Collecting Nights
I lift my head up from the pillow and hear the soft rain falling outside

It is that magic hour again, when it is dawn and not quite,

When the night hasn't entirely relinquished its hold on the day,

I listen to the rain murmur, insistent raindrops caressing trees,boughs, leaves, streets...

There is just so much beauty in this quiet hour that the words are summoned forth from me

Like droplets collecting in gleaming pools in hidden nooks and corners that only the rain can reach

The silence, which so far, has only been punctuated by raindrops, is suddenly pierced by the muezzin's call

Memory takes me back to all the calls to prayer I have experienced with you

Only you can lend the azaan with such a quiet eloquence

Only you can shape syllables, words and sounds into prayer.

It is another night.
Or is it the same? I cannot tell.
A wise woman once said that love slows down the turning of time.
But does it not also make the hours bleed into days bleed into weeks, months, years within a blink of the eye?

And what is time to a heart that knows love? What are the days to a life touched by the lyrical beauty of your mind?

And so I sit here by the windowsill,
Thinking perhaps, it is the same night or it is another,
It does not really matter.

This night is awash with rain.
The cold, hard pebbles have fallen thick and fast,

And the soil has responded with a song of the earth so rich and potent that its tendrils permeate the thickest of walls and the toughest of glass,

Rooftops whisper words to this song, which is as old as Time, and sleeping hearts beat to the rhythm of an ancient dance, as all hearts must.

Why else would the rain conjure warm smiles, sad smiles, wistful smiles, joyous smiles, but smiles nonetheless?

This earthsong is like your memory, its heady aroma like your presence that transcends reality, plausibility, reason and those silly little lines we like calling borders.

This night is punctuated by the whirring of the fan,
Its day has been filled with the persuasive purrs of the washing machine.
A comforting little domestic scene.

It is the small things, the everyday occurrences that really make up the threads that hold us together.

They make the fantastic seem even more fantastical, and they give us a place to return to when the magic is just too magical, and all the heart needs is a worn old pillow and the familiar crook of an arm.

This night has a sun burning in its sky,
And slowly, a line of winged fairies orbit the glowing circle of light.
Through the bokeh of wet eyelashes, I watch them greet searing heat and fall.
And rise again.
The burning is sweet, it is the fall, the separation that is agonising.
This night teaches me, warms me, and keeps me company till the sun of your smile beams upon my face.
This night is like so many others before it, and many more that are yet to arrive.
This night is a dream, and with you, comes the gift of many other dreams.
This night is a vision,
And this night, this one right here, is a wish.
This night and all nights are like promises, not yet whispered, but made.

All these nights are filled with light and dark.
They don't scare me,
I know that you are close by.
My hand reaches out across the seas of time and age,
And finds yours.

Restlessness
Dawn rises. As warm as baking bread and as delicious as your honey skin.

The curtain flirts with the windowpane, flitting, fluttering, giggling.

The sky rumbles in the throats of a hundred thousand crows.

Sleep tosses and turns and rears its tousled head in expectance of you.

Things chitter and squeal in the fast-fleeing shadows, light chirps in answer.

Bedsheets, crumpled with dreams, frolick in the cold, unmade side of the bed.
Hollows await your warmth, wrinkles await your smoothing.

Sleep goes chasing dreams go chasing shadows go hunting for your fingertips.

Memories rise like puffs of soft dust, clouding over, exploding, imploding.

All the maps of skin and bone rewrite themselves.

Water rumbles through the pipeways and sloshes, sloshes, sloshes.

Giddy with frothing thoughts, the rumble becomes a slow murmur.

Day is beginning. Tinging the curtains blue.

I find myself resenting this intrusion. The night is so much better for conjuring you.

The night, with all its whispers and inkiness, is so much better for shaping your indefinite form.

I do not like sharing you with daylight.

I do not like sharing you with all that is woken up by the insistent dawn.

The taps are creaking and leaking. The morning is invading. And there are footsteps on the narrow, quiet stairway. Everything is intruding.

I close my eyes and disconnect the day. Night emerges and you are blood and flesh and fire again.

My mind wanders. Sometimes you are sea. Sometimes you are fine clay. Sometimes, rough bark. Sometimes, lithe sinew.

Sometimes, claw and tooth and nail. Sometimes, rage. Sometimes, tempest. Sometimes, still water.

You can be conjured in a thousand green dreams.
You can send oracles into ecstasies.
And soothsayers into blasphemies.
You are every conjurer's dream, every sorcerer's wildfire.

Because you are magic.
Raw, unharnessed, unparalleled magic.
Magic that won't let anyone tell it its name.

Home
To sit with you on the floor, with my head resting on my knees, and my fingers tracing patterns on the spotless floor. Just... to sit...

To sit. To absorb. To feel. To let you sink in to me.

To let you crest on tiny upraised hairs that rise on my arms, on the back of my neck, and send their waving tendrils into my mind.

To feel you run down my spine in a shiver that brings me back to my senses and tells me that yes, you exist.

To make you as tangible as the cold, or the rain, or a sour tamarind that makes you close your eyes with its suddenness.

To simply sit with you and feel so many things. To be overcome by so many words, so many thoughts. To give in to ineffectual silence.

To feel you breathe by my side. To hear air swirl into you, touch all the places inside you that I have not seen, and thus blessed, rush out.

To sense you relax, to sense you drift away, spinning luminous strands of thought.

To allow myself to drift across the terrain of your mind. And mine.

