The Refuge

What if, you fall in love with an open wound? What if, you get addicted to the tinge of pain so much that when the wound starts to heal, you miss the anguish it was causing? What if, the lesions serve as an allegory to a memory so riveting that you want to relive the blow with every single beat of your heart?

Maybe I have said this before but the fact that there are still so many unfinished poems strewn all over the floor that we could have finished together, makes me sad. I still imagine both of us sitting by a fireplace on a cold winter night, picking up verse off the tiled floors and transforming them into clouds of music. You would have reached out and stirred the embers and made those clouds pour drops of dark ale into our chalices. We would have then cuddled and dozed off in a quilt on the carpet, listening to the wind whistling through the trees.

Titanic did not have to crash into the same iceberg twice to sink. We crashed into ours years ago and have been desolate ever since. I don’t know if it is the reminiscence of the fork in the path that is more painful or the knowledge of being confined to a window that only allows limited sunshine into the lonely, dark alleys of our lives that wrecks my hope.

At times, I seek comfort in the noise blaring out of a speaker to douse the silence in my head but there aren’t enough ways to bludgeon my incoherence and beat it into a shape that the people around me can recognize. Only if there was an abyss deep enough for me to be lost forever, I would never shake myself out of your intoxication.

Of course, grief can only last till the time you deny it a vent. Once you embrace your sorrow and make it a part of your soul, it grants you excuses to live through the day. It allows you to be absorbed in the monotony of the life in a way that it melts your insides and blends you in the morning mist. It even permits you a wry smile that doesn’t light up the eyes but just sits there as a legal document that you feel obligated to sign but never coax yourself to read.

It was gratifying to find shade under the same tree today even if it took us several decades to find it again. I take strength from your conviction and would like to believe that we will be able to find ourselves a roof too. However, for the sake of making it through this night I will seek refuge in the same silence within, my glass of bourbon and the following verse from Krishan Adeeb:

जब भी आती है तेरी याद कभी शाम के बाद
और बढ़ जाती है अफ़सुरदादिली शाम के बाद

दिल धड़कने की सदा थी कि तेरे कदमों की
किसकी आवाज़ सरे जाम सुनी शाम के के बाद