Paresh Tiwari

Undone

It's like a snow globe shaken to create a momentary snowstorm. You look at the falling flakes and once they settle down you are tempted to shake up the tranquil again.

I remember you had gifted me a snow globe, with a small red house in the middle of the white landscape, on our first anniversary. That's our home, you said in a voice soaked in the scent of dreams. We kept it on our bedside table under the pale glow of an old lamp and made love – slow and easy, savouring the salty sweat of our bodies.

marigold sun . . .
the warmth of your face
lingers in my palm

It has been three years since we last saw each other. I forget when I last wrote you a letter or visited a crumbling post-office to post one.

I could have sent you my words in an email, but there is something strangely comforting about the way ink caresses paper, each letter a unique identity in itself: flawed, different, fragmented. And in that difference, in that absence of cloned perfection lies the palpable pain of our lives. (I wonder if the words we use together often, develop a friendship, a love affair even - born out of familiarity, if nothing else).

Maybe I am writing this letter as an epitaph and I will never have the courage to shake up this insipid tranquil again. Maybe, I will take these words to the edge of a river and let them go like the ashes from an urn.

phoenix moon . . .
the night opens up
at the seams