To walk aimlessly with you, and yet, not leave the floor.

To lose myself, to sense you losing yourself.

And in that abandon,
in that landscape of pure white,
in that explosion of colour,
in that constant construction and deconstruction

In that land where everything is a cacophony, yet, round the next bend, where there is just a solitary, haunting swansong,

In that land, where we are known, and unknown, in that land where we unlearn and learn each other,

In that land where there are no maps, no given names, where everything bends to your will and bends despite it as well,

In that land, where oblivion meets existence meets meaning meets annihilation meets being meets creation

In that land, where mazes collapse upon themselves, where simplicity is unravelled,

In that land of everything and nothing, of yesterday, today and tomorrow,
your hand anchors mine.

You give me land to walk on.

You give my dreams shape, form and substance.

You make my words real, you breathe life into my visions.

You still me and you make the profane sacred.

You give this whirlwind land a few more storms, and a lot more calm.

And wordlessly, I am whipped back to reality, or some semblance of it.

I am still on the floor, sitting next to you. Light is streaming through every crevice.

The lamps are talking to the window, and the paint-stained panes are responding in tinted words.

Light is leaking in from under the door, and pouring out from below the bed.

Lines are crisscrossing along the floor, meeting, merging and separating into a hundred thousand patterns.

Everything is leading up to you, the focal point of all this energy.

And there you sit by my side, quiet, like a forest-spirit or a river-spirit, melting into the world around you, without needing to speak.

Here you sit, like a tree trunk supporting so many vines and tiny nests and hideaways that you become larger than the notion of home itself.

Here you sit, quiet as the ages, and just as immense and overpowering.

And to just sit next to you, to sit at the foot of the bridge between the real and the dream
To watch light pour into you and spill out, multiplied, manifold
To see everything begin from you, find its origins in you and then recede back into you
I am content in that.

For my words can never cover the landscape that is you.

They can only make small markings, like signposts, tiny etchings, like those on humble, hand-drawn maps.

I am content to call this vast, uncharted terrain home.

For in you, I can wander for as long as I live.

Stay
Stay awhile
The breeze has just about stolen moisture from the clouds
The bees have just begun their drunken search for honey
Fruit is still ripening in its trees
The sun has just about begun being kind
Clouds are learning new shapes
A steady thrum is slowly taking on the guise of music
A honest melody has just about started as a whistle
Stay awhile

Trees have discovered new knots, found new hollows, birthed new roots
Flowers are making peace with longer days, learning to wake up early and sleeping late
Children are growing taller, finger by finger, inch by inch
Memories are starting out as full heads of dandelions, poised to scatter their soft white florets in the currents of time
Stay awhile

Leaves are slowly turning green, green, greener, bark is toughening under the relentless gaze of the sun
The air is thickening, slowing down to a gradual, stuffy stop, heralding the arrival of grey rain that will make everything flow again
Fields stand empty, charred, waiting for the exfoliation of the ploughshare
Wheat, rice, roses, graceful jacaranda, brazen oaks, elderly banyans, prickly acacia, all wait patiently within a seed
Stay awhile

Silk floss trees are popping open their pods and fluffy white snow is covering bramble and bush alike, in the unlikeliest of places and months
Fog, mist and smog are finding themselves looking for new haunts
These are the bright months, the yellow months, the golden weeks
Every thing is slowly giving into a parched thirst that can only quenched by the yield of the skies
Stay awhile

The days are turning far too soon,
Stay awhile and make time forget its chores
Walk through this sleeping world with me
Press your ear to the chest of the earth
Stay awhile... and listen to the heartbeat of life.

First Rain
Maybe it is the silent thanks sent wafting up by the grateful soil, maybe it is the tiny, heavenly beads of prayer.

Maybe it is the thunder ringing in a hoarse chorus, maybe it is the strains of a few far-off violins softly fading in.

Maybe it is the suddenness of white flashes, or it is the unexpected switching on of lights foretelling eyes waking up to a dream.

Maybe it is the landscape washed anew in staccato flashes, maybe it is the rain reinventing the barren concrete.

Maybe it is the remembering or memories, visions that suddenly seem to dart around with the wind, larger than life.

Maybe it is my fingers spelling out your name in fluid letters or maybe it is the rain invoking you in indecipherable patterns.

Maybe it is the earthy fragrance of your presence or it is the earth remembering you in a hundred different aromas.

Maybe it is all this, or maybe it is my mind, which, as usual, is pining for you and is giving new names to longing.

Maybe it is a humble plastic bag, set swirling on the carousel of the wind, maybe it is a few glimpses of the gleaming road from amidst the patter of wet feet.

Maybe it is the roof slowly dripping into a glass of tea, sweetening it, diluting it and enhancing it in turns, maybe it is the crimson storm building in the kettle.

Maybe it is the smoke clinging to your fingertips, maybe it is the city wound in a grey cloud around your hands.

Maybe it is all of this, and more that makes me look at the terrace opposite mine.

The block is swathed in darkness and awash with light.
The rain is illuminating itself in white streaks.

When the lightning burns its way through my closed eyelids, in the aftermath of the flash, I see two people spinning in the rain.

I see their laughter, I taste it, I hear it flitting over windows, I hear it fly with carefree curtains, I hear it knocking on blind doors.

These mad, happy, crazy spirits... these silvery visions are both, memory and reality.

In that moment, they have forgotten themselves, the world, the rain, the wind, the terrace, gravity itself.

Only they exist,

And in them, you and I.