We have always had our hearts
broken by cities
You and I
Places which hold our dreams
Our secrets our promises
It has a hold over us
I can see it in the gleam of your eyes        
 In your slow intake of breath
Always remembering you in cities
Cities which has memories of you
Because I whisper  your name
Trailing all that is left of you in me
We imprint our mortal names
On the edge of these towns        
Its sidewalks littered  with our drunkenness
Places we love at first sight          
Other places that grow on us        
Remembered cities forgotten towns
We map them all in our palms
To be read like a horoscope
We have always had our heart
 broken by cities
As though cities were lovers

Words that came to me last night
Disappeared when I woke up today
But words are just words
Unable to encapsulate so many things I want to tell you
Or just the 'do you remember this?'
When I see something we once saw together
You told me about the wormhole explained it the exact same way to me the way they do in the movie
I can almost imagine how you would have seen the movie
Sometimes I imagine you imagining me
this profound sense of well being has settled over me ever since I met you again
You made everything okay again
Just by smiling like that
Just by giving me that hug
Because we are lovers of cities
And we both know what they do to you
You know how they break your heart
This is all incoherently structured
Images that don't connect
But regardless what I really wanted to say is perhaps just another way of saying I am already dreaming of your city
To see you again in your world .

You worry I can tell
About what I don't quite know
Maybe the 'nothingness' has reverberated in my mind
I can still feel your sad heart beating
This far away
You of the easy smile, you of the dark tremors in your eyes
You break my worthless heart into pieces every day        
If nothingness is what your desire
In any what way, then I hope that is what you get.

Because you are so beautiful          
Standing there like the boy I saw you
On Kundu ' s birthday so many years ago
And I had been torturing myself in anticipation over seeing you again
Five months.
That's the longest you have been
Away in three years.
And I couldn't hold my tears back
In the beginning.
Just having you in front of me
Was so overwhelming
And to hear the familiar voice again
The passion  with which you talk  about the things you love
To have you. Right here.
And to know amidst my interval of latent tears and laughter that I love you. Simply. I love you even from far away. As I already told you that I stalk you and I see that you are doing well and maybe happy too and I feel a warm pride in knowing that.
It's as though you are still mine in some ways
So embedded I no longer know what is yours and what is mine
And I am looking over the things I wrote and never posted
Because I was afraid to tell you how much I missed you and how many dreams you appeared in
And I am laughing( and crying too of course)because it's absurd to worry so much
 Because there is so much to be grateful for
That you exist, that you thrive and you laugh and you still make me smile.

I am sitting in class
And out of nowhere I am tearing up
Reading what you wrote
a day doesn't pass by when I don't think of you
My parents are in Delhi
Mum asked me if I am still with you
It pains to hear her ask about you
I am torn between wanting to see you again
But I won't know what to say
I won't know how to be a friend.
 If we would be able to  start at hello
Without putting too much meaning to hello which it can't hold
if we can spend an hour lightly and cheerfully                              
Then yes call me.
(On 22nd or after because I will be with my parents till then )

It's 1 am
you are swaying to a manipuri song
People around you are dancing
Strangers, enveloped in well being
A beautiful short haired girl smokes beside you
You don't feel the need to know these people
Though you feel a mild curiosity
You find mutual friends sure
But you don't feel the urge to talk
Atleast not much
You don't smoke
but the sharp scent of smoke evokes a hazy picture of past days
Of three dreamy years spent smoking and laughing
Gone of course            
Gone gone with the wind
You mutter under your breath      
You want to dance all of a sudden
Wear your highest heels
And twirl and unfurl your life away    
Like running , letting air fill up your lungs
You welcome exhaustion like an old friend
Who sings you to sleep.
You want to wake up enveloped in October sunlight and a sense of well being 

I dreamt I had a nosebleed last night
It reminded me of all the years I grew up waiting for it to stop            
Weak, vulnerable, betrayed by my own body
I sometimes see you walk by in half formed dreams
You don't know me anymore
But you still make me cry            
Even on my birthday just when I thought I had passed 32 days of not crying when I think of you
I lie awake at 1 wondering what you must be up to
I wonder if you still stay up all night watching movies
Anyway I am wiping my tears now
I don't want to be sad anymore
I guess I am probably saying this more
To myself than to you
How can I ever thank you enough
For all the warmest memories you have given me
Each one a gift to pick up for
Each passing birthday
I wish to talk to you one day
But not now, not yet
I am not strong enough
Thank you for the birthday wishes
It meant the world to me.

