Bye bye blackbird

I must stop writing about him. Maybe another time…

Lying on the grass at Sheep Meadow in Central Park, New York.

The colors of fall. If alone loss was this colorful in life…



He rolls over on his stomach and looks at me. I am in deep thought. I am making stories of people who the only offense they did, was fall in my life of vision.

A couple looking through photo albums. Maybe a son they sent to war...

Two college students kissing each other taking occasional breaks to breathe and drink some water. Must be nouveau love…

He catches me looking at them intently.
A kiss and I taste the coffee only one of us drank.
Eyes lower instinctively and a smile at the corner remains.
Another kiss that tries to steal that smile away. It only spreads it.

Lying on my back looking at a grey that tries to steal the blue of the sky. Successfully.

I've been trying not to say them too long. I give in...

“Main aur meri tanhayee aksar yeh baatein karte hain.
Tum hote toh aisa hota.
Tum hote toh waisa hota.
Tum is baat pe kitna hanste.
Tum is baat pe hairan hote.
Main aur meri tanhayee aksar yeh baatein karte hain.”

He waits. I don’t oblige.

I like to hear his voice. It now says, “And it means…?”

I translate. Or try to. While trying to hold on to the beauty of the lines. The significance shouldn’t overtake the beauty, I insist.

“That was almost poetry”, he tells me.

“I wish you could’ve understood the original without my translation”, I muse lazily plucking at an unrelenting blade of grass.

“Maybe it wouldn’t have been as beautiful”

I realize, yet again, how foolish people in love are.

There remains only a tiny stretch of blue in the sky. Its like an unrung school bell, which tells us, go home.

Like obedient school kids, we pick our bags and walk out.
His warm fingers entangle my cold ones.