Written by Shailja Bahety
After so many months
My pen has greeted a blank life
It convinced me,
But I don’t want to inject its void.
With the stars, moon or sky
All that signified you once
Yet there is something
Breathing on my chest,
A stained barren map.
Your feet were the waves
Of the ocean, I kept diving in
And your limbs, the bridges
I kept riding.
Your palms were the beaches
Where I built a castle of hope,
The wind wafting around me
Were your fingers and toes.
The rain held me evergreen
When you used to sprinkle the water
From your hair willfully
To drench me into you again.
Your face lived a universe
With the stars, twinkled eyes.
The song that the sun once sung
Your lips kept whistling all the time,
And your heart was the city
I kept roaming around.
But the city got torn from the map
And you took it with you.
It was near the centre,
Now the hole is breathing through
I tried to fix it with tapes and glue
But it was never you.
Whenever anything shattered and broke,
It was you who always built it up again
And now all of a sudden there’s no you.
And here I am,
After so many months
My pen has greeted a blank life
But today I’ll fill it with all that broke in me
Once you told me to let it all out,
That is damage in you
Let yourself be broken and cracked
Because that’s how the crevices take shape
And when love will penetrate inside you,
You’ll heal yourself.
I know as a star
You’re now on the map of constellation too
And I caught you smiling merrily
Because you know
I found my long lost city too.
