When We’re Dead

How long until I forget the sound of your voice-
the sunlight seeping in through your bedroom window,
you telling me you’d rather talk in the dark.
Escaping to your terrace
and taking pictures of the sunset,
talking with the flowers blooming in the spring.

Did you know I was watering our grave?

Will I forget our music,
the taste of permanence on our tongue
enveloping memories yet to be made.
When we sat together on my bed
our heads vicious, large, and beautiful
and our thoughts sufficed the movement of our lips.

Can my mind do our memories justice?

Will you forget the feel of my skin-
our hollows taking comfort in our spaces,
and the bouquet we bought is dying, is dead.
Your fingers on the edges of my hands;
a tide, always there, always persistent,
bodies running in on each other.

These gardens are futile without a rain.

How do I think of you as a past
when all my thoughts of you are in present
and the curing of these wounds-
so incomplete, still burdened.
I need another touch, tell me
do you do too?

Will we ever listen to our scars and smile?

Everything I’ve learned about being alive, about being conscious, about feeling, is that the fragility of everything we’ve had, all the souls we’ve touched; is so painful. It is sand, escaping through our open fists, and I find myself always wailing, and I am always waiting for the kind of permanence that will last forever but nothing ever does. And that is a hard thing to learn over and over and over again; until the fountains in my throat are dried up and I’ve accepted myself to be my only friend.
The beauty in it all is that sometimes even I don’t love myself.

Within the stale promise of a friendship
and two months of winter in our garden,
the quite bloom of a murky departure,
no passengers, no trails to walk by,
only your footsteps casting a reminiscent ache –
I will remember you in my poems.

Photo Credit: ishaandave1991 Flickr via Compfight cc

Paakhi Bhatnagar

Paakhi Bhatnagar is a student from India and an avid reader of historical fiction. She is a passionate feminist and blogs about current politics and feminist issues. She also possess the uncanny ability of turning everything into a debate.

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Paakhi Bhatnagar is a student from India and an avid reader of historical fiction. She is a passionate feminist and blogs about current politics and feminist issues. She also possess the uncanny ability of turning everything into a debate.

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