The Unwritten Narrative of a Ruined Time

While I see the river,
festival of water dance within me
You once said:
“If there were a footbridge to cross,
We could walk together toward the festival of Jalkeli,
a kaleidoscope of joy.”

So, I wove a bridge by ribs together,
Each step trembled in my chest.
The festival never came,
Yet the tides still clash on either side of river.

We were restless hearts then,
wandering a narrow path like parted hair,
thorns on both flanks.
Hand in hand, we dreamt of love,
threading time’s treachery.

On a Magha Purnima, you whispered:
“Wish I were a star across the sky?”
And yes, you were..
I cast rays of light upon you,
But I still trust the silence of new moon nights.

Another day, you longed
to climb a mountain where clouds would kiss your skin.
I bent my spine,
arched like a camel in the dust,
and shaped the stairs beneath your feet.
You ascended,
your navel afloat like a sea suspended in sky
But I have yet to unbend my spine.

Time is venomous now,
a coiling serpent.
We only dreamed back then
like food in the eyes of a starved beggar:
untouched, unreal,
a floating embrace on a drifting lotus.

The fatigue of passing days burns through me.
I ploughed the city in delusional fervour.
Now the metropolis, my chest is a battlefield,
like Troy, bloodied and betrayed.
Toxins pulse through every vein.

Yet still, I wander for you.
You, bathed in light,
fulfilled, complete.
And me..
I swim in the monsoon’s murky waters.

You became a successful farmer at the edges,
Grew life from desert sand,
Harvested dreams shaped from the earth.

I remain,
half-living in reluctant breath,
haunted by the clock of sorrow
a relic of lost time,
an endangered human being.