Maybe you were waiting in an ashen cul-de-sac,
just as broken, battered and bruised as I am,
the scars of yesterday becoming raw wounds
again, sliced by the malice of a myriad tongues,
etching, etching and etching their mark of
hate, while you endured with silent sobs
and a light blue resolve defying a crimson shriek.
Maybe you walked ahead and saw the cathedral,
the twilight grazing its twin crosses with a faint
magnetism, and you were just as drawn,
before your Gazette with its defeats, subtle
beauty and tears, with its cover stripped,
and pages worn or dog-eared, screamed, ‘Don’t!’
Maybe you looked just as hard for love,
and the lines you wrote,
stitched by the elegant pentameter,
but concealing apparitions and appearances of
pain, reflected guttural screams of an,
‘I need…I need…I need…I need…I need,’
but still felt unworthy, undeserving
and unsuitable like a songbird in a cage,
plagued by Stockholm Syndrome—
the visions of burnt landscapes and
charred trees, becoming a false savior
promising you riches but giving you delusions.
Oh, how I wish you’d found me,
and how I wish that we’d transcended together,
rising like a Phoenix from the ashes,
over the maddening crowd who nods
to Falsity speaking, saying, ‘You are enough,’
and instilling in them an egotistical ardor
that’s insatiable. No darling, I’m not enough
without you and how I wish I held you,
whom I never knew.

Partly inspired by ‘You who never arrived,’ by Rainer Maria Rilke

© Nitin Lalit Murali (2018)