In his name.

“love gains an eventual life, bearing each leaf on a barren branch, till one day it’s a tree.”

Part-1

In his name, against the mirror as she stands
and looks quizzically into her crystal black iris.
in them she finds some her own, some strangers.
She’s looking for shapes, may be a face.
She shuts her eyes and stands…
stands for the one who has poured himself into an endless wineglass,
for her to drink.
She’s drinking down her image,
feeling the romantic high gush through her veins,
diluting their color from green to red…
like a fish out of water, her pulse points thump,
wanting to break free, like a Jeanie in a bottle, a bird in a cage.
Her rosy lips eventually depart each other,
into a silent smile, a pink blush…

In the back of her eyes lie 100 mysteries untold
and under those long eyelashes, a million dreams they behold.
Made from the soot of the candle she burnt last night,
waiting for his homecoming..
On her right palm sits the little dibiya of kajal,
like a crown on a princess’s head.
She puts her left ring finger in the paste of kajal,
a mixture of black soot, olive oil and endless love,
looking for its meaning, waiting to be adorned.
Towards the mirror she bends, dilating her pupils
and outlines her eyes with the eternal black..
Beautifully, neatly, impeccably..
Like a silver lining in a cloud, wanting to rain yet looked over by the sun.
Seems like she is giving a boundary to save all his hopes and dreams and fantasies.
The first move, the first touch, the first kiss, the first rose, the first…..
In her kajal clad eyes they gain immortality.
She blinks her eyes twice, one more time.
Soot burns in the eye, like the fire that produces it.
Drop after drop after drop…
tears falls, darkness fall…
She shuts her eyes and the whole world stops dead,
she opens them and all is reborn.
So she is……

Part-2
In his name, in tears as she stands,
she remembers the first time she cried for him.
Her love, wine and song all rhymed.
That night, when he laid his eyes on her for the first time,
there was no fantasy, pretence and lies.
On that full moon-drunk night,
she saw in him a man of the rivers
and he looked at her plain and nice.
As unconsciously she searched for the moon in his deep set blue eyes,
he drowned her completely behind his ink blue eyes.


As love and silence lingered in the air,
between the two of them, words lost their way in hidden mazes.
When all he could do is press his lips against hers
and take her to everlasting eternity.
Her love hung motionless in the eerie silence of the night,
only looking for answers.
Her love was alive-
as a sudden gush in the neck, a lump in the throat,

an unspoken emptiness in the heart.
Her senses questioningly stared at the moon,
who herself doesn’t know for whom she shines.
And as her tongue touched hers,
her skin rippled through his fingers,
like a stone thrown in a quiet pond,
this gives for once a sudden splash
and chooses to shiver out of numbness..
Traveling through her candid frame, he could feel the waves trip.
Her eyes were closed, mouth rosy and ajar.
She was pushed to madness, craziness and insanity.


Like games of hide and seek on a long Sunday afternoon,
he stretched his hands to touch hers.
There was mastery in his fingers and triumph.
Her heart was so eager to love, so young, so juvenile, so prone to life.
She was a bud which just broke its dormancy to bloom.
Into him she merged seamlessly,
like two colors on an artist’s palette flowing into one another,
like mercury amalgamated, like chelpark blue on a blot paper.
He unbuttoned her coat of darkness
and exposed her invisibility.


She remembers it were not tears but pearls of overwhelm gliding down her cheek. some interrupted unknowingly by the lips, some grazing her neckline.
He licked her salty tears off her lips.
To him she tasted of myths and long rainy afternoons by the seas.
Tasting tears and breathing scents,
he held her in a futile grip.
Like sand slipping out of his enclosed fist.
Drop after drop after drop..
tears fell, darkness followed….

Part-3
Tonight after 20 crescent moons have passed and numerous Saturdays gone,
in his name she dresses herself.
As polka dotted blues drape her body.
she wears a faint smile and a natural pink blush.
She tilts her face, a little to the right and hooks on her long blue earrings.
Tonight, she looks as bubbly as the froth made in his goblet of golden champagne.
Behind that gentle smile is a tempt and hope for a guiltless, mirthful Paris night,
when he will breathe into her one more time.
And she will suffocate in his scent, yet another time.
Tonight, he will fill up her senses as she’ll lose her defenses,
through the color of his hair.
Leaves of time have flown, so has she.
She is a bird out of her cage,
an ink that blots without a paper,
blood that clots without an injury,
a Jeanie rubbed the right way…