It's strange how days go by
Then weeks and months and years
Holding on to disappearing things
Not completely letting go. One person.
A million dreams. The exuberance at 17 which you can't replicate at 21. Never would you feel the same way again. You wait for the magnanimity of growing older. Hoping it will suit you better. Youth is as ill fitting as an awkwardly tailored coat picked up from the flea market. On birthdays you remember the people you were with on all your previous birthdays and how every birthday you find yourself bereaved of so many people; it sends you weeping. And then there are old lost friends who reappear. Don't go yet, you want to tell them, Stay. 

Epilogue to a Goodbye

When I dream about you
I wake up reaching out for you
And then a torrent of tears
In the bathroom while brushing my teeth
When I can't find you
so much of my time alone consists of
Crying that you are lost
You are interspersed in most of my waking thoughts
You are smiling and walking through
My dreaming thoughts
With the mark of familiarity only you possess, the specificity of you
That I am unable to stop loving
I have reconciled with the fact
That I will be carrying that gaping hole
In my heart, in my life
For a long long time
Thank you so much for the hug.
I have been craving it for a long time.

Don't say anything more.
The last thing you wrote was beautiful.
That was kind and I need kindness
Every now and then.
Let me return to it
To remind myself that I was so lucky
To be once loved so much by you.

Hey you
Hey you beautiful wonderful you
Hey you who gave me so much
Hey you who took my words away,
I haven't dared to write since
Hey you the lost-and-the-never-found you
Hey you the stranger you
You don't have to apologise.

Goodbye, my darling.
Goodbye you.

I am finding it difficult to form coherent sentences without words like "tears" and "misery" and "love" punctuating it. Dangerous, yes. Still the heartache. The stillness of it. The way it rears it head so unobtrusively. Tugging ever so constantly. So many things I wish I could have done differently. I probably didn't tell you I loved you enough. I should have.

And I wonder if I should post this. We are supposed to not look back and construct what-ifs. I just hope I can find a semblance of peace someday. I miss you. I don't deserve it to say it though.

You make me smile too
and cry, yeah mostly cry though
I have never come across anyone who can make me cry
 like a bawling newborn baby the way you do
Though I am smiling despite the tears
I am smiling because you are.
I believe that is called
Tileological, atleast that's what we studied
In Political Thought today,
When the ending is known by the beginning
 Or maybe I have got the meaning all skewed up
While applying it in this context.

My cousin was watching Wall-E on TV when I looked up from my book. I watched it for a while and realised it's too hard to watch it now, it brings up happy memories which I can no longer bear, it brings up images of you laughing and excited to share it with me. I hope you are far happier than I could ever make you.

Because it feels so good to know
that you are doing so well
And I am so proud of you from so far away.
Thank you for letting me know.

How can you talk of forgetting
When simply everything is a reminder of you?
I don't know how to write about you
about us without inviting misery.
You are still the last thing I think about
before I go to sleep.
I miss you so much
I don't even tell myself.

Once again the house is full
The curtains have been drawn in all the rooms
Sunlight finds itself in niches of the past
In darkened rooms covered tables and chairs
Musty children books the eldest girl poured over
How they grow so awkwardly and suddenly
All at once
And how they all leave
Heartbreakingly turning into themselves,
 An entity entirely separate from me
But they are home now,
All of them
 Even if it is just for a few days
 They have revived their old quarrels
They all run around the house like children
Taunting teasing tackling each other
Bickering and complaining about each other
The youngest goes to the garden to observe insects
The middle one is listening to music on her headphones
 The eldest runs to the terrace to watch the sunset falling over the hills
There is an aching joy in just watching them be
And that is good enough for today.

Slow writing and quick erasing

In my book I write you

In  dark corners, all over the mud walls
 in the rice fields of late rain in the crooked house by the river

 In the  bougainvillea by the fence under the pillows
 in the shadows of candles and kerosene lamps

In the tulsi of the courtyard where
 mother performs the morning prayers
 In the evening rites of Sanamahi where I offer incense

In the filtering sunlight through the fine white curtains

In echoes  made by children returning home from school

 Kicking dust and sucking on popsicles

In the ache and agony of piercing glass pieces

Suddenly dropped on a thirsty midnight

In the blood that is spilled, violently 

In the bugle played by the wedding band

In the tale of Khamba-Thoibi

I write you in all the places you have never seen,

You have never been,
And then I erase you
From the pavements, from the cigarette ashes
From the paraphernelia of pain
The sudden brake of the car
When the afternoon bursts into a thunderstorms
In my slow writing and the quick erasing
In the trappings of memory
I am beginning to forget the immediacy of you.
When you were just a hand reach away from me.

