ABSENCE MAKING NEWS

I watched Inception last night. My heart is still racing. I'm going to go watch it again on Monday, once the fucking weekend price hike is over, and again, if I can afford it. Two-hundred and seventy-five bucks to watch a movie - ouch. But it was totally worth it. (It's ridiculous that I was watching movies a decade ago for thirty-five bucks, balcony seats at New Empire: Deep Blue Sea, thrice. Oh, yes.)

This poem was inspired by a friend's parents. They have the most enviable way of letting the things in their house hang on to their history for them. It would explain why they seem so youthful: the past just leaks into the little things, and the people stay young. Neat, no? The impression I get is that if the house fell away, the things within would still be exactly as and where they are. But this isn't about them, of course. It's about me. Written mid-April, here in Delhi.

Absence Making News

Within the rages of middle age
with its bodies that need refitting,
its baffled hearts (or so they seem),
its patches, pouts and peregrinations,
I spy with my little eye: oases.

These bodies they are not innocent.
The skin conceals, the marks mislead,
and two bodies grown old together
carry more weight outside themselves.
(Or so they seem.)

I find myself jealous
of the letters, fetters, strings and baubles
set aside, to remember, relive, revive
this sleeping keeping store.

I worry about wrapping paper, love.
So young and not so young, I dream
of grey hair and flowers,
of weathered love, sweet
and familiar, grotesque and graceful;
the smell of sweat and spice and soil and sky,
of cinnamon, and skin.

My fingers reveal the roads
of rock and sand, ice and ocean,
farm, forest, rainstorms and revelations -
this shadow of my hand on your belly,
your one small toe much smaller than the rest,
the smell of my bad habits, and
the shape of absence making news
in blesséd scars, old scabs and missing clay -
all this and more,
nothing promised, nothing safe.