Today I Must Write About Love

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
— Pablo Neruda, ‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines’
                                      1.
Today I want to write about love —
of loves past and present, maybe future.
I want to remember, write about good things —
not about what did not work out or ended,
nor the fights or misunderstandings.

Today I want to dream of love’s goodness,
its sense of nurture, companionship, calm —
not the wild fantasies, loyal lust, or electric desires.

Today I want to write about love in the morning —
not late at night.

I want to wake up very early, despite my body-clock,
reclaim what dawn bestows on us before we are awake.

Today I will sit on my trusted blanched driftwood,
accidentally wedged between two jagged rocks
whose slow-fraying volcanic ash tries to colonise its colour.

I want to etch letters of love on her white bark
before she floats ocean-wards, leaving only memories.

Today I want to write on love —
on paper handmade from bamboo,
whose grainy imperfections
remind us of life’s unpredictable lore.

As I unscrew the top of my glass ink-bottle,
the purple haze of my favourite ink fumes.

I stretch the first sheet of paper
and start writing the letters, upside down —
hoping the ones I intimately loved
will decipher their mirror-image secrets,
their truths, under the lens of clear sight.

                                2.

It is now, the day’s end —
I have written copiously on sheaves and sheaves
of off-white petal-flecked paper.

My amassed cursive-script glows
in the dusk’s deep-orange, blue-tinged, raw light.
The black lava-sand on the beach murmurs,
the ocean is restless, the high tide hungry.

It is time to gather all the letters and poems
of love I have scribbled today,
and head to home’s safety.
But I must write one more line,
a line that eluded me all my life —
that translucent phrase formed of liquid-letters
floating in front of my eyes,
impossible to pen down on paper, despite its gravity.

The light is fast fading. The loose pages
I have written on, try hard to disengage themselves
in the evening’s gathering wind.
I start, attempting to write that elusive line,
and before I can end with the flourish of a full-stop —
an unexpectant wave rushes towards me.

And even as I gather all my words,
it washes over them.

As the wave retreats, I pick up
the saline-soaked pages —
the waters have taken all my words away.
All my script’s slanted ink has been washed off
by the ocean’s acrid unbenign waters.

I stare at the smudged pages —
all my words gone —
and love too.

A pack of stray beach dogs appear — I count 17 of them —
rushing towards the scattered papers.

mistaking them for food, for love.

They ruthlessly paw at them, scratch and devour them.
I see these canines are satiated, albeit temporarily.

I wanted to write about love today —
and I did.

But the sea, the wind, the black-sand I so love
have taken my lines away from me.

I try to write about love —
that unfinished, unwritten line eludes me —
always. Perhaps I was never meant to write about love.

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