To make way for the new

Some things you understand
Like the harvest every hiyangei
The toiling in the fields
To celebrate the bounty of the earth
With Lai haraoba, to appease Ema Lairembi
Your daughter is getting married
You have little to give her for her awunpot
You search the till for the little savings
But found nothing but despair
All you have is the house of mud,
And the black earth sustaining lives
The ways of Epa-Epu of living by the land
are but ancient relics found in phuga wari
The old ways are dying
Last evening you looked like a woman
 who lost something she can't quite remember
You gave your grateful daughter
Lik, khuji,lei made of pure gold
You had given up the old ways
To make way for the new.

You are always counting

You are always counting days left to go back to him,
counting the distance from the room in which
 you are hugging yourself wrapped in a red cardigan
to the street where he sits on a platform
 smoking a cigarette, perhaps 2696km give or take.
You count the two languages that set you apart,
 the one language you both share even though
 you both know how to say that one line
 in each other's language. You count the dishes
you eat which he might be alien to, nga for instance,
 not to mention eromba and soibum even though
 you are quite familiar what what he eats.
You stop counting because it's tiring to count so much,
and you need to tell him you can't wait to see him.

A Machine of Grief

You should have realized that the faces of your childhood

which you romantise conceal so much madness, so much

pain. And that you only had to go back in your mind to see

the signs. When you were five the man who used to drive

the van to ferry you and other neighbourhood children

committed suicide. Your mother told you he is driving

a truck now. You didn’t question her. You didn’t know what

death meant or what caused it. You heard whispers

of how your much older cousin which you have met but once,

had married a man whose parents didn’t accept her

because she wasn’t their kind, not from their community.

But you didn’t know because this was the limit of your

world and you knew no other.You didn’t really know what

different was and that you would be different once you

step out. Now you know that laughter is rare,pain more

frequent. You see the violet hills with a sadness in your guts.

and the morning mist intensifies the loneliness of your

existence. And when you walk the walk you have been 

taking as long as you had learnt to walk, you walk briskly 

as though you are trying to escape from some kind of
absence, the echo of decay. While your life is disintegrating, 

even that assumes a rhythm. Melancholy becomes a 

habit the mind exercises. You have become a machine of grief.

When he told me I was full of contradictions,that I say one thing about being this strong independent woman who doesn't care about how people perceive me, I didn't know what to say apart from being slightly hurt. Someone had once told me I was very gullible, too weak to face the world. I was twelve years old then and I vowed to shield myself. I would not be gullible, I would not give in. To whatever that she thought I usually gave in to. I was young and foolish. I am still young and foolish both. I daresay I would be old and foolish too.
I am not clear about many things, be it about myself or others or even poetry. I am constantly adding and subtracting emotions and thoughts. How can I be expected not to change and remain the same, constituting the same thoughts and feelings? Sometimes I think as a woman or to-be-woman, certain things are expected of me. On on hand, I am expected to be the quintessential feminist, disdaining frivolous activities such as fashion and maybe even men altogether. On the other hand my mother wants me to be fairly balanced about things, observe the traditions, sometimes even reject some progressive things because they don't fit in with social norms and so on and so forth as most of you might already know. And in these many ways,I am being confronted with options forced down my throat. Clearly, I am not being given the choice the make up my own option. I am constantly being told this and that. Do's and Don'ts.
Sometimes I think I would love to have a place of my own but then again I wouldn't want to stay too long either. Yes, I am a living walking breathing contradiction and yes, I don't think of substantial reasons for doing the things I do because if I spent my time finding reasons, I would probably have starved to death by now. And then there is poetry, I have my books and my poetry to protect me, I am shielded in my armour.  But you broke that armour for me and now that I need it, I can't find it anymore.

How can you eat so slow?

I am getting my money's worth,

each rupee's worth.

You are so immersed,

Like a three year old

Hanging onto the summer's last

Ice-cream, until next year.

A sign of assurance

You joined it and that surprised you
because that's not what you would
 have done if you knew what it was
you wandered into it and you stayed
because it gave you slogans to
channel the anguish you have
borne ever since you took your first
breath, the first time you were
told you couldn't do this and that
 because that's not what girls do, the
first time you picked up a book in
 which the woman author wrote
with a man pseudonym, or the time
the first slave was separated from
 his family in America, saw the bullet
ridden eight year old girl's body
tossed into the swamp, hear him
 telling me "Why are you so desperate
 to go back?"" Why do you do this
to me?" and you don't seem to know
 enough, because you are a fool
 and you want to please everyone,
you are scared of ending up
a total failure or knee-deep in mediocrity,
 but then again you don't
want to lose out on him and that's
why you ask him for a sign of assurance.

