12 October 2021

We Once Dreamed The Same Dream

I never meant to hurt you, I keep saying,

It is just that I am missing my skin. 

How many times will we wake up 

On that balcony, the wild good drenched

Around us, the mistimed monsoon

Arriving all at once? 

Namma Bengaluru — ours, the whole thing

In the time when there was no time,

In the summer when there was no rain.

Making maps out of pavement, 

The sweat and chai and dream mingling

As we slept in the garden, one body

At last, a kind of final frontier.

You did not mean to be an indictment, 

I know,  but that is love. I did not mean

To be a wound, but that is madness.

Its hurried metastasis, now my throat,

My aorta, my name. 

And how to say, now that the banality 

Of it is clear to us both, that we once

Dreamed the same dream, for a never

Ending rain, before we learned our fear

For the inchoate, a stove left

On in the night, leaking death

And divine.