What happens to a shriveled leaf
when kissed by rain
Do rains have a memory of not falling
from steel skies onto taut faces?
Rain writes on our minds,
in fleeting ink
the secrets we hide from our selves.
There are no sites of memory in our brain
What then enwombs the weight?
Void doesn’t mean empty.
Sigh and you will know!
When the Sun sets
her hair flows like a paranoid river
She stops avoiding boulders and
flows over and past them
When night falls
she isn’t scared of drowning.
In her dream, the shriveled leaf
Withdrawing from the world,
curls a bit more
Whispering a secret
before the wind takes it away
to other dreams in other unblinking eyes
What then becomes of the rain:
It falls.
falls
falls
falls
through, by, on, in—
time, night, fog, crevices, edges, roof tops, fleeting
gestures, puddles, graves, eyes, faces, dreams,
filling a nothingness.
My mother tells me, she hears the rain
howling on our roof
every night
Night is when other mothers dig empty graves
for many a janaan*
awaiting their return.
Sigh,
and you will know
Void doesn’t mean Empty.
*Janaan in Kashmiri means the one who is close to heart, the beloved. Here it means the beloved son whose mother is waiting for his return—referring to the people who have been subjected to enforced disappearances in Kashmir.
