I'd make a fine stone in
the Duck and Drake game -
skimming through the surface
with the bare necessary contact,
to sink when slowed down;
you had seen me slowing down
and sink with a faint splash,
the moment you said it was better
that we meet in letters,
best we do not meet at all;
or did I say that -
I do not remember;
perhaps yes, for you never
said a word which could reconcile
me with my self which I left that evening
on the shores of the big city
and hurried back, leaving you
to go round and around -
the cab guy picking customers and dropping -
nobody ever finding their true destination
but only places to go.
Ever since I have housed myself in
the crowded cafes where
people smoke cheap/semi-expensive cigarettes
and sip on tea/coffee/lime-tea/black -tea/ginger-lime-tea
and talk-
the talking never ends and it is an all right feeling sitting
in the bright light, knowing that people have things to say when
I can vaguely recollect my thoughts.
If I was a Jean-Paul Sartre, I would avoid pondering over your thoughts
like the beer mug in front of his eyes at which he would avoid looking for
half an hour straight,
but I am not a French existentialist philosopher
and reading four and a half dead poets a day,
plunging myself into nicotine only tires me enough
to fall asleep,
and this is when you enter my dreams.
Your arrival is agreeable to me and I always
find myself sitting confused in one of those galleries
which my mind constructs -
a glittering set for the presence of
the two of us -
faces of other people in my dreams,
I do not recall.
We kiss and I am almost convinced that it is real -
there is no room to feel otherwise;
much like the first time when I kissed you
and you moaned a little, quivered a bit;
here we have it all going - our tongues slithering our soul -
teeth biting our nerves - this is how a kiss should be;
if there was a thing called a 'perfect kiss',
then our kissing portrait would make rounds of
the internet under the Creative Commons license -
a picture which young undergrads would use
in their assignment -
perhaps frame it on the wall
and when the grades come out, they would
get wasted with their pocket money in one of the
many sun-lit bars where the music is loud and
kisses are stolen behind the closed doors of
the public washroom.
You leave me in my dreams for a moment or two
and I get restless again, taking fast, counted steps to find you
and you arrive again -
such a relief it is to see you, and know
that it is a relief for you to see me too;
to life I wake up, knowing that you are far away and
that I could still be with you in less than three hours from now,
but if I should - I do not know.
I step outside and aggressively look for a cigarette -
a certain tangible object so willing to burn for me
and wrap myself in a jacket like I once
wrapped you in my arms.
Your warmth was more than
my jacket bought at a fifty-percent
discount could provide,
I thought you felt the same
but perhaps
I was not of your size
or you did not like winter
anyway.