In between

In between shifting furniture
And arranging my books,
In between clearing away the glasses
And washing my hands
In between the calls I don't attend to
and the ghosts of old lives
In between suppressing hot tears
And learning how to smile
In between the auto rides,
the metro rides, the ricksha rides
In between the things that remain
Which has your name
In between the days I don't cry
And the ones which grasps me my chest
And my lungs collapse, my ribs fall in,
In between yesterday and forever,
You will live and do all the things
I will never see you do again.

Where all things begin

Back home,
The roads turn into mud with the approach of the rains
And Ebok goes to work in the paddy fields
Once again she tells me the phuga wari
which frightened me as a child
Back home,
The air is cool, afternoons are drowsy,
The world gives way to the swaying bamboo trees
You could almost be the child who gave her heart
Much too recklessly.
Back home,
There is a sweetness and ache in all that I see
Because back home is a place I will never be
That place suspended in time has lapsed
So much has crossed over to the other side
You are transfixed by how little
your meagre life is of consequence
In the larger scheme of things.
But back home is where all things begin again.

I just have to let you know
 For the last time
 That I love you.
And that I wish you well.
I love you.
I love you so much.
Please take very good care of yourself.

The only way I can reconcile with your absence
Is to allow myself the hope that
I will somehow, someday, somewhere
Find you again
Maybe in some hidden corner on the edge of the earth
Maybe one rainy day we will find ourselves
taking shelter under the same roof
Run into each other at a departmental store
I am willing to believe in coincidences
I am willing to believe in just about anything
To see you again.
Years and years later,
I imagine you full of a life I missed out on
Running into your arms,
I would feel as though I have finally
 arrived home after years of exile.
And as a final act of kindness
Please do not say otherwise.
Please leave me this much.

Was it me you were speaking to,
The last thing you wrote.
Or should I stop writing?

All that you said,

I wish that too in 

that sweet moment 

when the world is wiped clean 

and anything is possible,

before sleep takes over.

That is all

You,
I start at you and I don't know the rest.
I say it over and over
And I don't know how to proceed
My words are failing me.
Please don't go, I want to say
But I erase it
Please be alright,
 I will say instead.

You are not here anymore.
That is all.

You

You 

will always be you 

in ways that bereaves me

Now sealed from each other

My ears pressed to the walls of the room

You occupy, worlds that never meet

Just felt intuitively

Through lost currents of the heart.

That is how the world shatters.

That is how the world spins.

If I say your name at one end of the world
 Would you hear me at the other end?

Sick to the stomach

Afraid to even write here, 

Still in love, still in fear

A series of emotions I am

Unable to entangle

but mostly the debilitating, weakening, sinking 

 falling that stands out

The dread of just falling without landing

without an end

Unable to write, unable to eat

In the mistaken belief 

That you would peel off my skin

 and I would punctuate you life.

Silence, so much silence its beginning

 to reverberate into loud nothingness

Still so much to stitch back together

With needles, only the sharpest would do

Vast expanse of space now,

No plans, no date marked

Blank pages, nothing much to write about

A book suddenly made blank

Un-inked, wiped out of trace

Words undone

You have already done so much of trying

To claw yourself back into what was

Don't you see the deep red  blood you drew from him?

It is time to leave. 

Muffled sobs because your mother sleeps beside you.

What you wouldn't give to be in an empty house

To cry your eyes out

To live your life out in the never-ending desert

 Searching for what you have lost 

And will never get back

Still the tug of the heart to overcome.

I hope to one day 

Love you without hurting 

To love you with pure grace and goodwill 

And love you from a distance 

To love you for the wonderful dream 

that you had turned out to be.

Crying your heart out

The Indian summer bore down on you
You had an urgency in your walk
The prospect of happiness gave a sudden rush to your head
A half-smile to your lips which you tried to suppress
But there is only so much you can hide within yourself
Even though it was something  you did ever so often
You remained the unprepared victim of unannounced happiness
I still remember the mint green scarf you wore that day
How you skipped steps as you climbed  up the stairs, so eager,
 your heart bursting, exploding, as though the minute moments of your life
 could change the fate of the entire world, as though
 the world itself would burst into flames
if you reached the door too late,
and how you saw the lock on the door
and  your heart sank
And you ran out carrying with you
Misgivings of being denied the perfection
that was to be that moment
Unable to bear it no more, you sat down
Under the canopy of the first stars
And that's where I found you
 Crying your heart out.

