Things You Left Behind

Came home last night
to an empty house.
Stripped of all essentials.
Picked clean like a fish
to the bone.

You cleaned out
pretty meticulously, like only
you can.
Furniture, furnishings, crockery,
linen, music system, washing machine,
cosmetics, the magnetic stickers on
the frig.
You even took the lone bindi,
from the bathroom mirror.

All that are remaining are my
books, looking forlorn and forsaken,
cowering against the wall.
Like stricken,
abandoned pets.


It’s like, you didn’t
want to leave behind anything
that might remind me of you, or of our
love that we once had,
of the joys we shared.

But you are wrong.
There are so many things,
you have left behind.

The long drives drenched in
monsoon rains , shivering
and sharing a cuppa chai,
in a wayside dhaba
in some remote dirt road.


The surprise Sunday mornings when I served
burnt toast and bland tea,
to your royal highness in bed,
to your amusement
and my consternation.

The musky amorous outings that
notch the bathroom door.

The night I drove to you,
from miles away as you bled,
losing our only baby.

Or the days you nursed me
as I deliriously rambled from
some strange fever.

The times we went to plays,
browsed in book shops, or just
doodled on each others
passion spent, basking bodies.

These are the things you
left behind, indelibly etched
in me.

How I wish I were a bird, that
I can molt memories, and
begin afresh.

Sept 2003