Every once in a while, I call your name
To make me believe it happened.
Autumn, Autumn happens.
In secluded corner of skin we carve
Seasons to explain wind and rain and that state of
Droplets heavy with hope.
I have washed over pages heavy with residual droplets
From three monsoons ago
With words like
Fall.
Add 'in love'
Before or after.
Some sort of laughter that drove us up against the wall
And out on the streets
Teenagers driven by some strange idea of
Invincibility, invisibility
Maybe I built a voodoo doll and stitched your name on it
And asked you to tear it apart when (if)
We separated
Because that is what I would have
Liked to do to you.
The trees here are growing old and bent
And I think their age is an invitation to be touched
Like when we made up love stories, we would
Like when we carved monuments in text, we would
We touched, we touched like
Lips and skin and a mutual dizziness
Ground pulled from beneath our feet
Aftershocks the rumbled down our throats into
Smoke in the pit of our stomach
The unpredictability shook us, the fingers, I remember the fingers
The shaken, beaten,
fingers we used to taste the
Carpet of grass that held water in a tight embrace
The fingers we used to break the electric tension of fragile love:
It was all a monsoon hangover anyway.
In a way, aren't we all the love police?
In a way, isn't love going to dismantle us?
In a way, haven't we fingered the past enough to
Blur dew and rain?
The choice was mine, you said
Where I wanted to damage pre-existing love stories
Where I wanted to write love the love that has never been written
Because it has never been created
Except in the impression we left on the grass.
In a way, didn't you tell me it was my choice to
Choose to be destroyed by love?
Every once in a while, I call your name.
A friend told me her boyfriend told her
Sikkim has autumns.
Fall.
In love.
