. If you know where to look, you can strike gold.

There’s something so intimate about taking a potential lover there, too.

The intimacy of following each other through the shelves in sacred silence, losing ourselves temporarily in different spines and corners, only to saunter back into the fiction section and find someone waiting to kiss you secret between the shelves where the security cameras can’t see.

What books you both pick. Who stops for which author. The way you watch me as I kneel down to pluck out poetry anthologies and click photos of its pages.

Catching your eyes in the little gap between a shelf ceiling and the books.

If i had to give that place a color ? Warm autumn sunlight. A smell? Slightly stale sweater with some forgotten perfume on it.

Oh also, on your way out you can pick up free books that the staff leaves on the wall near their window display.

FREE. BOOKS.

They’re usually slightly worn but still, free. books.

I scored a hard bound copy of “Midnight’s Children” the other day.

I have no pretty couplet to end this with, except for the fact that it’s one of my favourite places to be,

Lingering somewhere between love and yellow pages, reading poetry off bare brick walls and thinking about nothing

<3

I wear my god silver, 
chained, round my neck 
to the club

I wear him out silver shining, 
till the sun comes up 

Dont you? 
Do you really think he can’t see through certain walls?
Do you really think he can't see 
what you got going on? 

I believe in him so much  
Dont you? 
He's coming everywhere with me

To the bar, very far 
 Burger king at 2am 
 back of a hot strangers' car 

After all, he made this world 
Made this life 
Made my mind 
gave me these eyes & thighs 

Tell me baby, 
why would he ever recoil ?
at me having fun
at me,  tasting all wines? 

What matters is which ones I go back to drink again
What matters is he's there when I'm on the brink again
chain clanging against the white marble sink again 
hold him tight in my psalm 
 I'm gonna think again 

I take my god against my chest 
I take my god through these brown eyes,
 looking up at the moon 
Take him as prescribed, 
morning, night and noon 

what about you?
Do you hide from him? 
do you ride and do you die 
all for him?  

Or do you simply not believe in god? 
you think you got it?  think you know it all ? 
like a fever say my prayer 
ever dusk when I despair 

Think you got it ? 
I think we have it all, 
Every morning lift my veil 
and let it fall 

I wear my god silver, 
chained round my neck 
to the club

I wear my god, shining, 
let him know
 that i'm living it up  

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I like it when life feels quiet 
I like it when life feels blue 

When it becomes a distant current I can observe
flashing, pulsating, surging ahead
like the milky way through the sky on a clear night

I like it when I'm out of the flow
 when I can put my fingers to it lightly and feel the buzz 
like touching the glass screen of an old tv 
electricity licking your fingertips 

A rainwashed road at 2 a.m. painted with splashes of traffic lights
The house when you wake up from a nap after sunset,
and night has arrived with all that is silent and humming 

Dusk. The glorious bluish greys of dusk.
When life looks like a painting from picasso's blue period
When I'm a blackened silhouette against the window: no lights on 

I like life more at night
I feel like every city has a twin sister who emerges after sundown
The night town and the day city are two different cities. 
Similar, but separate. 
You must take a sip of both wines 
Every city looks prettier at night, don't bother trying to change my mind

Always nighttime in the high heavens 
Always blue around 5:32 

Always staring 
cosmos churning 
pressing my nose to windowpanes 

Always writing, 
always drafting 
my verses are very often about you

I’m not man enough to be a man just yet,
And by that I don’t mean my shoulders aren’t rounded enough
or that I don't drive monster trucks
I would be man enough in a ball gown,
If were I a man 

I’m  just  not  man enough  to  be  called  one  yet

Not quite a man,
not quite a boy
hands of both resting light fingertips on my bones

I’m not "boy" enough either
Just outgrown my pirate dreams and my glow in the dark dinosaurs
I'm a boy in all his boyish glory only to my mother
perhaps to a lover
even though it sounds strange when you say that aloud

A real in between, this liminal space of self
this quiet corner between two breaths where the lungs hover
soft, strange, serene.

