Paint my body in your burnt sienna drapes,

Musafir, the night gobbles me up, a toxic fire,

the rise and fall, the nadir and crescendo of our

unspoken words, soiled, buried for long

in abandoned corners, limp through

the branches of my want.

Let your infamous, jihaadi prose copulate

with my wounded feminine core, vandalize,

set on fire your self-sculpted exile that beckoned you

in a blinding flash, as you left me alone,

My brown, burnished soul, feeding on

the dust and motes of your trampled legacy.

It all began with a mistake, a naiveté, an adoration

A hue of torment, glittering, lingering,

in bits and flecks of your printed words that

that I nurtured, surreptitiously, with my own jagged edges.  

Today, I lie before you and your words, Musafir,

stripped, tear-stained, chapped, yet whole and pure.

Today, as the hungry remnants of your own soul

lie before me under the black soot of the Kolkata sky,

Come, let us bathe again in the monsoon of your tumultuous words.

Come to me, eroding me, my fallen hero,

As we wipe away each other’s looming clouds.

In the shimmering lyrics of our new love note,

Let there be nemesis again, let it be my salvation. 

Based on the protagonist of A Thousand Unspoken Words by Paulami Duttagupta