Words (04/08/2015)

i still

remember that night

when the boughs started breaking

like promises and you slept

on a pile

of dried up leaves

waiting to be raked

by the uncertainty of

another passing season.

 

now i didn’t know much

about mowing a lawn

but i learned that only grass

had a kind of blade

which didn’t make you bleed

and you said,

it’s been so long that

i’ve forgotten how spring feels like

 

so i started slipping words

in the vase you kept on your nightstand

hoping they’d bloom into poems one day

from all the dew dripping

down your eyelash

from the times

you’d stand across the looking glass

wondering how you would look like

if you tied your hair in a bun,

but you had none.

 

spring never came.

 

soon, days transpired into nights,

the nights became nuances

amidst dawn and dusk

leaving you confused

between the darkness

that had just arrived and

the light which had caught rust

 

and radiation

became the remedy

for everything malignant

but your lips were the only thing

which never metastasized

into smiles,

and i know how you loved to smile.

 

you’d smile every time it rained.

 

you’d say,

that rain is the sky’s way of holding on

to the earth despite the distance

and that droplets were liquid strings

connected to tin cans on both ends

and that’s how gods and mortals make amends.

you see, nothing falls in vain

you’d say

 

so i wrote you a cloud

because pillows weren’t soft enough

to bury your face

for all those rainy days

because your windows were slowly becoming

colour blind from all the grey

and now i know how curtains feel

when the sun pierces through their skin

kissing the foot of your bed

reminding you how every day is one day less.

 

but i am no magician

to make you a cape

stitched from all the cure

so you could endure,

for flying off is better

than fading away,

so i have nothing more than my words

to alleviate your pain

take them,

take them

so i can write you a mountain

with letters coated in vertigo

so you would never dare to look down

when  i frown or become hellbound

because i’m still learning

to hang bullseye patches

on my blind spots,

to hide

your exit wounds.