Because you don't know why you are the way you are

You tell yourself it will be alright,
Sometimes
Most times
It weighs you down
It leaves claw marks
And you don't know how it came,
 Like an avalanche of frustration
And you.just.don't.want.to.go.on.anymore.
Because you have lost so much
 And gained what?
Nothing to show.
Just shadows.
And the dark.
The screaming silence.
Because this is all that is left of you.
Words. Tears. A mind tearing itself apart.
A descend to quiet madness.
Because you don't know why you are the way you are.

Do you see the lives you couldn't save?

I always saw you

 As the man who would get back home

 Later than other fathers

I was a little scared of you

And overawed because everyone saluted you

 You were always posted somewhere else

 And came home once or twice a month

 Sometimes fewer, 

You always brought me something

 Some little gift

 Even at nineteen

I think that is all you do,

Being a father

But you are a person too,

 With your own insecurities and fears

How do you live through it,

 Rescue the dying and come

 Back home to us,smiling for me?

How do you do it, Papa?

How do you wake up each day

Not knowing if you would come back to us?

Is that why you can't sleep at night sometimes,

 And you say it's because you are growing old?

Do you see the lives you couldn't save?

 

All the places you avoid

It's strange how we keep on living
Laughing, driving on the dusty roads
In newspapers they write
 Of the curfew, the dead toll
Of the faltering peace
My daughter still goes to school
Her hair tied with red ribbons
She kissed the apple I gave her for breakfast
My husband left for Moreh
 Halfway through breakfast.
Some disturbance at the border
The girls in the shop next door continue
 To weave the muga phi
Giggling at the young men
Who glance at them
The media would be disappointed
 At the presence of enthusiasm
Weren't the streets supposed to be deserted,
 Windows closed, lives halted?
In Manipur, Myanmar, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan
All the places you avoid,
They go on living, breathing,
Sometimes more deeply than you do.

Over the years

Over the years
 I have realised that
The only way to get over
 This overwhelming sadness
(Perhaps of loss and scarred remains)
Which descends like a blanket
Of cold night stars
My warm blood
 Slowing turning Cold
 Cold like my collar bone
Over the years,
 I have begun
To depend on transferring it
 To a cause larger than one life
So I have a shelf of them
Like a collector's prized possession-
On Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Gaza.

We have established a routine

We have established a routine
 Sitting on the rocks,
Being pulled by the lure of the black sea
Violent, turbulent and it still calls
And you are tempted
Tempted to go just a bit nearer
 This happens everyday
 Till the third day
 For three days
We pile out of our rooms
 Knock on doors
We walk the streets christened with French names
We walk, we smoke
We sing a Puducherry song
And we eat, counting the decreasing wad of cash
Young, and penniless- our predicament
We file back into our rooms
By midnight
 Doors close
And in smoke-filled rooms
(The kind I imagined the poets inhabited
When struck by poverty
Or heartbreak, whichever you please)
You pull me close
Tug at my blouse
Mouths and tongues dissolve
 We have established a routine.

Wake me up tomorrow

You are going about the routine tasks
 Of attending social gatherings
Picking up glasses, red with alcohol
 Cool with ice
You witness yourself
Bent over a sink; sick
And then you lean back
Stare back at the bathroom tiles
Luminescent. Swirling.
You pick up your phone and type-
Wake me up tomorrow.
Come back to me.

....You grew up absurd
Thinking guns are the only things that talk
I grew up normal enough
In places where money talked
But isn't that twisted too?

We are here, this is now

We are here, this is now

Things are just as they are

The unmade bed, the dried flowers

I look at you 

Oceans of your eyes 

Lash like waves 

On the shores of my life

I was a mermaid once,I will say

I used to watch you 

Setting the sails of your ship 

You will smile an indulgent smile 

And then?you will ask,

How long did you watch?

The span of twelve full  moons,

I would whisper into your ears

I waited,washed with melancholia 

Searching the seven seas 

Then I found you,shipwrecked 

Washed ashore, unconscious.

