A red sky,
dissolves in blue
the sun’s hue
turns to a dripped nectar.
The leaves do not wither,
The soil is never dry.
The air smells like
someone I knew,
It was a dream,
too good to be true.

A red sky,
dissolves in blue
the sun’s hue
turns to a dripped nectar.
The leaves do not wither,
The soil is never dry.
The air smells like
someone I knew,
It was a dream,
too good to be true.

It had just rained last night.
You called me twice
You came to my garden in that linen white shirt 2 in the night.
The ground was wet, will stones blooming and cursing our toes.
The plants were drenched in a smell of petrichor.
You should not have wore the white shirt
and shown me those breasts wet and erect.
Our lips drew wars for blood, the tongues wrestled for saliva and hands traced every inch.
We forgot the stones, as if pain was an asylum
those were not the leisurely moans, I felt the trembling back but you hands made me swallow.
A bite on the bosoms and you turned into an animal, taking my hands inside the shirt
Neighbours were asleep, they wish they wouldn’t.
My hands helped you with touch as you stroked me so well,the hands moving over the warm breasts, turned cold and wet from the rain
The touch moves as you let out a moan.
I swallow a room in my mind,
to digest its origins.
Its woodwork churns and mollifies,
I could feel my fingers full of sawdust and laughter,
lost handprints(possible mine), from the dying
furniture and the floor caress my head.
You will always find a way to meet yourself,
once you are forgotten by everyone.
The lights are turning dim,
I do not know, how to serve light in a tall glass for myself?
Can you teach my fist to hold sands of darkness?
I shall learn somehow, to sprinkle when necessary.
You can learn anything, you want.
But remember to put off the light in the end.
The garden screams with its emptiness,
and my eyes could bear the shrieks.
Is this is how I forget your touch?
Without music? Without sleep?

you are most beautiful
when you sleep–
when the coffee-toned notes of your skin
brew a silent language.
while your lips are too tired to doubt my eyes
the dark mist of your breath trickles down my neck
I wait, staring unwaveringly.
outside there is a trail of rain,
drop by drop , this wind whispers
from the willow’s cage.
moonlight traverses the silence between us
every pause is sedimentary,
the longest distance between us tonight
is a raging river, its depth
a soft silver sea.
come : dissolve, disappear, dissociate,
a distance is only a measure,
when eyes can see.
when we submit ourselves
to absence of light :
these voices become unending images.
the moss by the window grows up
presumptuous contentment ferments itself.
This air is magically much lighter today
I remember this forgotten dream
where each rain drop
becomes a spiraling sigh of someone I knew.
Searching for my heart,
I scramble in linen white bedsheets,
my eyes rummage the room for a mirror
for this face must be a void :
an artist’s regretful hallucination
a dreamer’s revered loss.
We smile the best,
when the mind’s eye forgets the face.
I should settle for a second slumber
to grin like a Cheshire cat,
the sky turns murderous grey
a lovely occasion? Isn’t it?
What’s the opposite of an echo?
Lay your head on my chest,
Under this waxy paper moon and
Tell me what stories hide
In the constillations of your freckles.
Let my fingertips trace over
The epics in the old soul.
Some spines are cracked,
And pages torn– but you,
You always remember
Which are my favorites.
“Have we done this before?”
“Tracing ourselves in one another?”
“Yes”, you say
and that mellow smile of yours brews
a breeze smelling of thousand dreams,
I collapse into them. Slowly, again.
Shashank Bhardwaj