Borrowed life. Borrowed you blue.

My mother’s anger in my book spines
My father’s fears in my chest pocket

This is my dad’s suit, actually, that’s why it hangs kinda loose 
Yeah this is my mother’s armani armour, that’s why it doesn’t fit like a glove
This isn't really my sword to wield, but I'll bear its weight if I wait long enough 

Not quite a boy, nor a man

A third thing,

Really, just an only child

An only child is a lonely child

A lonely child, is only potentially lovely

Too many
Too many dreams
Too many lives for one body

Too much planned for someone who isn’t yet a man
˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　 . ✦　　˚　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔

There are fifteen selves in my ribs

Twenty lives, and sixteen summers’ worth of dreams
Much ado about something, I am just one boy
twenty-one

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

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Home.

Powerful little four letter word.

As someone who’s shifted houses since he was 40 days old, I know for a fact now that,

Home is not a place but a feeling.

Home is wherever the three of us are together, no matter the color of the walls or number of rooms.

We’ve called so many different buildings home.

The house with the ugly purple bathtub. The 3rd floor loft where we had peacocks nesting next to the water tanks on the roof.

The cottage with yellow walls and green iron fences, where our neighbors had a little black labrador called Jude who loved to sneak in through the gaps and nip at my moms ankles.

Throughout houses big and small, what made it home was us. Mom, dad and me. Our sacred little triangle.

But now that I’ve moved out. Home has become a state of mind and being I occasionally inhabit.

I am somewhat at home in London too, especially in and around Russell Square.

I never felt at home in Singapore, despite having my own tv and my own shower.

Home is a videocall, for most of term time.

Home is still, whenever and wherever the 3 of us are together.

Home is the emergency seat on an air india flight that I always try and book for extra legroom.

Home is the yellow of smoggy delhi streetlights,

The twinkling stars of Simla city at night.

Every journey eastward will always kinda be home.

Something about coming home rips you open and has you all soft again.

Makes you think- I was meant to be held, actually

I was meant to put my head in my mom’s lap & be scared about being 21 and having the world at my feet.

I'm not half the man I am in London when I’m at home.

But that’s okay.

Home is where you can forever be kinda fifteen.

Home is the absence of social armour.

Home is stealing dads’ sweaters and pairing them with mommies’ rings.

Home feels eternal.

Feels so safe that you don’t mind repeating the same day again. Home is where time melts on white plaster walls under afternoon sun, and you can never quite tell if you’re ten or twenty-one because the jokes we laugh at are the same.

The action figures on the shelves, the tchotchkes and the tablecloths are the same.

Only the boy in the mirror is different. That too, only outwardly.

Mild tricep definiton does not, a new boy make.

Home is me, home is you.

Home is where all is soft inside.

Home is us.

Long live our love.

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Every friend a fleeting fox,
a hound of heaven glimpsed only at night.

some we see for years and months,
some for no more than an afternoon.
time may vary; fleeting they remain.

majestic times when our orbits collide,
quite a pity when our paths split.

life, a string of fairy lights,
the glowing bits 
friends, family,
and lovers, occasional.

bright beauties I keep,
treasured through polaroids
and hangout receipts.

question remains:
am i the wire,
or the silent current humming through?

/

new year, same brain.
look how far we came.
where next do we claim?

many more I’ll meet,
more still I’ll lose.
I don’t want to know.

just want to be twenty-somethings and free,
loitering by the barbican,
maybe make it to when our hair turns grey.

no plan, really 
just want more people like you,
holding my hand. 
┊         ┊       ┊   ┊    ┊        ┊
┊         ┊       ┊   ┊   ˚★⋆｡˚  ⋆
┊         ┊       ┊   ⋆
┊         ┊       ★⋆
┊ ◦
★⋆      ┊ .  ˚
           ˚★

Hello. 
If you're reading then you're a real one and I already like you a little extra 
--because you bother to actually open and read my substack posts. Aww. 
 Unless you have malicious intent. Then, I dont like you that much. 

