Begin where we left off.

In response to Aditi Rao’s "Letter to a Kashmiri friend”

Goodbyes are meant to be an end,

a period after all the conversations
were to cease keeping us both company 

but that’s when I began to know you
and what frequently frozen ticks in my
clock meant, how the happy moments

are, a little sad, a bit incomplete,
like a city sprawling with umpteen wonders
but none, make it a place to stay forever, I  

miss home, rewind a decade, we
were atop the tower studying the cosmic matter,
how they moved past one another, sometimes

ahead of the other, you’d say “distance
equals speed multiplied by time”.
It’s true, and that’s how we drifted apart. I

moved two steps in the time you
managed one. I looked back for a while,
beckoned you to keep up, but you liked

to look at life, closely, and I was
already chasing far away galaxies,
I speak now from another planet. Last

Christmas, I had sent a broken
clock, a year before that too.
Gift of time is precious, getting and

giving, but I had stopped then.
There is, however, a new horizon I’ve
begun to see. Look up in the telescope. I’m returning.