Gorvachove, Keonjhar, 19 May 2025
Things fall in the cracks between the days.
I lose little things only I miss:
My google password, old photographs,
Poems I had left incomplete,
The exact location of contraband correspondence,
Keys to old locks, and sometimes,
The locks themselves.
Little pieces break away from me
Like chunks from the brittle shoreline
Under the barrage of a persistent flood.
Already I fumble the names of familiar lanes.
That café, where we sat, late at night,
Sipping coffee, laughing, while people stared,
Its name, details, all escape me now.
The names of flowers, the smell of seasons,
The lingering taste of happy childhood
And addresses of old homes
Fall away like stars in the night.
I know when it is time, I shall lose
The contours of your face, your smile,
Till even you cease to appear
In the canvas of my consciousness.
I shall stand on the edge of a dark abyss,
An astronaut by the precipice of a black hole,
Leaving his familiar galaxies
For universes untraveled, unexplored!
I shall peel off all that I was in this world,
Till at long last I lose, even myself,
Like a dog shakes off the persistent sand,
On the shores of a vast, rolling sea.
(Once upon a time in Phobjikha Valley, Bhutan)
