1.

Dear Girl,

I met your mother today. She lives her days dreaming of death. When she wakes up she says the nightmare has taken her back. She asked me about some of your letters but I've already left them to the rivers. How she longs for you to lay down with your head in her lap, once again as you recollected the day you just lived.

Lived.

After the tide, they said the river is flowing in the opposite direction. I hope to sit beside its bank someday waiting for the letters I had left in its arms.

The river is flowing in the opposite direction, with me.

I'll meet you on the way.

Kisses
Him.


2.

Dusts fell on my tears. Accumulated.
Till your window was darkened by wetness.
And suddenly, you remembered the light-bulb
I had gifted you long, long back,
Wrapped in a rose-bud.

"Chase your inner darkness away", I had said.

Now you knew what I meant.
There were rooms in either side of your skin,
Where you lived, twice. Duplicated
In every unfragmented moment.
The shadows overlapped.

You decided to swallow the light-bulb
After you had carefully peeled off
Each of the rose petals.


3.

Dear Girl,

When I opened the window yesterday, I found a breeze blowing out of my room. She said she was trapped there forever. Did you ever notice her?

I can, somehow, remember a day when I had been writing something on one of my dusty pages, when all of a sudden it began to flutter wildly. And I had thought it wanted to fly down to the bed where you slept.

Yesterday, when the breeze went out, the night came in through the same window. This time when I'd write, I'll create invisibility.

You'd have more room to hide.

Kisses
Him.


4.

She was photographing her shadow in the neon lights.
Her shadow posed for her on the wall.

"My shadow's such a professional bitch. She lures you with her lusty frame."

She was jealous.
But her camera won't listen to her.
It kept clicking.
Click - clickety - click.
When she was checking out the photographs of her shadow, later,
She found on the wall her shadow checking out a few photographs too,
In each of which she was seen photographing a shadow,
Holding my hand all the while.

"You belong to the wall", she whispered into my ear.


5.

Dear Girl,

Yesterday, for the first time the night was dark. You were right! It really is beautiful. And very well designed too.

I remember the times you wanted to teach me the handicraft. Said I could too weave a blanket out of darkness. And I had kept stumbling in the blinding whiteness.

But it shan't be wrong ever again. Yesterday I fixed your left eye to synchronize with the right. At last I can breathe in your darkness.

Yesterday, for the first time again the night is dark.

Kisses
Him.


6.

She used to sign her name on the water.
Rowing in the lake.

He tried to reach there with his hands,
Trying to touch her poetic alphabets.

Her name rippled away.


7.

Dear Girl,

Sounds still creep on the grass where we used to sit. The analogy of dawn seems just as unmindful. I've lost a few eyes in these years. The dewdrops seem hazy. But I do listen to the tinkling sound they create as they fall on the grass blades.

You'd be glad to know I've found an abode amidst the grass, in an abandoned ant-hill that the ants had evacuated sensing the rains. And guess what, I've found all my eyes in there.

Kisses.
Him


8.

"I'm back", he said.
And yet, none answered.

The darkness knocked on her cheekbones.
But the door was locked.
She slept stagnant on her mute heart.
She recognized none anymore.

He pressed his ears on her heart for one last time
and whispered,
                                    "I'm back".