You are there and you are not like the dizzy sorrows that are mine lining my shirt, frosting my drink as I walk across downtown Calcutta my beloved misery  where your smiles light up the stairs and my cigarettes endless like your days and ways that are my sorrows, my ins and outs How I look at myself is an odd thing to ask before the pen and the paper, and an hour that is not ideal for confessions It is morning, after all Are you not reminded of the promises round the corner that such mornings used to brag about? I am, and I have not yet recovered from the treachery of nothingness Feelings We sit around your séance tonight as all our rotten old loves flock around like ghosts in their eerie lovemaking we don't learn, we don't laugh we're wallpapers hanging tattered and loose - as we must - we don't mourn, we don't bluff but Hello!  Wait a second or two my first first love: who are you? Asking me to glee as the traffic changed from red to blue like your lips from red to blue so untrue my first first love: who are you? Women You are the evening threshold and you are the smog and the hungry people passing by you are the haggling, the snug pigeon holes and the likenesses of all the gods above hanging her tongue red and hanging loose as if in shame: the people streaming by that cannot be considered familiar as if in a dream: for we are the people flooding your wilderness, offering nothing Meenal Why is it that you always close your eyes while we are making love? Why is it that we are always crossing swords? Why is it that I cannot write to you anymore? Why is it that you always get ever so lost in my coffee drizzles? Why is it that I grow cold even while tending your young and supple breasts? Why is it that you always walk away during the sandstorms, just before the rains would wash down our orgasm? Why is it that you make me forget all those lines I once tried to write about you? Why is it that you are one of my unkept words? (c) Prasenjit Maiti 2002

Prasenjit Maiti (b 1971) is widely published on the web.  He is Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Burdwan University, West Bengal, India.