Time doesn't stop for us

Time doesn't stop for us,
it accelerates and swirls
We maintain an unbearable distance
between us, for propriety's sake.
We still catch each other's glances
and smile from across the room,
always heavily aware of each other's presence
even when we aren't in each other's
line of sight; the secrets that lovers keep
And whenever evening draws to a close
my heart sinks like that time in school
when Sunday outings used to end
and there was the unmistakable
dread of the drudgery of Monday.
Our hearts sink in perfect congruity.
And you ask me if I am alright,
like you always do.
I leave with a whispered goodbye,
my heart breaking as I turn away from you;
no goodbye hugs and kisses
 for lovers like you and I.

Toothache

The first flush of desire

is akin to a toothache,

you are constantly running

your tongue over it,

fixated on the acute pain.

Humming of your heart

What we want from lovers
is their stories, all the details
that make up the person we yearn for
We want to know the first time
you scalded your knee, the first
girl you fell in love with,
even that distance you keep with
your father, and were you loved?
We want to know
how you appeared in my life
and changed everything even by
the most mundane of encounters.

We want to know the feel of your skin,
already our hands lying in proximity on the table
before us seem to shoot electric currents,
we want to know how it feels like
to sink into your world and then swim up again,
we want so much all at once,
it's as though we set ourselves
up for disappointment,
Sometimes we think the whole damn world
is contained in a person,
in lovers who aren't yet lovers,
What we want is as incoherent as this
poem, full of fits and starts,
of restless waiting and longing,
the whole world suspended in the wake of
the whirlwind of whatever-this-insanity-is.
And what I wouldn't give to be beside you again,
on the road to somewhere, nowhere,
leaning against you, listening to
the humming of your heart.

Grief is intimate

Grief is intimate in a way
joy can never be,
It chokes you out of breath,
It carves rivulets of hollow-nothings
in the cavity of your chest
By now you know one can
grieve for oneself, selfishly, childishly.
Grief lurks in waits for you
when you are hanging onto\a mugful
of tea one uneventful afternoon
to take possession of you,
to make you realise the gravity
of your loss.
Even that rage you carried
with you all of last year,
it dissipated like everything else,
lost, irretrievably lost,
shedding parts of you
that you thought you couldn't
possibly live without.
It's as though the world has finally
opened its gates for you
and you are hurtling
in a pace and direction
you can't quite control.
And those mental images that
you still hold on to somehow,
Childhood relics that haunt you,
asking you if you really found
the great adventure you were looking for?













you 

Stay

We started with awkward smiles

now we are asking about dream houses,

City or countryside?

Collecting intimate details

as lovers do(but we aren't lovers,

not yet)

In this little town, admidst rumblings

of history and misfortunes,

we have somehow found 

in each other

a reason to stay.

I could love you

But you are settled in your ways,

I am still forming myself

And haven't really decided on

the life I want.

So I tell myself

not to be swept away

by the storm of your arrival.

I could love you

but these are years of my life

when I will always put myself first.

You tell me that you haven't felt such

desperation to come home as you do now,

But home is not where

I imagined I would be in my twenties.

I still let myself have an alternate 

storyline though,

one in which we could have ended up 

together and I wouldn't be so worried

about rushing into a storm

I can't control.

the one in which

you asked me to stay
and I did.

and I did.

Oh it does

Maybe that is how life chooses you,

when you are reading a book

wondering how to turn your life around

And it does,

Oh it does.

Desire

You are always going away

Somewhere, inhabiting a life

I know so little of,

And I am always retreating a little 

into myself.

I could say a number of things

For instance, I have often wondered 

how it would be like to kiss you,

but there is so much at stake.

We are always surrounded by friends,

a precaution you have made a point to take

at a place like ours;

small-town stifling atmosphere

where people talk

and anything can be a fodder for scandals.

I long for you even as I sit next 

to you in the car,

the air tense with our mutual desire;

I wonder if other people can sense it too.

Some days you give me hints,

But for all your years, you seem

As bewildered and confused

On where we stand.

By now it has grown into a fever,

consuming me like cancer,

By now you send me notes,

all along your travels,

probably missing me a little.

What remains of us

What remains of us?
Not the unaccounted-for-love,
Not the devastating fights
Just plain wonder
at how it had overwhelmed us,
Struck us like a disease in the beginning
and left us so drained in the end.
I am no longer searching for you
in other people
and that is something.
What remains of us;
a worn-out pair of shoes,
a few drops of perfume,
and something that could pass for kindness.