Valley. Flatten. Fools.

Pic: Ankita Shreeram

Valley.

The swirling mist

Joined hands with sedate, grey clouds

To hide the valley from our eager eyes

Our thirsty eyes

Our city-weary eyes

Maybe if we’d all dived in

With our city-weakened bodies

And primitive desires

We might have made a hole

In the singing mist

And our laden souls

To allow,

A little joy inside.

Flatten.

Touch and go. That's all it was

But I still believe

At a meandering turn,

I might find you

Waiting.

Holding a smile in your hands

And an embrace in your eyes.

Time will flatten

Like a deck of cards falling

And it’ll be like

We never stopped singing together.

Fools

By the door of her stone house, she stood

Unsmiling, watching, sedate

Her sari was a dull maroon

And her children were a happy brown

Their merriness and her silence

Both blissful, yet different

So different

From the unrest in my heart.

They played with sticks and stones

And she, with paddy and hot coals

We’re fools, you and I

We play with people and thoughts instead

And we feel the needles poke in bed

Our sleep as murky as wakefulness

Guilt seeping between different levels of consciousness

Dissonance causing cracks in the armour

We so proudly wear.

I want to be naked

Mentally.

Soulfully.

Bodily.

Because You will cloak me

The one I seek

The one I see in the dreams I don’t remember

And walk with in the walks my selves don’t return from

You will show me

That we were never meant to hide.