Are you well, beloved? Whatever I have, blow it all away in a single breath and simply take back the love with interest.
I long to grip your sweat-damp back hard in my hands! When my lips are lost against yours, I fall into terrible danger; which pair is yours and which mine—you make it so hard to tell them apart! Your small, small eyes hold so many languages, so many words, so much hurt...! Fearing I might understand something, I have never dared meet your gaze properly all this time!
I remember you when you fall asleep in terrible exhaustion, still holding your storybook, or when in your dreams you search every corner of my house, dying to find something! Tell me, will you only search inside the rooms? When will you judge what you've done to my scattered heart?
I have tried to understand—your way of staying so distant even when so close to me, your way of gripping my hand so tight even from far away—none of this has ever escaped my notice.
On some Holi day I sat thinking—there's green, there's purple, royal pink... even banana-leaf has a color named after it, yet there's no color named for you! The next moment I thought again—if there were a color in your name, everyone would touch you in their own way, hold you in their fists, smear you on themselves and make you theirs in an instant!
As you wished, I will forget you properly, am forgetting a little more each day. Only, the water that falls from my wet lashes after bathing, that bit of water, the gentle morning sun, and night's good-night—these remind me of you so much. That's all, just this much! I'll manage this much and forget you completely. Yes, didn't I swear this oath two years ago? By now I should have been able to, shouldn't I?
Whatever you're going to misunderstand, misunderstand now. Next time you won't get the chance! I've packed my bags myself this time, let me leave. I won't plead to stay anymore!
When you smile, even the peacock spreading its plumes forgets its pride in beauty and stands staring down at its own black feet, head bowed. In that smile I too lose my way, running to pretend I'm reading, turning pages of a book—this fraud that I am.
You ask quite often these days how I'm doing! I'm very well, just as I was supposed to be; only sometimes I hold the doll to my chest, calling your name. Truly I am well!
I have something huge in common with poets, you know? Poets can't sleep properly at night either, and neither can I.
My youthful body and my eternally young heart—both writhe daily in longing for your touch.
Listen, does the one you love know that when you sing, hundreds of drops of anguish scatter from your eyes in all directions? He doesn't know. He only hears the song. If he knew, he couldn't have left you behind! Does he know how much pain you've endured to stand where you are today? Of course, I don't know either. Thank God I don't! If I knew, I would have hidden you in my heart long ago and never let you suffer at all!
Listen, how can your lover hurt you even knowing everything? Do you know I can always sense when you're hurting? When your heart is tender, I understand completely? When you withdraw in hurt silence, I can tell right away.
The day you sold our memories by the kilo to that street vendor, I immediately bought them back at nine-and-a-half times the price and arranged them in my bedroom—otherwise that man would have peddled all our memories around. What does he know of what these memories mean! How can you do such things, tell me?
I hear your lover weaves new words every day to keep you intoxicated? I can't do such things—I just write something plain to hide my tears, and that works fine for me. Indeed, in the end, becoming utterly plain is the only necessary goal for people made of clay, isn't it?
Friday and Saturday together make ninety-six holidays a year, not counting all the other holidays. Yet you haven't found a single day to come to me. Listen, I won't want to see you anymore. Watch—one day my time will become as precious as yours.
Your lover doesn't know many things about you—listen, do you yourself really know your own heart? I know some things. When you tell her, you can tell her too, how about that?
When you read this, you'll feel my fingers touching your cheek. Listen, do your eyes still reveal your heart's thoughts? If they do, I won't touch them again, never! If I get bound again by looking into your eyes, where will I find someone to untie me?
If you could understand my heart, would I need to pick up a pen, tell me? How much pain must one feel to want to shed anguish like a stream of blood through a pen's sting—how would you people sitting across from pens understand that? I'm not like you, not like neighbor Nimai uncle's daughter or my friend who knows everything in my heart. This motionless me is like the swift ink of my pen. Listen, does ink appear to you only as black? But how does that one black color explain my joy, pain, humiliation, neglect, even my shy smile so eloquently—I haven't been able to understand that myself to this day!
You say I supposedly do nothing all night but stay awake wasting paper and ink—all this is useless work! But you know, until I write the words down, they stick in my throat like thorns, I literally get hiccups! Ah, if only I could accept your taunts and still touch a few of those letters frozen in my chest!
Everyone says only beautiful writing becomes poetry, I say when people write silly verses about love, those are no less than poetry either.
You said whatever your lover writes becomes poetry! Yet look, after dodging sleep so many nights, I still can't properly join two good words together! Does she know she's harvesting the fruit of all my labor without any effort?
People supposedly hide their most precious belongings, save money beyond necessity. If only people learned to love before learning to hide and hoard! Alas, people even hide their love waiting for good times! Is this possible? I cannot. Does love have an auspicious time too?
At the end I only wanted to hold your hand once more, wanted to see you properly one more time. I keep forgetting—I can't ask for these things anymore, it's all over, time made you win. When this you of mine eagerly wants to hold someone else's hand, if they neglect you, tell them: a thirsty woman dies of thirst every day from so far away! What they're neglecting was my most ardent desire!
See how I turned poetry into prose! Made prose into verse. Wrapped tears in laughter's veil. Only I couldn't make you mine.
Your leaving turned out quite well, I became terribly sad. Only sorrow is synonymous with poetry.
I never want to be a poet, poets are really such fools—they choke their own sorrows, squeeze and extract them from their chests, then they themselves paint them, add beauty and flavor, arranging them like fairy tales. How strange! How foolish!
I ask again—stay well, beloved! Setting aside my bad habits, stay with me after all, to the very end.