Regardless, Hi! 
Happy end-of-year! 
See I'd wish you a Happy New Year but with the way this year has gone, I think its end warrants more of a celebration. Thank god it's over! 

It was a truly crazy year for me. It started with me meeting the Dalai Llama and it's ending with me.... watching a sitcom in bed with my mom, eating popcorn. Alls well that ends well, I guess. 

It had its bad parts too. well, more like ONE major bad part. 
*cough* break up essay *cough
 But one equally major good part, moving back to London. 

But this letter isnt about me or how my year went, it's for you. 
Yes, YOU. I'm talking to Y-O-U. 

I'd like to start by thanking you. My elders have taught me to give thanks for all the good and the bad because, there are no good or bad moments, just lessons. Preachy, I know- but true. 
So, whether you were a well-wisher or a sore loser hating on me, thanks. I've grown from having you in my life and I will cherish the lesson learnt. 

This year restored my faith in friendships both new and old, and I dont wanna namedrop people but you know who you all are and I love you all so so much. So much so, that I wrote a little poem ( ofc i did). 

Anyways, I just wanted to say as the year ends, 
I’m grateful to have you around and to call you a friend.
nothing too soppy — just glad we’re buddies.
always know I’ve got you,
and it’s good to know you’ve got me too.

May we only be happier and hotter in 2026, and may 2026 be like 2016

Love,
P.
˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　 　˚　　　　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔ 
　　　.   　　˚　　 　　*　　 　　✦　　　.　　.　　　✦　˚ 　　　　 ˚　.˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.˖✶   ✦　　

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There is a boy and he's wearing a ring. This isn't the only ring on his hands. 
The boy has many beautiful rings but this ring is, or  was  special, for all the wrong reasons.
                                                               
                                                                ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

It was given to him by his love, well, by someone who was his love at one point in time. 

They exchanged rings. The boy objectively gave away a much prettier ring away than the one he got back. That one transaction may well be a metaphor for his entire relationship with that love of his. 

But the memory that once sustained this relationship and this ring turned to poison.
Fate, fortune and a rather cruel turn of events conspired against the boy and his love.
Bridges were burnt,  heartstrings stretched and torn but the ring survived, somehow.
Until now, that is.

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  ⋆˙⟡⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The boy kept it with him, took it far and wide, and once when in a fit of aching rage the angry red fool tore his ex love’s letters and pictures to shreds, he somehow didn't do anything to the ring.

But as is the case always, with time the burden on his heart grew weaker, and as his eyes and hands fell into newer ones,  he almost forgot about the ring.

Even from a purely fashionable perspective, the ring was nothing special. A black band, perhaps of stone set in a smooth larger ring of shiny steel. It was most definitely not silver, for the boy knew that real silver blackens with time.

It was just, a black ring with a silver lining. He rarely ever wore it and on the off chance that it would catch his eye, he’d grimace at it and bury it under his many other accessories and accents. All prettier than this ring.

Yet, despite his obvious dislike for the ring and its history he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.

Twice he nearly plopped it into the thames, and once even considered the garbage chute but the ring would stay, as stubborn things often do.

However, the boy was now weary of it.
┊         ┊       ┊   ┊    ┊        ┊
┊         ┊       ┊   ┊   ˚★⋆｡˚  ⋆
┊         ┊       ┊   ⋆
┊         ┊       ★⋆
┊ ◦
★⋆      ┊ .  ˚
           ˚★

 He didnt want to keep old energy around and wearing a ring given by someone who no longer even spoke to him, felt like a binding that must be broken. Maybe somewhere deep down, he didnt want that bond to break. But he could feel necessity of doing so. No point in keeping old ghosts around, no matter how familiar or precious.

So today, as the boy is midway through his annual trek back to his birthplace in the mountains, he toys with the ring rather fatefully, with the intention of losing it.
He planned to lose it at the airport itself but absent mindedly wore it onto the plane.

