A City Made of Our Sighs

Photo: Nilanjana

I still search the city

for signs of you.

It should have been enough to know

you breathe somewhere across,

but the restless heart

seeks dawn at midnight,

and every house, with its lights on

could be a place where you might be looking up

at a stranger's face

& kissing him full,

and asking him, the way you asked me -

is this the start, or the start of an end?

.

This crumbling city,

surely made in part by our sighs,

has our souls' sticky notes

bookending it's unknown tales -

the time we restrained,

and the time we let go.

.

Shouldn't every lover

have a museum built of a city -

shelves laid out with corners of ecstasy,

and rooms full of wounds?

We were a secret the nights folded onto,

misting the windows as we kissed -

why is love a city-discoverer,

finding places where shadows go long?

.

I will walk on the bridge you loved so much,

and revel in the ships' mournful horns,

I will see the mist where the river turns,

and know that's where every love story ends.

Photo: Veronica

Cities and love stories are so intimately intertwined that often the city becomes a character in the tale. And because of that, it also becomes a saviour.  Because love may depart, but the roads and the shades and the corners don't  - and the city becomes a precious talisman for the mourning lover to hold onto. 

With time, memory slips into wistfulness because every place the lovers had spent time in has a story attached to it. A journey through the city becomes a haj of love. Words, silences, gestures, laughter. Knots being untied, straps being unbuckled, lips seeking destinations. A restaurant corner, a deserted matinee, a graveyard, a street corner, in the middle of a party, on a boat, in a car, just that point where the river bends and where they first said "I love you" to each other. 

The city becomes a map of unending unrequited love. 

Photo: Nilanjana

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Hear the poem!

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