Ghosts Over Tea
Say you love me
Say you burn for my presence,
my touch, my words, my gaze
Say it hurts you
when that gaze doesn’t touch you
Say you crumble when the gaze comes to you &
passes right through you as if you weren’t there
As if you never were
Because I do. Crumble.
But your words are honeyed poetry
Perfect in meter & rhyme
Sparkly little mirror bits
Catching the light, setting fires
Drawing blood, vanishing
Your pretty little nothings
While I crumble & melt & dissolve
into nothingness
Yesterday I sat at a cafe, sipping chai
enjoying Ankur Tiwari
a poet who whispers & we pretend it’s music
And I remembered my last visit there
Was to grasp at things connected to you
This is where we had
Our last meeting, our first conversation
Your eyes dancing from rain outside
Your baby curls still dripping laughter
Your words tangoing with dreams & fervour
I didn’t even think of all this till an hour later
Tracking the last time I was here
& what I thought then,
the feelings that brewed with adrak & chai
That we sipped over grand plans
that came to nothing
You’re now the memory of a memory
And soon even less
Like the wafting steam over my tea
Because my friend, your words are powerful
But stronger still, is your silence
Your single act of violence
In a conversation between two such as us,
lovers of words
You turned me into a ghost
And that trumps everything
For how long will you run on
these meaningless sounds
When your soundlessness reverberates
what you think of me, of us
Nothing.
Speak your poetry
Shout your politics
Roar your wokeness
All I hear is your silence
Say nothing, say nothing
You might as well say nothing
For how long will you run on
meaningless sounds
That no one hears?
We are all just ghosts over tea.
💡: Written for the prompt ‘जुमलों से तुम चलोगे कब तक’
📸 : Vivek Tejuja
*Read my other Love Poetry. Or listen to it.
