To Love, In Retrospect

The thing is
Something about the way we pronounce desire
Something that is born from the core of our bones
That grows disproportionately
to the extremities we've known
That grows till we begin spelling it with
In the chatter of our teeth
In the skin maimed by indents
In the way we swirl tea
Some call it charting a destiny.

"Build a map".
The cartographers' skill we used to mould
Shapes, like imagination can only bend in so many ways
Before it becomes a repetition.
"Build a dream."
Like the house my mother's mother made in pencil
And the home she makes everyday by the art of breathing.

Build a fire, a song, a whistle to create in empty corridors
The kind that makes the glass hallway shake.

There are so many kinds of incineration, and
Words that light up in the shadow of absences
-Like the cigarette butts you lit
But I burnt out into blindness-
Are my absolute favourite.

The Unfinished Capsicum

Maa ne kaha tha,
Shimla mirch ki sabzi nahi banate,
Bachpan mein
Bettiah mein
Shimla Mirch nahi milti thi,
Jab milti thi toh sabzi nahi banate.
Kam tha na.
Fridge mein Shimla Mirch rehene se
"Rich lagta hai."
Ghar mein aaoge toh,
Fridge mein shimla mirch katti hui milegi.
Puri shimla mirch aaj bhi nahi istemaal kar paati.
Rich lagta hai.
Marwar ki raeth mein,
(Oasis)

My language enters my mind in a flood
Alphabet soup
That drowns me out with possibility.
I have sat on the edge of the flood that is self-perpetuating.
Some say that a flood like that
is a lake
But I know the difference between a resource
And an inconvenience.
Ghar ki dalheez par khatam hota hai.

I walk home
having waded in the flood
having floated paper boats where wooden ones would break
Having seen/imagined the tadpoles
That swim past me and return, as I do,
Home.

I wipe my feet and dry my calves
And hear the sound of rain muffled by dryness
Roll down my jeans
And walk inside.

Maa kehti hai,
Tumhari poetry samajh nahi aati.
Kuch kehte ho,
usse sirf thora sa
hi samajh aata hai.

If you ever come home
You will always find
unfinished capsicum.

Something Other Than The Desperation/ The Morse of Understanding

How much time before we keep mouthing 'I love you, I love you, I love you'
Before we realize that the only parts we ever
Picked up and blew dust off
Were parts we could wear around ourselves.

Call it a disorder.
Call it an affinity.

You once told me night and day were conjoined twins
Ripped apart by sunlight's parentheses
I laughed and told you I could build a story around that sentence.

This is that story.

Can you keep that Chinese delivery bag where I wrote you a haiku?
Can you pretend you remember the first three sentences I ever told you?
Can you convince me that we have been Good Hindus
Because I don't, I don't want our flesh to singe this way
And believe there was no reason to.

Can you draw lines in the red plastic box
I left accidentally
When you begin to hate me?
Can you tear the pillow cover,
smash the last dredges of black in the kohl pot,
Break glassware into the wall till
You can absolutely erase
How I feel?
Can you love me enough
To absolutely hate me?

Call it extremities.
Call it existential need.

In retrospect,
All we will have is movement,
Light chose to settling
In between the crevasses of your hair.
Wind making twisted mountains of your shoulder,
Your laughter seeping into every 'Bend over'.
And silence.
Wafting in silently like the dust
like parentheses
In sunlight that made us
That tore us.
I will always remember the sunlight
Best.