हम दम

18.12.18

the Phoenix of love

waking up to dawn with you
is a far too distant dream
I’d settled for occasional happiness
of walking together at dusk
of quiet caverns lit only by you
the rare tranquility and turmoil
of holding your throbbing body
perilously close to mine
the unbound joy and strangeness
of being seen and held gently
made me feel worthy again
of saying ‘I love you’ to myself

but this sweet painful secret too
has turned into a distant dream
fledgling desires crashed hard
into realities that aren’t enough
to contain our myriad selves
I tried hard that I didn’t lie
nor can I tell the whole truth
since the secret is inseparable
since the other should only hold me
and not take me a piece apart
I feel I cannot be held whole
at times I can’t be held at all

although almost always in denial
I did observe boundaries tentatively
nudging them at every opportunity
where I couldn’t go wasn’t mentioned
I feel gagged and bound now
I wish to have it all or nothing
I haven’t known reassurance
I haven’t learnt to negotiate
you want me in your everydayness
but I want to be your secret
I don’t want us normalised
I want us to be an immortal myth

it isn’t possible to be infallible
in the ways we’ve learnt to love
to want to possess and only parts
disregarding shadows and reflections
I don’t know what’s worse
my indifferent blindness
or your caustic rejection
of our other irreconcilable halves
the potion of wrath from all my bits
that went searing through my flesh
now lies in my gut corroding my being
I want it all to end mercifully quick

you lament not knowing
how to keep me close to you
I dread the act of deleting
once one’s had their fill
I can’t lie nor tell the whole truth
perhaps you foresaw
how our embrace would unfold
I may have pretended to know
we wouldn’t get entangled
in each other’s undesirable shadows
it all seems suspended now
in anaerobic amniotic fluid

apparently we have begun to believe
in the partial stories that now lie
scattered after the inevitable crash
as consolation we now imagine
a safer sanitized coming together
in the noise and clutter of daylight
I can’t think of it being anything but
distracted disenchanted displaced
I hate the word ‘recalibration‘
I shudder at what I might lose
not willing to pacify my ranting self
with what we were and may find

the dim lit horizon is saddening
it marks the demise of my fantasy
I am unprepared for what awaits
yet again I writhe intertwined
with my loneliness, grief and rage
yet I yearn to hear your untold stories
I imagine seeing your hidden scars
wait to dance in abandonment
with you to unfamiliar music
sing you a love song about longing
but ‘am afraid my lungs are full
of ash and smoke from burnt desires

as it usually happens with fear
uttering its name somehow
makes it slightly less menacing
just the meeting of my worlds
feels like an acknowledgement
an accommodation even
although nothing has moved
towards any sense of resolution
there’s a lightness in the breath
as if the ashes are magically rising
such is the treacherous panacea
of the prodigious Phoenix of love