The City That Could Never Sleep
A silhouetted fairy tale
It was in the crashing and burning
of mundanity-stung breaths
strung into languid piano chords
treading into deafening depths
of silence aching to be dissonated
into finger-scraped expeditions
exploring an unfamiliar territory
where they found a corroding flotsam
of wedding rings they’d hurled away
in the ocean wildly swaying
to a draconian song
wrapping wintry perspiration
between moist thighs and near-dawns
city lights slither through their dark skin
in whiffs of cigarette ash and yardley scents
the makings of a fairy tale
envisioning a Parisian mise-en-scene
silhouetted against its sole witness
a city that never slept
oh she never could
knowing that they existed
entwined in an ever-after
that it couldn’t bear to contain
in its infinitesimal smallness.
Notes: There’s a patch of Mumbai that garners attention of every voyeuristic onlooker. A road in the shape of a necklace by the sea strung together with impassioned couples so lost in themselves that they’re blinded to everything else around them. We often joke among ourselves that there’s all kinds of love on Worli seaface except the old-married kind.
That patch wears a somewhat illicit scent — a conflict of sweat, cheap cologne, soot and ill-timed curry spills on shirts — all that will probably be cleansed at the end of the day. The next day, busy and bustling with mundanity, will be a clean slate.
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