Joy Knocks at My Door
(– for S)
Leaving the taste of smoke on my tongue.
My body a ripe rasbhari, a mini sun hanging
from the branch, poked by a hummingbird.
And then it is gone. The night dies premature.
I’m lying in the middle of the room, my chest a can
of coke that has lost its fizz, mistaking my shadow
for your body, the thick roll of blanket
for your head. Nothing remains. Not even
my memory of you is transparent
like this day—the ear nodule, the poodle paw
nose, your expressions shifting
like a mime artist. Now I know what it meant:
reclining on the bonnet, gazing at the birds
flying away from the crisscrossed world.
Why do the lovers of your dream hold
hands & desperately want to be flamingoes.
Now I know that you wanted our love
to be a passage into that world, the other world,
the world that exists in a mirror.
I smell too much of this world, don't I?
My Therapist Laughs off My 2-Week Affair
Then what about the galouti kabab
dissolving on my salivating tongue?
Or the swiftness of a room lighting up
when the flame licks the head of a match.
Move on, she says. The symptom of love
lies in its obsession. That your life's screen
-saver becomes that man's square jaw, fern fingers,
the way he vapes and pronounces Def. Col.
I flaunt how much I know him: 34, agnostic,
diabetic, scientist-cum-lawyer. Has five friends,
two bosses, one ex. Fancies Murakami
in books, Old Monk in booze, bears in bed.
Doesn’t prefer twinks, caramelized onions,
or people who behave like soda fizz on first dates.
I’m tired of matching all the pointers
from a Youtube video Sachche Pyar ke Lakshan,
reading Barthes and Hooks,
writing poems in a feverish haze
to know my love too was grand
like an elephant’s tusk.
So
Fuck
off.
Don't tell me
to move on.
Don't tell me
that love
is a function of time.
