The First (A Letter: A Poet, A Reader)

My Poet

My shadows always slept silent until the poetry of your soul smoothly submerged in it all that I call distress. Dreams have never been the same ever since. The mazes are longer, more elaborate than ever. Also, the need to grow in them and never come out is getting stronger by the day. Your words shimmer and remind me of a long forgotten autumn of my life. The fallen leaves weave rings of burning amber and I swallow jewels I stole from your crown.  I have been feeding on your words ever since I came across them. The hunger which mercilessly clawed at my mind perpetually sleeps like the monster within which you just tamed with your storm.

How can such a young man be a prophet of my being the way you are? Age never determined relationships and needs the way experiences did? Sometimes I despise myself for drinking so ardently from the pain which keeps you awake at nights. I fantasize about your aching eye, the lashes and the almond warmth. I fantasize about the hidden wells behind. Why is it that the farther you get, the easier it is for me to snuggle closer? Days and nights go by and I make love to the ‘you’ real to me. Is it not I who embraces the sun, the shadow and the nightmare of your life? Even your questions answer my questions. Your verses softly sink in and I float, never fall in the never ending vacuum of peace and calm desire. Stay as eternal as the glaciers that melt into the tears the mountain weeps. Stay as eternal as the senses which perceive treasures and grow roots in minds. Stay eternal with your words for I will die too soon. Then you shall envelope my soul.

You write no more of swelling dawns, glass eyes or breathing palaces. Am I the fluid you claim to drink these days? Can you not catch a glimpse of a beauty I wish I had possessed? Why don’t you write on me? Your ciphers tie me down and lend me wings. We talked of love and life… things that are hard to believe in now. Have we grown ever since? We walked and ran. We took turns to push and pull or hold hands and drifted in our worlds of make believe truths. How far are we now, from what we were and what we were not? I married my desert roses to vivid verses and you’re still here, lending an enthusiastic ear to my madness as I do to yours.  You married your childhood nightmare too soon. She’s a recurring phenomenon, and I, the mistress of your sleepless nights. Would you not choose me over her then, over and over again?

I lose my actualities to the blend of bittersweet symphonies you spell out meticulously each time your poetry touches my lip. They become one then, refusing to part. I know not, which is which. It is all a game of jumbled up, lived characters. We keep playing with words we like to believe we are good with, in a world of our own. Memories fail to ignite moments the way your expressions of them do.We'll hold hands and run around and they’ll laugh at our sublime tragedies. I have been saying it all this while. Your words and my love should rescue you for some time. But I keep trying to swim in my temporary heaven of dark denial. Don’t let me lose myself to myself. I need your help the way you want mine.

Yours forever,

 Z

(She blooms and bleeds

 Thorns of gigantic deserts never leave.)