not to be the night when I lick my fingers

it was not to be the night when I lick my fingers,
you laughed at me, chortled at the way I spilled
everything on the canvas of the sky. a roundlet
of onion stuck in our conversation, our poetry.

I remind you of a pie you were to make for me,
and I worry today if I am an irksome ingredient,
like those peppercorns in your vadas that you
spit away saying you find them ground better,

but I am this whole, not a powder of intimacy,
I am a dripping stick-kulfi that coats desires,
I am the extra spice that burns your words,
I am just not a bullet in the index of the menu

that you skip over and come back to, because
I am affordable and easily available today, even
if I come out to be not what you really wanted.

after all,

it is not to to be the night when I lick my fingers,
invisible tears emerge on downtrodden cheeks,
painting colorless sky grey and blue. a julienne
of a fantasy is shattered, to become my poetry.

.

For dVerse Poetics.

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