All things to be said 

Have been said 

Except for some things

You will say tomorrow 

Your nicotine stained fingers

Reach for the lamp

We are here,this is now

I leave behind nothing

I leave behind 

No marks of having occupied this space

No scribbles on the wall

Or a list of to dos

No timetable

No punched hole where

A poster of some popular movie star

Hangs

I live sparsely

Hardly 

The tears dry up

The broken glasses are swept into the wastebasket

The thoughts I thought hang in the air

Invisible army 

Whose occupation will be another mind

Maybe a stray earring will

Betray me

I leave behind nothing

Except my absence 

I think I am keeping 

All of myself

For a space from which I no longer have to move

Which is mine and mine alone

Mine and maybe yours

Maybe all I want is you

 And nothing else.

Once again
 I search for myself
In these grainy blurred pictures
You are there too
Always
 Maybe just your hand
 Or your headgear
What were we then?
 You and I and the rest?
 We marvelled at the world outside
Mouth wide open
Of some distant promised land.
How were we then?
Did the hurt exist,
 The throbbing pain?
Age is catching up to us.
 Just the last moment of escape.
That was it. You and I
Bending our heads over books,
 Scraps of paper, old loves, life,

You mention it again
The name, and other specifics
I don't quite know
What to say
I never have known
Our hands lay entwined
Far removed from us
You tell me of things,
 Mostly fears
 Something about me,
 About the way my face arranges itself
How do I explain?
Nothing.
The silence drops
Fall on the ground.
I don't pick it up.
I say I have to go.

So many faces with no names

I am sitting down at the end of the day
Listing things to do
Tomorrow I will read,
Sit down somewhere and read
In a borrowed language.
Maybe under a tree.
Or at the obscure corner
Hidden by shadows
But what if it rains?
Curl up in my bed, I suppose
Climb up the library stairs
But it is not home to me
 The way the school library was
 Things are different now
 Even the rituals of reading.
Sometimes it sends me weeping
These detailed changes
The impersonality, the coldness,
So many faces with no names.

I ask instead of the time

We light our cigarettes
From the terrace we can see
Old houses,broken bricks, workers.
You tell me what you see,
Ten years from now,
 Or was it twenty?
I want that too, I want to say.
I want to be with you.
Always.
But there are other dreams
 I promised  myself
Dreams without which I won't be I.
I want you to know
My love won't change
I can't imagine any other way.
We will figure out ways.
 Maybe you can visit me for Christmas in New York
We will go ice-skating together,
These things I say
To suppress the heaviness
That almost chokes me
You will no longer be across the road
We will no longer spend lazy days
 Day after day.
No longer drive each other crazy.
It hits hard.
It is devastating.
Night is falling,
So is this conversation.

What do you know of love?
 I want to ask.
 I ask instead of the time.

She wants to buy white lilies

She is unreasonable today
 She doesn't want to grudge
 Even half a smile
She doesn't want to talk
Or pretend to listen
She is far away
 To the place she crawls back to
Where we have always wanted to peek into
She doesn't want to wear red, pink, orange
Only black, only white, maybe drab gray
She wants to go to a less familiar place
 Not where we can watch her steps
Or bump into her in corners and pillars
And linger our hungry eyes on her
 On her strangeness
She wants to buy white lilies
 And place them on a forgotten grave.

Claiming Myself

Someone told me I write well
But when I write about the things I know
 And that is mainly Manipuri in character
 Whole lives are lost
 Lost in translation.
 English was never suited for the tongue
Of people struggling with life
Amidst bullets and floods
Obscure, forgotten people speak
Their own obscure, forgotten language.
 For how can you translate warouba ;
The kind you feel when the person
 You gave your whole life to
Forsakes you to please people
 He once claimed didn't like him much?
Can you say pendaba is a sub-part of warouba;
The kind when your nights are wet with hot tears,
Visited by convulsions of sickness,
A life which has spiraled out of control?
What in English is called the leihou
 Barring from some ugly scientific name?
Nongjabis drive away the rain,
They paint the sky red, merry orange.
All I have with me are words now,
 Words of a language I neglected so long
 Which I am now tasting, swallowing,
 Slowly claiming myself.

Politically Born You Are

Politically born you are

 Your head is counted

 Twice over, maybe thrice

There is fear that we are

 Declining in numbers

There is fear of being swarmed

 Over by foreigners

You, my child

 Even as you learn to speak your first word

There are tensions soaring

On your chakumba numit,

Unknown assailants

 Murders two non-manipuris

In broad daylight at the bazaar.