I don't know how many more days will be drowned
 in tears before I can let you go
And how many sleepless nights pass
waiting for the clock to strike 6 in the morning
My heart attuned to the timing of your arrival
And I am writing this in the hope that it will cure me
As spells to exorcise all that I have loved and lost
You most of all
Like the pain of countries partitioned,
Torn apart and bloodied
You and I,
Now just You
 and I
Separately
without being held by each other
untangled limbs
I worry about you
Still
Even though I have no claim on you
Love, like other habits, die hard.

A prayer for you

My mother told me to not give my heart so young

That I wasn't like the other young ladies

 I grew up with in school

That I was supposed to achieve a lot more

How was I to know I would find you

And that you would take my hand

And show me a whole new world?

But now that I have lost you

 By my own undoing

 I want you to heal

And even though I am no longer yours

I want to help you

Somehow anyhow with words

 With silence, even in my absence

I want you to have the best the world can offer

I want you to have the rains that you love,

And the little things that make you happy

I hope you can find solace in them,

In your movies and your music

I don't have anything else to offer you

Except a prayer for you.

You are your own person now

You belong to no one

Untangled from another person. 

Brutally. Glass shatteringly.

Breathe. Cry a little less.

Can you do that for me?please?

I know how much it hurts,

How it was never meant to be this way

And how can you possibly un-love someone?

But things are they way they are

The sooner you accept it the better 

You want to learn how to forget 

Is that it?

You want to wipe it clean 

All the memories, especially the good ones 

Because they hit you so hard

At how perfect it once was 

Because there are so many things that I couldn't say
When I should have
Such as it never happened that day
Even though you found so many witnesses for it
Such as I let you make so many assumptions
Because I knew I had lost you
And it didn't make sense anymore to clarify
Every single poem was about you
So please don't take that away from me
That I really wanted my whole life with you
Till you brushed me away
That I will always always love you
In the most intensely overwhelmingly insane way
It starts and ends with a cigarette like you said
And all of it,all of us ends in rain.

What would I do without you?

Everything reminds me of you
I never knew it took so much effort to breathe without you,
Waking up and not finding you beside me
Even years from now, if I walked through the college gates
I would always think of you walking me back,
Not running for classes, not the friends I made
You are there in everything that breathes,
Like the wind breaking at my window last night
To which I laid awake whole night listening to because I couldn't sleep
Because I had ripped out my own heart it seems
One recent scene emerges
Your eyes are closed and the wind is falling on your face
We are matched in white, the world brushes past us
It moves me
To have you
To have you holding me
Like dying thoughts
There is so much to wish for
What would I do without you?

excerpts

........I opened the cover and saw that he had written in a beautiful cursive handwriting “ To M, By now I have become more you and you more I. Always, K” . I was surprised to find no “sorry” or no “love” mentioned anywhere, having always associated romance to have been bound only by those words.I was discovering new terms of romance, of loving and being loved, of loving while hating, of loving even after it was all over, of love that faded and love that remained, of love that we carry with us throughout our loves. By now, I have become more you and you more I.

You have settled into yourself

You have settled into yourself
Wrapped yourself in bones and skin
You emerge with tremulous eyes, as though on the edge of tears
and a beautiful mouth unsure of speech
To never be anyone else
Confined to the childhood that is yours,
love that is yours, loss that is yours
Have you ever seen a body, wrapped in worn-out shawls ,
rushing past in the pavement
and felt a twinge in your heart
of a life that you narrowly missed possessing?
And to love someone, like I love you,
 So specifically, How does that work?
Would I not love you if you shed your skin and bones,
and all the debris of your mind,
all the things that you said
and all the songs that you sang?

Your smile half-asleep

Most days are laid out in front of me

Like freshly ironed sheets

Everything seems so new again

 Unfamiliar, Uprooted

 A part of me feels too old to learn the tricks all over again

To reconcile myself to the new ways

 To the new world of yours which you inhabit so effortlessly

I long for the familiar old room

The walls that have heard so many of our whispers, our tears,

The window that saw us through many rains, unspeakable heat,

The old ways, the old life.

Most of all I miss those Sunday mornings

Walking to your place before the world woke up,

 before you woke up,

climbing into your bed,

And you would smile half asleep,

and that meant everything to me.

.