by Sahana Mukherjee

 

 

“There is nothing else. It reminds me of some tale,
stay with me to remember,
it reminds me
of where I was going without you.”
– Richard Siken

I
How does one love? You asked me
when I’d thought we were already
in love.
Walk down the road you cross
every day to meet me,
and go back to your house.
Stay there
with your father, alone
all monsoon. Do not come out
once.

Next time we meet, just tell me
if you can speak,
tell me how you feel
and you’ll know you’ve loved.

II
The last time it rained,
I pulled out sheets of wasted paper
and started writing to you —
It had seemed I’d never write again:

I don’t know how you’re doing,
but I do hope we go beyond
the famines of thought
and love soon, so no one would
shut the windows in Monsoon,
and we would jump straight
out of them
if we wanted to live.

Look at the sky, though.
Look at my balcony.
Look at my mother sitting there,
living, hoping she too could jump
straight out of it.

III
You are late, again.
I am waiting in a yellow lit
room. A father and a daughter
beside me. I am reading of a
woman who likes to change
her face for her lover every
night. Her lover has no escape
from it.

I think of a poem. I think of writing
it all down on her face,
each crescent, a moon. Each night,
a new face.

I wait for you as my father waits
for the hills. And, waiting, each night,
he asks me different questions.

Here, on the woman’s face, let me
write down two of them
for you:

What is this world so full of light?
Why are we still in it?

Her face is fleeting, remember.
Her face is fleeting, so are you.

 

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Illustration by Mavni