Category: Uncategorized
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The call of the void
My dear, I woke up – I use the phrase casually because you know that I didn’t sleep all night – knowing what I wanted to write, what I wanted to tell you, how I wanted to phrase the sentences. But then the day wore on, last night’s spell – for it must have been…
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And other unfinished stories
My dear, of course — all our lives, this and the others, have been nothing but documents of loss. That we’ve lost each other irretrievably is no news : this third planet from the sun, don’t you know, is known in all the universes for its coldness– no one can match it in its precise…
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Mercury / or, Hermes
I woke up today and everything was fog. All the clarity, the tropical sun, the warmth : disappeared in a night, it didn’t take much, not even twenty-four hours, not even a significant drop in temperature but I could feel the coldness spreading through my bones, the wetness of winter dripping in my mind drop…
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Manikarnika
I’d mentioned before, my dear, that this poor land on this horrible earth has never seen a tragedy. That after life: life. Death was only a pause, a line break before the next dazzling stanza of the poem : where fortunes change, lovers unite, and dead parents always return as beautiful infants. I know we’re…
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After a death
I’ve heard that one shouldn’t, but I mix scents : so by the time I am perfuming my left wrist – usually with common notes of rose, violet, and amber – it seems I am not a woman, not even two, but a diaphanous mix of fragrances. As if I only exist as a floating…
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Purpura
I try to write but words keep getting entangled with my fragile veins : and instead of a letter, all that appears is a red-purple spot on my body. Your name is a thorn of a disappearing rose, lodged near my lungs, and each time I think about you, a vessel bursts somewhere deep inside.…
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I Giorni
My dear, why think of what I said years ago, when I was still young, when men would go speechless at my sight, when love only lasted for a moment and a half. My dear, forgive me, I know now that you’ve painted me each time as I am, as I must have been. I…
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Paris
There is a photograph, which has continued to haunt me for years : a photograph taken somewhere in Paris, of four men, none of whose faces are visible, and even though I am sure you are not one of them, on some days I am uncertain, my dear. Have I told you how at midnight,…
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beyond six rivers
Walking on a particularly hot day through the Delhi emporiums, looking for a saree : Benarasi : I stopped for a moment as I saw myself as I was centuries ago, in Harappa or Mohenjo Daro – my memory is weak, forgive me – and in that strange mirror, where I could see two of…
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Aabi
I can’t say if this entire scene is a memory of a dream, I really can’t say, but sitting in that vaporous classroom in Calcutta, reading lines from the Sakuntala, I remember someone, I can’t remember who, said that tragedies didn’t exist in ancient Sanskrit texts, that it was an imported concept, that whatever died…
Beyond Six Rivers 