The Silver Link...

I opened my rosewood chest
Again today, to see my life
Still intact within the
Withered folds of blue velvet

And the sweet nothings suspended
In the thick air, suffused
With moist memories
Started echoing again in my heart

The ‘ Payal’
Made in silver and white pearl
With strands of thousand chimes
And links of several arcs to curl

With time, the metal has oxidized
Like the relationship
Between you and me, though
The rate was much slow

And the failed links don’t
Make such a shrill sound now
As they used to
Many years ago

Lifeless and still it lies
At a dark and moist place
Where nobody can hear
The call it makes

Closed, bound and mum
It has grown older and numb
Forgetting it used to hang
Around the most beautiful ankles

Ankles, which have grown older
And weak now, like the links
No more slender and beautiful
Busy and worn in the life’s slink

However the stillness it carries
Is now too that beautiful
As it used to be, when
You made me wear them

I still remember
The mute tip-toeing
When I entered my house
Wearing them

Afraid, mama would hear
And ask me your name
Which I was never meant
To disclose and defame



Time has passed but couldn’t
Take away the beauty
Woven by the chrome moments
And the live strands of desires

I know the one which you took
With yourself, while going
Must have been lost, like me long ago
But the one you did let me keep

Is still there
Within me, in the chest
The dark and moist chest
A part of me but lifeless

And for the world that ‘One’ is now a heap
Of failed links, mute chimes and discolored pearls
But surprisingly, it still
Talks to me and tells me

‘Your ankles are beautiful”