I hold someone’s hand and someone’s hand,
freezing like stigma — seeping into my marrow.
I shrill, stop, stop!
Let’s stroll down to that riverbank
and forget what’s done to breathe freely.
Gulp your fears and shed tears till you are
soaked in solace. Shh! talk to me
not yet meander in the meadows
of silence or speak to the river.
River, rushing yet loving listener
unlike people with half-baked advices
Unfold your tongue to dissolve
your tight tucked traumatic secrets into
water or let big fishes swallow them
Someone, speaks a language of long sighs —
tears tumbling together to k n i t
syllables to speak of sorrows,
of deepest despairs, unseeable
and of screaming songs, unheard
like a voiceless bird rippling
in a waterless pond
Someone sobs, se le ep —
re
stl
ess. Sleep, sinking dream of my eyes.
My dream’s eyes are night owls hooting
on axed boughs of life.
I am silent like sea and this silence, a sparrow stuck
in my chest and before I tell you, solitude is my home
I strew in sickness of self that seeps in as prolonged chill —
tumults like heavy hollowness, like promises, never kept
and juicy words, never meant
Someone holds my hand and my hand, trembling —
Listen. You listen, blue thoughts are doorless homes
and doorless homes, prisons.
Their glances thunder my body. My body isn’t
a dirty river.
Silent sufferings, you know, are,
are climatic changes, bringing floods through
dry seas and sunsets appear in the afternoon
Someone flops.
Stumbles.
Chokes.
Screams, and
unfreezes
ice-covered agonies from heart’s peak
like sad snowman slipping slowly and slowly
from the snow-clad mountains of Sonmarg,
and hued landscapes embracing one to their bosom,
wounded.
Sobs again and says,
beneath my shiny skin like glowing snow on glaciers
lies the gashed earth: unseen, unheard, and unloved
I hold someone’s, hand
and someone’s hand, cold
like human ears for listening,
the unspoken.
I didn’t grasp a hand, I swear!
But I craved to hold;
a hand, a young life,
drowning
breathless.