You asked me to write and I did. I thought of copying down a verse but I realized it was in one of two books you'd promise to read.



I see
Tea leaves lie
Gazing upward
From the sink
In the same likeness
We used to lay
Uneasy in our sweat
Damp clammy calls
In the evenings
You would like to
Think
I am emptied
I wrote about us
On paper that smelt
Of balm and tiffin
Three years ago

When you pointed
And I could not name
I knew
You would wait
Squatting near my home
Convinced
In our circumambulation
I even repeated
Insouciant
A secret I
Remembered
Marquez you refused


You were ill
And I
Lay with my blanket
While the city
Cried as if slain

We mark
With the unearthing of
A rhizome dictator
An hour earlier
I should have left
Pulpy guavas
Were all I had
That day and the next
And next

We both wear
Goggles now
And I flounder
When the darkness
In the pipes
Fail to make
These moths
Foolish and desirous
Of the callous heat.