Naira

This eerie night
I can pen any poem
that I wanted you to sing for me.
I can paint your
black duppatta
and the magics you had beyond it.
I hear your chuckles,
your sigh and breath. ample, sumptuous,
decadent lean,these
words have me
between
wanting to
say more
and just
crawling ashore.
each wave,curls your mapped
algorithm.

You had entered me
and inhabited comfortably,
When I yearned for
my lost beats.
your voice burnt
beneath each layer
of my memories skin.
You disappeared,
and I stood between
tulip flowers and dream sequences.

I wander for you
on the Dal lake side,
in icy nights,
through Zafron strands,
inside the echoes of Parimahal.
I look for you,
in my incomplete dreams
and unfolded within.

mad poetry,willful gravity
and animal magnetism,
bone-caging desire.
I seek every why,
while open mouthing the rain
and the dead light of stars.

pressing into a warm wade of clay,
my soul is that hand held lantern in the dark,
every breeze lifts a song,
knows not to pay to carve a memory.

just keep writing,
as if holes are dug
to be planted with what you can offer
without knowing if it will grow outside of chanced rain and Sun.

Note for Desdemona

This is a routine lament. Colors are dear, these days.
Yellow flowers wilt
into brown silence;
voices fade,
there is nothing more
to be said.
Someday, all of this might make sense-
these faded days will bear witness, maybe.
But not now.
Where is the place where all silences end?
Maybe, there are ways to be objective about very long ago-
there are no answers in long walks, that one turned out to be a lie.
Last night,
I burnt your last photograph,
and my failures.
This morning they were back in the mirror.
Maybe, then, it is just you and not Me-
listening to the distance, routine tidings coming from a dirty grey ocean,
I can still lay everything on your door.
You are my straw-woman,
my imaginary Desdemona.

when we enter
our chamber of sorrows,
marrow tightens
in our bones cages,
we receive the marsh fogs,
like hush curtains
of second chances spent.

Call the rain,
gently whisper each poem,
each word that crawls
to where I want you
a slow tasted savoring,
mouth your tides,
tongue the undertow.