Waiting for the Third Stone

You thought I had gone away.
How easily you assume things!
If leaving were that easy, I would have lived!
That day you laughed so much, didn't you?
You danced? With bells on your feet? Like rain dancing in the courtyard?
Such joy at the thought I'd never return?
What shall I do, tell me! It hurts so much!
Goodbye is too heavy to say, Srijit—you wouldn't understand.
That I don't exist—such a soft scene before your eyes, I know.
Or am I thinking wrong?
Whether I exist or not—perhaps it never even crosses your mind!
You wouldn't know if I left, just as you don't know I'm here.
There's no room for this existence in that heart, is there?
 
You know, this love I feel for you—it needs nothing of you.
It never has. Even the day I first loved, you weren't there before me.
You weren't there, yet I walked a long path alone, living in your existence.
The path ends, I end too—I never understood.
The heart wears away in selfless, solitary, silent love.
I've learned to live forgetting the visible, lost in the invisible!
Will you vanish? Will I vanish? Don't frighten me, beloved.
Living around you, through you, without you—shall I not see how dying feels?
 
You're happy, aren't you, having stolen all my happiness?
What you'd read—these days I don't send it anymore; I burn it.
Do you know how sweet it is to burn?
What I know you won't read, I send.
What you don't read, what you throw away—that burns too!
See how well I've learned to live as ash!
Haven't I become so good, tell me?
I burn, yet I don't scorch. I'm consumed, yet I don't consume.
I remain restless, foolish fingers seeking peace on the keyboard,
yet I don't knock.
Page after page of fuel-letters soothe me, or sleeping pills.
Your time remains yours. Such joy in saving time, isn't it, Srijit?
Truly! Where self-interest doesn't move house, what's the point of expense? Be it time or money?
 
How many days I haven't seen you...
Of course, meeting now would be nothing but madness.
You're right, my head isn't quite right.
Who with a healthy mind would love you forgetting such self-interest, tell me?
Actually, love doesn't quite suit healthy people.
I lived as a character in one of your familiar stories.
The story's beginning, the story's end—you knew it all;
only the taste you didn't know.
At the price of your taste, I've sold a lifetime's worth of longing and I'm quite well!
Still today I'm the blazing heroine of your lightless story!
 
Some love and then desire the body,
some desire the body and then love.
Some love people,
some love numbers.
Some move by the heart's reasoning,
some by the body's.
Tell me, Srijit,
how many bodies can settle a lifetime's debt?
Keeping the mind missing, did you finish life in the intoxication of magic pen?
What you've gained—the day of losing it is right ahead, know this.
Being alone doesn't feel good at all, Srijit! Believe me!
This fear isn't yours, it's mine.
 
Do you think me worthless?
Think you'll crush me
like crushing ants?
If I'd learned flattery, I'd have been beloved, I know.
Who tells such truth, tell me? Only fools!
One day this very truth will be truth. Match it up!
The pain of people who never-got-happiness—fine, I accept it;
but when very happy people cry caught in love's terrible trap,
how does accepting that feel?
I'm not cursing,
I'm not sulking,
I'm not complaining,
I'm pleading to be unafraid.
 
Am I scolding too much, tell me?
Be good to me, don't keep anger.
Stay well even on that day
when no one will be there to tell you these things,
that day when you won't even know there's no one, that day.
Are you well?—send an answer to my asking. You'll say, why?
The person whose being or not-being changes nothing—
let them just stay dead.
If sometimes they live and shamelessly ask, "How are you?" don't answer.
Let this courtesy of response not happen! Let the silent custom of irregularity continue!
 
Rain falls, rain stops. Peace descends on the melancholy heart.
For one whose rain never stops, what will appease that heart?
My pain, my life, my tears; this bonus pain of writing you these stories—that too is mine!
Untouchable feelings—intoxicating in an instant, nothing touches anyone.
The train of words keeps growing, waiting for words to end,
anger accumulates, hurt comes and laughingly stops the wayward train.
Small life, my world smaller still,
even if the story of both ends, do words ever end, tell me?
 
One doll, two stones.
How many years...
Empty doll, three stones—cutting endless hours of waiting.
I'm well, quite well, Sri.