Cold Press
The moon didn’t make it to the papers today.
Everyone talked about the sun. Its rise or setting. Absence and Presence. Cloudy with a chance of rain. Filtering in conversations over cups of tea, or wine.
Tomorrow might be the same.
But one night, you will look out of the window and the moon will be there, shrivelled or full, and regardless of how she looks, you will figure out a way to compare her to your lover, maybe even write a poem or a ghazal comparing the two.
Is it too much if I want to be as irrelevant as the moon?
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You Reside in Old Desires
Under the bougainvillea tree, I find your body with traces of perfume from the bottle I bought from the bazaar of loneliness last year.
The summer has carried us here, deep into forbidden nostalgia, a heavy luggage filled with nothing for our present selves, nothing of use.
Soon, you will have to leave, for you have dreams to build, and goals to achieve, a broken faucet waits for me at home and there are always other things to repair.
There is nothing for us here, still, I want to ask you if we can sit together for a while. Can’t two sentences of an Urdu couplet sound pleasant even without finding meaning?
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The Pigeon in the Balcony
It was in the evening again
that I saw a pigeon on my balcony
chugging quietly from the roots of a plant
that had been watered only moments ago.
How disappointed she must have been
on all the days when I got up too early
and had watered the plants as
I had nothing better to do.
Abhishek Anicca is a writer, poet and spoken word performer. He identifies himself as a person with disability and chronic illness
