The threads

u n w e a v i n g
from my saffron 
dupatta
one 
by 
one 
just like bleak 
strands of blood
dripping from
my mother
uncle and 
his son.

His son 
hugged
mine
beneath 
the old chinar
where we once
shared our 
darjeeling.

My baby 
woke up 
again
the masked men
blasted their agonies
on our pale 
blue door

I still await
 a knock 
   a cup of coffee
      a call
         from 
                     you
                     a distant memory:
                     your frizzy hair,
                     silky palms,
                     our shared laugh.

But I still laugh 
as my boy 
licks melted butter
from hot parathas,
your favourite

my father and I
take walks
through the fog 
and dust,
the sun shines of
aluminimum 
which brought him
your white pills,
often
we talk
of you.

You never 
walked this way
but we feel you
silently reeling
your love songs
in cassettes 
with film
longer than
these boundaries
'our' people
have made.

Don’t 
  apologize
    let the threads
       cocooning this
    distance
  in love
stay.



Written in response to poem 'Letter to a Kashmiri Friend' by Aditi Rao

1 comment:

  1. I really liked the way you enjambed this poem, and you can really see the influence of Aditi Rao's poetry in it. The imagery gives the poem a charm, however I feel like the last stanza would work better if it wasn't enjambed the same way as the rest of the poem, to give it more of a distinction. Also the relationship between the subject of the poem and the poet isn't very clear. I loved the unique comparison of boundaries to the film of cassettes.

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