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.