by Paresh Tiwari
Wedged between the warm darkness of the theater
and the Technicolor splashes of the images in haste,
you rewrite the opening scenes of the movie.
Like the unravelling of a late winter dawn,
the unveiling of a Sanskrit shloka,
the undoing of Ghalib’s last ghazal.
In that one moment you are the mother and the hooker,
your deep-red lips parting the night along its seams.
In that one moment you are the lover and the deity,
your kohl-rimmed eyes painting fractured dreams.
In that nothingness you are Tolstoy’s Anna,
Van Gogh’s Sien and Beethoven’s beloved.
The arch of your neck carves the thinness of ether.
On the undulating expanse of your face,
a grizzled mountain romances the first snow flake.
In the runes of your crow’s feet,
the metallic call of a flute etches its stray notes.
Somewhere in the middle of the movie,
I hear you say – more to yourself than anyone else,
“But wasn’t he supposed to love her?”
And I wonder if we really know love
and its thirty-nine shades, its noir shadows,
and its wet-weary-slippery glimmer.
In the warm darkness of the movie theater,
I watch a story unfold in your eyes and hurtle
towards its origami conflicts.
