Dhee Sankar

Water Game

( “Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.”
— Shakespeare )
 
I did love rain in my own ways before;
Now rain has become a sign. Now rain is a curse.
Your watermark. No longer just downpour.
No longer giver of life, but just my hearse.
 
Rain is what happened the evening you let me know
Your secret: “trying” not to break my heart.
Rain is what happened that day three months ago
When we got drenched, you tore some flower apart.
 
Rain is what found you and your newfound savour
As you walked wet, woke shivering with hormones.
Rain is what bound your bodies closer for cover
As you turned out lights, set alarms on your phones.
 
Rain is what drowned me, snickered and said, “It’s over.”
Rain is that sound which breaks me down to the bones.

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Parched

( “Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
– Vladimir Nabokov )
 
Rain! Please don’t come this year. Hear my curse.
I’ll melt, I’ll die, you stand for someone I killed —
Sky! Shut your chest, wall up those tears with bars
Don’t drench me in beauty, make my soil soft-willed
 
My palms don’t want your drops in lieu of hers
Don’t force my palms to reach out in hopeless plea
You moisten my stitch, you worsen the wounds I nurse
You flood caged wings with the memory of being free
 
Don’t you dare fall on them and me alike.
Rain, you flooded the hills that killed my soul.
You chose a side, went as a chaperone on a hike,
But graced my palms even as they lost their hold.
 
You will always fall like an enemy’s air strike.
Wish I could banish you from my world as a whole.

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