 You, when you took your first walk

 From me to your father,

 There was the demand to secede the hills of Manipur.

Your bedtime stories are of good girls

 Who win over giants by their sheer kindness

Maybe I should tell you of the Manipuri lores

Of hingchabis, of baneshees,

 The ones my Imabok told me.

 Because good is scarcely found,

I want to arm you with courage,

And maybe some words,

 Incase you do find 

Those giants who might listen to you.

 

In the right they fight over boundaries,

 In the left over love

In my country,

 They fight over Gods,

 Over some young people who ran away 

To get married for love.

 Love is a crime in places,

 You have to pay for it

 With your life.

In my own house,

 Some fight over unmarried daughters

Some over why last night's food

 Wasn't thrown away and left to rot.

 Over misplaced badges of my father's

 Ima says she saw it a few days ago.

Grandmother says you shouldn't laugh

 On your own wedding,

 It's unbecoming of a young woman

But her own daughter giggled

Throwing flowers over the groom's koiyet

I sometimes cry when I read poetry

 Or read about Aung San Suu Kyi

 News flash that Ratko Mladic is on trial at the Hague

He ordered the Srebrenica Massacre

 It seems personal somehow

 I lived in Bosnia during the aftermath.

 I tremble a little with anger.

There are dreams of beaches,

 Of French towns on Indian shores.

You come to me now

In your blue jeans and white shirt

 You tell me your secrets

You whisper your life,

 Things lost, people found.

I search for you in crowds

 Searched for you in six lives

 Found you in the seventh.

I want you to know

 That I love watching you

 In the kitchen

 That I love it when you swing me 

 And sing me to sleep,

 When you pop a whole bunch

 of gems into your mouth

 Like a greedy child

 I found you, found you 

 In your blue jeans and white shirt.

I want you to know that

 It is worth six lives of search.

On writing a story

I start off with a girl.of sixteen
 Halfway through I realize
Her frivolity, her extremity
I am not pleased with her lines
 Her clothes are too perfect
In stories, clothes are badly worn
Perfect clothes belong in runaways
 In stories, fashion disasters are the norm.
Then there is the issue of the mother,
The father, How Do I deal with the parents?
 Too kind, too rigid, too affectionate, too strict?
The conversations flow,
It's the only thing which has dragged on
 While the rest have become sluggish,
 And then finally left to lie cold in the snow
 But there is no snow where the story is set
 Only rains and mud strewn roads.
There is a beautiful woman,
Like in all stories, we must have one too,
Caged in an unhappy marriage,
 There is the husband who is cold and grim.
 There are books and poetry,
 Garcia Marquez, Orhan Pamuk,
And there are weddings on the cards
 But you see....it goes one way and then
When I wake up the next morning
 Quite another way.
Who must suffer, who must laugh?
 Someone has to die, surely
 But which one?

Scaling a nearby hill

Everyday I suppose some persons come

Charging up this hill

 Like I am doing today

Why I chose today 

I don't know.

 Maybe there was nothing else to do

No company to keep

 But then again I never have company

No friends to drag me to car drives

 To some land far away

Nor to the waterfalls of Leimaram

Soaked in wine, soaked in carelessness.

Here, when I reach the summit,

 I tell myself it is some ancient place,

 Place of the Meitei Gods

 And I must tread carefully

 Or I might awaken them

 From their long slumber

 And test their patience.

 My mother told me

 There are waters where

 You don't see your reflection.

That there is a boulder under which

Someone was buried.

 A demon? A temptress?

I see the glittering lights of the city below,

 Where it has its own demons unleashed.

Hey besty, hey besty hey hey hey.
God hey, hey you beautiful wonderful you.
Hey you fixing your new house while i feed on mangoes,
Hey you so far away from me, 
Hey you smiling and grinning likle a little boy,
 Hey you loving me hey you hey you
I want to hey you, poke you
Taste your smile and the twinkle in your eyes.
I want you to hey me,
Hold me, drag me to rain, snow, hail,
Wherever you go,
And love me hug me besty me.

