Lamentably unfinished.
But aren't all poems?

You have slept in many rooms
But there is one you can never name.

It has too many secret cranies
Too many faults that it likes to flaunt-
A cracked roof that dances with the mango tree leaves,
A used Persian carpet,
A window that sighs and weeps when it rains,
A melancholy curtain that has seen many kisses,
An old shoebox of memories (left by a former lover),
A discarded hat,
A wailing faucet.


In the morning,the room plays footsie with the sun.
Every secret seems to be graciously revealed (finally!)
And you feel that at last, this is what it's like to know it:
Seeing anonymous fingerprints on the bathroom tiles,
Watching a party of ants soldiering on
by the bedposts,
Remains of Joshua Jackson on one side of the wall.

For minutes, you are fooled.

But you realize, she has just left
ambiguous crumbs for you to find:
An exposed leg here.
A bare shoulder.

Before the sun sets,
She becomes attractively musky,
Like an old comforter.
You look at yourself in the mirror and realize
you have turned sepia
You wear the dusty hat and pretend you are Humphrey Bogart.
You whisper your secrets
To the holes in the floor.
You dream of flying far away
And bringing her along if you could.
And you mouth the word, "forever, forever"
Like it would run out.
You were never (could never be) yourself before.

The restless moon
has been enjoying a private conversation with her
Since it settled in.
And for all your straining, you could never hear
The audacities they whispered to each other.
Again, you find yourself alone.
All the revelations of the day dutifully return to Pandora's box.
You invent words
To pass the time.
You are puzzled by her animosity, this abrupt strangeness.

But during the mornings, when the sun deigns to swallow her whole
She comes back.
Then she leaves
Running after moonshine,
Leaving you wallowing
In a confusion of patterns
you can never name.

But the cracks on the ceilings,
the holes in the floor,
and the weariness
of the startling, blank walls
whisper, I need you
I yearn
I exist
only for you.

And you realize that inspite of the minutes-
the insanity of space existing between her hellos and goodbyes-
You shall stay
For you believe that this yearning
Will give you wings.