1.
You wave au revoir on a brand new January morning as my taxi circles past your walled face.
I leave wondering if you treasure me at all,
if you hurt for my presence in the dead of the night as I do yours,
if you are warm, cold, strange, shut, shallow uncaring,
if you will walk into the arms of another woman soon after,
if you will walk into the arms of multiple women soon after,
meticulously planning your weekends,
segregating, separating, serenading,
capsuling people into closed compartments,
like you keep your files stacked neatly at work.
2.
But before that, we kissed with masks on in the elevator
and before that, we ate omelettes with buttered toast amid sips of Cappuccino,
while before that we lay in bed all night, your essence playing Jal-tarang on my skin,
my pores spilling of you, your body exuding of me
and before that we listened to songs that smelt of the sweetness of our rural heartlands, holding each other only as lovers do,
nuzzling, necking, rubbing noses, and other juvenile things
and before that, I ached for you, even though you sat right across me,
in the armchair twirling your whiskey glass, through half-closed eyes
3.
My empty hands longed for the fullness of yours,
my body yearned for the sustenance of your embrace,
my soul watched the ripping away of myself from myself,
the bruising of my lips, the falling of the chips,
the slow ascent into pale clouds of paradise,
as your whispers wiped out all soft and loud sounds of the universe,
although that night at some crucial point, I dreamt that the ice cubes in your glass,
turned my beating heart into a tiny piece of glazed glacier
and I lay frozen in a lake of distilled spirits.
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