पहला स्टार्टप और पहले प्यार में
एक ही फ़र्क़ होता है —

एक स्टार्टप करने के बाद दूसरी बार
स्टार्टप करने में ज़रा सा भी डर नहीं लगता है

लेकिन एक बार प्यार करने के बाद
हर बार प्यार करने में बड़ा डर लगता है

वो क्या है ना मौत तो दोनों में भयानक ही आती है
बस प्यार में थोड़ी मौत रह सी जाती है

-

As you sleep next to me,
I eavesdrop on your breaths.
It speaks the language
of dreams,
I can bet.

I inch closer
and sniff your exhale,
hoping to catch
your dream
by its tail.

-

There's so little space
for my heart inside of you
that I have to break it
before entering.

-

I never thought
long distance
could turn into a
trigonometric problem.

I live on the sunny side.
Every time you visit me
in summer,
you end up complaining,

your tan = my sin.

-

HICCUP

I hold my heart
in my throat
and let it throb
non-stop.

That's how
I make believe
that you haven't
yet forgot.

-

Why do you always
write about loss,
you ask.
Why not give love
a chance?

Isn't loss nothing
but love? I ask.
It's only when you lose
that you find
how much you loved.

-

I offered you
my cologne bottle
minutes before
we parted.
The memory of smell,
I said, quite often
proves to be
important.

You declined,
saying,
you didn't need
reminders
of things
not meant
to be forgotten.

-

My love is binary.

It is only those
who don't appreciate
its intensity at 1
that end up missing it terribly
when it switches to 0, or none.

It is unfortunate
that it doesn't know how to go back
from 0 to 1.
Anything multiplied with 0
remains 0, didn't you learn?

-

Your first guitar lesson
was on a pen and paper,
where I taught you
the physics that goes behind
making each of those strings
sing. I wondered if
it made sense when I said
that the frequency
is inversely proportional
to the length: the lower I go,
the higher it gets.

"Ah, it's just like me,"
you said.

-

Ever since
you came into my life,
I have started keeping
flowers with me.
I send a flower
to sweet folks now
in place of
my throbbing red heart
that I'd send earlier.

It is more apt,
now that my heart is taken,
and the flower
has more heart in it.

-