As you speak to me, love,
with winter in your words,
Christmas in your eyes,
I see how cities live.
I wouldn’t forget your jhumkas or the nose ring,
the magnificence with which they adorned you,
in what space and time.
The bonfire sits right beside you,
but you shiver in your maroon shawl still.
Beneath, you clasp a book, you tell me—
brittle brown pages, a flimsy excuse for a spine—
some translated Persian story I’ve never heard of.
You tell me hype puts you off books,
and literature is the truest account of humans,
much truer than history shall ever be,
that art is a form of rebellion,
must never try to impress,
that empathy must drive us all.
Your hands, love, are chillier than mine.
They’re little, ordinary hands, you say,
but no.
Conversations of deceptions, betrayals, loss and grief,
and I keep wondering how one gets to hold them,
then dare to lose?
But you’ve been hurt. Haven’t we all?
Doesn’t the tenderness that love starts with
die a silent, unnoticed death?
You’ve never tasted cherries nor wine.
Cherry Wine, you say, was written for you.
And coffee, love, is the supreme beverage, we agree.
but I love my latte, and you like yours cold.
Your metaphors, love, so layered and deep.
Your poetry’s a maze you’ll swoon if solved.
Perhaps you love to be found, just not so easily.
The night ages, but I’m yet to learn,
so many little stories that make you up—
stories that’ll will stick to the cafés, restaurants,
streets, and bridges where they happened,
and live through time unaltered, untouched.
Through the beautiful time that shall be ours,
and if you leave, through that hell too.
Perhaps that’s how cities live,
through memories and stories,
of people in people,
of you in me.
Image Credits: Aviv Perets
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