I Will Forget You This Summer.

“This love has mocked me.

I feel ashamed and lonely like a little child whose friends mock him for being an Orphan.

I don’t want to be victimized.”

I despise the dampened monsoons

and the aroma of ripened mangoes associated with them.

It is because these falling raindrops remind me

of the time I strolled with you on these drenched boulevards,

underneath the reverberations of a stormy cloudburst.

Oh! These clouds are so naive and innocent

that they do not themselves know for whom they cry!

Yes, my eyes are dampened like the monsoons too.

I see them holding back some salty tears

at the wicked thought that I am in love with you!

I will allow myself to cry out this venom of love  

until my heart is hollow and bereft of you.

I will let my untainted bosom become obscure and opaque

until it mirrors your insignificant name no more.

I will do this before the vernal and vivacious springtime comes..

I will forget you this summer.

I abhor the sight of that brackish and salty lake

over which we saw the rising sun.

Like the golden tawny fleck of your hazel eyes,

the cold waters of the lake once sparkled so bright.

We threw stones in it and counted the ripples flow.

I remember both of us never obtained a tally!

So blatant at heart, we set our visions till the farthest sight

and gazed unto nothingness till no more we saw the rising light.

Our bosoms were so warm and our spirits so wild!

We did not act any older than a kindergarten child!

Yes, it was that teeth chattering wintery morning!

But now the sun mounts no more on the phosphorescent horizon

and the malachite hued cascading waters are still!

Now, I should grow old to realize, you don’t feel the same for me!

Like the dried throat of a parched and thirsty sailor,

I will throat-choke my unanswered love for you before I visit that lake again.

I will forget you this summer.

Like useless dampened vapors suspended in thin air,

incidental, inconsequential thoughts of you,

impregnate my mind.

Unlike those definite cartoon figures sketched out

in the ‘join the dots’ exercise I did in kindergarten, 

these thoughts of you, when traced back, don’t even connect

that out of them, something sensible I can detect!

They are so like you: so moronic, so witless!

That’s why I want to forget you:

to create space for worthy thoughts.

I will forget you this summer.

I thought, this physical distance between us,

which has been vindictive to keep you out of my sight,

will be heartless enough to keep you out of my mind too!

But every night when the shining stars light my room,

I find myself sitting by the grilled rampart of the roof,

talking to the velvet moon, trying to reach out to you

in hopes that you’re on the other side,

talking to me too!

But have you ever heard me calling?

So now I’m realizing, that I’ve been no less a fool

who thinks that it is a dialogue

going on betwixt me and you!

Who sits energized when the sun goes down

Alas! But sits alone, talking to the moon!

The moon deserve so much more,

than these nonsensical monologue addresses from me

which are actually meant for you.

So before it wanes thrice over the mulberry horizon

and shows up in its fullest, the very first monsoon midnight,

I would have forgotten these ridiculous banters!

I will forget you this summer.

As I sit amidst the silver of the night,

this caramel night sky above me, asks me some questions.

I wish I could answer even one!

I’m scared, it has figured out my love for you,

and also the fact that it will always remain unreciprocated!

I close my ears to be deaf to these surreal questions

and to your name that these winds

Shout out loud to me!

Like all the nights since you’ve gone so far,

tonight seems rejected too,

as it drags on without you.

My lonely cigarette burns!

Yes, I’m burning with it the hopeless actuality

that quite like a fool, I’m in love with you!

Your childlike smile keeps flashing by,

in this nebulously dark and thin air

but the smoke hangs on!

Now, my chalice of golden whiskey clicks once,

as the drink meets the ice.

My hand, shaky in your love, lifts it

and gulps in down thrice!

Now half the whiskey is gone and

half the cigarette is burnt!

But the sound of your unfeigned laughter and

that sparkle in your ultramarine eyes

when you teased me

are yet so clean in my mind!

Before the whiskey is gulped down absolutely

and the cigarette quits to burn!

You need to take leave off my head

before the pain of separation erupts acutely!

I need to forget you too soon.

I will forget you this summer.

As the winds move south and the feathered fowls migrate,

I know, it is time for me to move on too. 

This misery of separation from you, I can no more take.

The blush of my love will flush not a red but blue!

Ever since you’ve gone, I know I have to carry on

because living in a dream which has you and me

is not the way my life should be.

Not a tear for you, I want to shed

so forgive me please, even if I do.

Through all the weather maps, I have been,

just in order to bring you to me.

I will breathe my last, if I undergo this sea of storms!

I can’t fight any longer now.

The sooner I forget you, the better it is.

So, I will forget you this summer.

Even when the summer has gone

and my love has been faded by the monsoon mist..

When my senses blossom to the color of spring

and my weightless heart waltzes to the chorale of chirping birds!

It will ache me yet when I will remember that

somewhere I loved you,

somewhere you left!

Somewhere this love was darned, 

somewhere my heart wept...

....and then

I will forget it all over again

and continue dancing in the monsoon rain!