You have taken yourself away from me
And time
Finding it extremely difficult to pass itself
In your absence,
Engages me in other activities.
.
I seek to write
And while I have written
Only your name
In what seems like ages,
I discover
That you have playfully
Blanked not only my mind
Of words other than your name,
But also emptied my only pen
Of all ink,
Before leaving.
I try to locate the bottle
Only to find the empty carton
With no-points-for-guessing-what
Scribbled on it -
Your signature
Scrawled upwards in your tiny
Handwriting
Mischievously smiling at me.
.
I seek to read
But you have
Very shrewdly inserted
Exactly three of your
Hair strands
At different pages in the book,
All page numbers -
13, 22 and 40
Adding upto
Exactly the same number
As the digits in your birthdate.
Wholly distracted
I keep the book aside
And go for a walk
Coming back only to discover
That not only did your shadow
Accompany me
Teasingly
For my walk,
But that you also
Impishly
Hid the book
Somewhere I can not locate,
Upon my return.
.
Tired
I throw in the towel
And seek to sleep
Knowing fully well
The futility of my attempt.
It has always been like this -
Sleep is the last place
You allow me to retreat to
Unless I take you there with me;
Do you not know
That my sleep
Even if I reach it in your absence,
Has already been conquered by
The swarm of
Soldiers of
The dreams of
You.
But you are anyway
Not here,
And I should have known better.
.
Tell me
Oh my absent tormentor!
Where do I go from you?
The only place
I can think of going alone is the one
Which
Anyway
Someday
Everyone goes to.