Then once he landed and showered, he vowed to get rid of it before he undertook the rest of his journey that would take him back to his mountains. 
He wouldn’t dare to re-enter his mountains with this ring on his person. Not at any cost. His mountains were pure and serene. Sensitive and susceptible to such ephemeral energies.

He had already spent his summer grieving this love in their woody embrace. Sobbing ever so softly underneath the whispering pines.

But now, with a rather fierce resolve he vowed not to make home a sanatorium again. 

His mountains and his home would be lively and joyful this time around. 

And so we walk into the present, the boy is being driven through the busy lanes of his old city. 

The city of djinns, durbars and poets- Delhi

A city he once called his. He originally planned to leave this ring in some corner of an enchanted pine forest once he got to his hills, but the very idea of that felt wrong.

You can’t enter sacred territory with sacrilege on your finger. 
✦　.　　. 　 ˚　.　 . ✦　˚ . ★⋆. ࿐࿔   ✦　　

And so, as the car cruises on one of Delhi’s many highways the boy rolls down his window and lets the wind mess his curls as he kisses the ring- and perhaps through it, its giver- one last time.

A deep, lasting kiss. He then slides it onto his silver chain momentarily, thinking he may keep it as a necklace- only to remove it the next instant.

The silver chain is home to an amulet. You can’t have a haunting and an amulet resting side by side in the center of your chest.

His heart thumping, he kisses the ring again, and slips it onto his pinky finger, from where he knows it will eventually fall.

He gives the universe thanks for giving him someone who loved him enough to exchange rings with him, but notes rather ruefully how the end of it all was awful.
He tells the universe that he’s returning the ring back, 

and may another ring only find its way to him when it’s meant to stay on his finger for long.

He then gracefully lets his hand rest on the half rolled down glass and watches his old city pass him by. The city where he too, like his love, the ring giver, was once at the brink of adulthood and just starting to separate his path from family. The city where he too, had once been 18 and younger, and probably hurt many others. 

The city of poets where he grew up amidst smoke and mirrors felt like the right place to bid the ring farewell.

He tilted his hand downward and let the wind and gravity do their job.
Something within him winced as he heard the ring clink onto the road, and then the car lurched forward, and the ring was gone.

It may be picked up by some street urchin and worn happily. Maybe a wily tradesman finds it and resells it at the famed thief market behind the old fort in town, or maybe cars will drive over it and it will get stuck in someone tyres, or sadly roll into a gutter.

The boy likes the urchin outcome the best. Atleast someone should get some joy from the damn thing,  else may it perish.

But the ring and the boy are no longer one. 

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

You would think this is where his story ends, and in a way it does.

But no story ever really ends. It merely changes and pauses.

Here, the boy's story changes and pauses for dramatic effect.

Who knows what comes next. Maybe his friend who has a tarot deck in her tote knows
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

Maybe many years down the line he meets again the giver of the ring and will abashedly recount how in the flame of youthful mourning he let the ring drop, only to find that the giver of the ring held on to the one the boy had given him.

Maybe the fates are kind to him and he finds a love so fulfilling that gives him many a newer, prettier ring and he forgets all about the black ring.

Maybe he sees it for sale somwhere and smiles a wry smile.

Only time and fate will tell.

Out of all these future outcomes, the boy prefers none.

It is much too strong a burden on the heart to consider this matter. 
He focuses instead on the journey ahead, and his return to the mountains. 
┊              
┊         ┊       ┊   ┊   ˚★⋆｡˚  ⋆           ࣪𖤐                 ˚★⋆｡˚  ⋆┊         ┊          ┊      
┊         ┊       ┊   ⋆                                                              ⋆   ┊        ┊         ┊     
┊         ┊       ★⋆                                                                     ★⋆       ┊         ┊   
┊ ◦      ┊                                                                                               ┊      ◦ ┊
★⋆      ┊ .  ˚                                                                                        ˚ . ┊      ⋆ ★
           ˚★⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀                                                                 ★˚⠀⠀
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