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.