A garland of kundo

Once again

 I wear my mayek naibi, 

 My muga phi the colour of adorgulap

 Inland with gold it seems,

Trace chandon on my forehead

 Lik, khuji find their familiar places,

 My neck, my arms,

 The finality of sana on skin

Another wedding,

 When they ask me, 

I say absolutely not, 

Atleast not for another six-seven years

 But that is just half a truth

You, a stranger to my land, 

A valley surrounded by nine hill ranges

 Shrouded by mists and myths

 You would think time had stood still

 A little longer than in other places

You,who never heard Khamba-Thoibi stories

 While growing up

On you, my beloved stranger

 I would place around your neck

A garland of kundo.

It's a strange kind of waiting

What is this game
 Of hide and seek?
You hide
 I seek in desperation
 And when I seek you out
 I don't say
 What I thought I would say
 We meet
 Everyday
 Sometimes we skip days
 Then days turn to weeks
 And weeks to months
 And we meet again
 We play the same game
 Over and over again
 Since the first time
 Five years ago
 I loved you then
 As only a child could
 I hate you now
 As only a scorned young woman could
 It's a strange kind of waiting
 Waiting for you to fade.

I write to you

I am writing to you now,
Writing to you makes me sane,
I imagine that you can hear the tone of my voice
I have a frightfully wild imagination
 Quite displaced from reality
 I wonder if you understanding my world is one of them.
 But I still write to you,
 I no longer care if you read them attentively,
 Smile appropriately at the amusing anecdotes
 Or just leave them sealed.
 It has become a drug now-
Writing to you.
Some posted, others still gathering dust in my locker
 Between the pages of my history books, between my sketches
 An out pour of my miseries, my love
 My sadness, my curiosities, my fears
 And also about the little delights
 Of waking up too early on Sunday mornings,
And that little girl who smiled and waved at me,
 And how badly I wanted her as my doll.
 That, all that and much more I write to you.

Wait for me

When I am gone
 Love me sometimes
 Remember the last lines we spoke
The last glances of longing and love
 And something that only the thought
 Of impending separation can bring
 Take care of you because I love you so
 Take care of things that might cause pain
 When your eyelids drop heavy
Pray a bit if you can
 Drop in a word for me
I will see you in my dreams now
You with your beautiful eyes
Hold me close, sing me to sleep,
 Cast your nets and bring me back
Our city of dreams, our city of awakening,
 I know you will find its soul
 If you do find mine too.
 Tell me you will wait for me
 As I take my time to come back to you
 Because the heart loves you more than it can bear.

Our love is a twisted thing

I try to hate you

With daggers of last night’s outburst
With the strength of every ache that I went through
I see your love as self constructed and self centred
Through the prism of my rage
The thousand year old rage of one
Stuck between girlhood and womanhood
I devise ways of hating you
The instrument of silence
The tool of insolence
I count number of days I should not talk to you
Weeks I should not meet you
Months I want you to suffer
I want to summon all my hate
Fill it to the brim
And throw it all at you
Because my love is a twisted thing.
Then you say a hi
And all of it is gone in an instant
All of it is wiped clean
I no longer remember why I hated you
A part of me mourns the loss of the passionate hate
But the person becomes like a character in a movie
Living the dramatic life
Saying the thundering heartbreaking dialogues
Someone divorced from me.
Because it’s hard to hate you
When you say my name and look at me like that
Your love is a twisted thing too

Aftertaste

The lingering warmth
On the tips of my fingers
Where yours had stayed
I now feel its aftertaste
Like the effect of a Schubert piece
Beauty wrought in longing
Like some things which don’t have a name
Your delicious mouth
And its aftertaste
Like coffee on a rainy Sunday evening
So that when I go away
There is still a mark
That continues to say
Those words we whisper
Into each other’s ears
Amidst peals of laughter
Stolen kisses and silent embraces
Perhaps on your unmade bed
The imprint of your scent
On my clothes
Also lies the aftertaste.
Till I swim back
Into your arms again.

