Hiatus
You left me
As the detritus
Of years spent
Together,
Inhabiting close spaces once,
Where our breaths mixed closely,
—You complaining of my bad breath
That was a turn-off, on moon-lit nights,
In the bungalow, near the placid river, where I heard the songs of the fish,
Tossing on the bed with white linens of the faint and unwashed stains deposited by the earlier visiting couples—
And subtly separated, this uniting breath,
As you turned your face away, slowly,
On an excuse,
That sounded no excuse,
In the farce of
Those enclosed
Interlinked proximities
Once went by the name
Of marital bliss;
The initial warmth
Evaporating from a heart
That once loved a stranger,
But now,
Slowly turning into
Cold rooms without souls and
Lingering solitudes
In the king’s bed,
Lit up by a roaming moon;
The silences pervaded every pore,
Stretching far and deep
As the shining arms
Of shifting sands,
Across the heaving bare desert,
Under a merciless sun
That killed;
Stranded I felt
On such occasions—
The flower solitary,
Fragile
Blooming in the craggy crevices
Between two rocks,
On an elevated plain
Visited by hungry tourists
With beer cans and other offending objects
Violating the sacred place
Where gods once stayed;
The flower in that crevice,
Dancing in the hot air,
Surviving the odds,
But
Its pink petals,
Slender stalk,
Its nodding head,
Pollen and all,
Noticed by none,
In the heaving wilderness.

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