He paints with salt on the sea
With ochre on a kiln

They scribble with ink on feathers
Smear earth on earth

I sit under a roof as high as half of me
Washing floodsites

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False, floating, true

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What next? It has been long enough and i did not plan an aftermath. Maybe i can ask a marathon runner, what he wishes to do once he takes the last lunge to finish the race or a mother that births a child or a man that repays the last installment of a decade old home loan or a woman getting rid of a tumor she has had for 5 years now or the little survivor of a prolonged earthquake that made her tether to random objects that remain standing around her. Her arms stretched to cities far away that cannot relax now, her aching legs flapping on the wall like the paper calendar that is forced next to her legs with a God frame on top of it since she learnt how to walk. I wish to ask the ageing young man in the other room if he likes her often visit like sinus attacks at 3 in the morning or longs like the ageing old woman in the other room taking care of an aged old mother, hoping this to be a viral fever to come with a dead end?

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Like 587 spiders hanging over to avenge the death of one of theirs'.
Like 9630 steps missing the 10k mark.
Like 1760 days of the degree coming to an end.
Like everything that is almost perfect but not perfect.
Almost real but not real.
Almost lovely but not lovely.
I wish to almost see you someday
In almost the same city but not the same city
Almost with someone else but not someone else
I wish to almost scrape you away from my skin
Almost believe that this isn't an afterlife
Almost reverse the lapels of my breath
Almost scratch the walls
And almost still survive.

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तार सप्तक

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On the flip side
I will boil some vocab
And steam an ice cream
To be served piping hot
With a pang of disbelief
I will fold bedsheets
With ghee indeed

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On such days when my arms turn into yours rocking me to sleep at 3 a.m., feet turn into branches coiling themselves around each other forming a nest to hide inside. A nest not too tightly knit to choke me like a Covid patient, not too loose to avoid a touch like a measles one. Small brittle locks scattered over the forehead reaching out to kiss the eyes, failing miserably sway like the loose bedsheet threads on the sides peeping under the bed.

On such days i recall summoning the sea, the moon, the mountains, the Gods to ease if not end it all. i don't know who among them actually can, collectively or individually. I now let your limbs attached to my body dig holes in the flesh to let the time escape, expand and collapse onto us.

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Of the same degree
As helplessness of a flying lizard
Or of the flying fox
Blinded by its summersaults
The extreme efforts of a kangaroo hop
Or a sloth's unconditional walk
Perhaps of an octopus donating his extra hearts
Is my intense desire to swim to you
If i start walking today, and the time stops
Hope to reach by the end of lifelong.

How funny it is that I have run out
Of human metaphors
Or an emote that can express at par
From the depth of a lyrical lagoon
I rest the case in the lap of a nursery rhyme
For animals' lack far-sightedness
And thus can embark on an infinite war.

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पोस्टमार्टम

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