Having a smoke with you

Having a smoke with you
Is stupid, as stupid and pointless as chasing cars,
But i would rather sigh with you, blow wisps of our dreams
Draw them for you with the spiralling smoke
Partly because I feel like a five year old kid who draws on walls,
Goes hop-hop on the sidewalks, partly because I love you so much
For reasons so numerous, and sometimes for no particular reason
Partly because i can sit with you all day, all night long
And talk about my fascination with Jews, at how brilliant they are and how determined
And that really kills me when I think about Munich
How that girl in class looked so beautiful today that I could simply die
Partly because we look so amazing in that photograph
And how my hand fit so snugly in yours, as though it was crafted that way
And when i think of all the places i want to visit,
I think of waltzing with you in Prague, Sitting on the banks of the Bosphorus with you in Istanbul
And that’s probably where Orhan Pamuk fell in love
Also because i want to take you back to Bosnia where i lived
By the river Drina where they found land mines
And i somehow cheated death though i used to built sand castles there
There are landmines in Vietnam too you told me
Partly because i fell in love with Delhi because of you
Even when i was determined to detest it
It now feels like home
Also because i love the sandwiches you make, they are so-so good
That i feel like clapping my hands and giving you a standing ovation
Also because i can sit in silence with you and the smoke builds up that silence for us
And it’s just wonderful to watch you from the corner of my eyes
And Love in that silence in the fleeting twilight hours in the yellow light that shines on you
And your shadow seems so aesthetic that i wish i had a camera with me then
And i feel i am living an extra-ordinary experience everyday,
Something others are cheated out of
And i just wanted you to know that it’s awefreakingsome
Which is why i am telling you about it.

How to tell you I love you?

It's sealed in a box
Wrapped in folds
Of whatever that makes me sigh
 When you are far away
And you lose a little bit
Of your love for me,
 Do you forget the feel of my skin,
 The taste of my mouth,
 The dreaminess I engulf you in?
How to tell you I love you?

They do terrible things to you

They do terrible things to you
Cruelly disillusion you
Disturb your sanity
Make you remember
 The mediocrity of your existence
And sometimes you wonder
If your life is as despicable as that
They end mostly in tragedies
Someone or the other dying,
 Leaving, falling apart
But you love them nonetheless
 Even when they make you cry
 You weep for them
 For yourself
Because in their misfortune
You find a way to end yours differently.

There you are

There you are,
 Like you stood eight years ago,
Clothed in terrible innocence,
 Terrible sincerity
How did I bear the aching loss so long
 Only you know
But now we have one year worth of laughter
 To fit into three days,
 We have the gift of stupidity
And sincere role-playing
Of pseudo-intellectuals, commies,
 Garbage-collectors, world-savers,
World-forsakers.
And among the most wonderful things,
 Is doing the most ordinary things with you.

Waiting. Heart-aching.

When I woke up
And when I ghost-walked through the day
Trudging to class,
My heart was sinking
That terrible ache spreading
Right upto my fingertips.
 That you are gone.
 And she is not here yet.
And the waiting, the waiting,
The heart-aching.

Let That be My Scar

To what silly games

Did I forsake myself?
I forgot the girls I was fighting for.
I forgot for one, the real causes
The one I swore I would fight for
Live for and die for,
For the narrow slit of my eyes
For the history of my people,
Of your people.
Of all the misunderstood, forgotten people.
But now I have you crying over me
When I dont deserve your tears.
I nearly lost you
By my own carelessness,
Because I was a seventeen year old
Stuck in an eighteen year old's body
And I didnt think twice,
Infact I didnt think at all.
I didnt realise that I was the girl
I was supposed to save.
And that I failed.
Let that be my scar.

You are mine again

Your lips are parted slightly,
Your eyelids are dim,
 I touch them,
Run my fingers over them,
 Your softness, Your cold cold skin
Your collar bones,
 And press myself close to you,
 To hear the familiar rhythm of your heart,
 Once again I tell myself
You are
 Mine. Again.
  I lost you once
When you got caught in the web of your past
You lost me, I cried.
 You nearly broke me.
 Oh you did. Cruelly.
Viciously. Like an act of perfection.
I went over it. Over and over again.
It will take time to heal,
 The wounds are raw still.
But since you swore you would do whatever it takes.
Start by promising me you are just mine again.

Silence, cold star and your absence

Lost again
In piles of assignments
 Which I procratinate
Ambition- a little less today
 Just the swaying daisies hold my vision
And the sweet peas-
Pretty pink, pale, lavender
Creeping up the fence of brittle twigs
Ofcourse you remember
We talked of lavender dresses
And fairies who crashed their bikes
 Right over there
 And they would laugh like us
Clear, bright, alive.
Lost because this building
 Is a hundred and fifty years old
And too many lives have claimed it already
 And I am last in line
Laughter- today drowned in the disturbing silence
Of the yesterdays, the yesteryears
And lost again
Because you seem so far away
 All that belongs to me-
Silence, cold stars and your absence.