If there is one language common to the world, it is the language of affection. Attractions swells, sex sells, motherhood tears the body apart, nostalgia seeps into the soul, heartbreak reverberates in the thrum of our blood as humans continue to love and lose. I’ve been trying to encapsulate those affections that different languages across the world express, through a myriad of stunning words. Sensations of love, lust and loss are fleeting through the course of our lives and yet forever, as we grow into the people we are meant to be. Eternal. So here it is – a series of poetry that captures affection in every syllable and word.

Dictionary of Affections is The Zoya Project language, common to the world…

SAUDADE

‘nostalgia, the love that remains’

I bottled the stars for a rainy day,
The ones that grew
Over, and within my mother’s house.
I sat on her lap
And let her braid them into my hair
Weaving songs and stories
Into the thick curly strands
With her nimble fingers.

She would sing
Of shepherds and angels
While she made steaming chai and coffee
For me to drink, while swinging
On the cloudy verandah
Inches away from the spray of wind
And rain drops.

They scoff at me when I tell them
That when it rains now
I hear her melody in
The soft pitter patter of the rain
The music box of my past
Wound up by the gentle breeze
That brushes against my face
In a soft kiss.

They ask me
How I can believe that I can bottle stars
Within a lantern
That my mother hung in my house with her hands
And as I set them on fire and let them glow
‘Don’t you know’ I ask
‘These are the stars
That twinkled in my Ammi’s eyes