BLACK

Black:
I smoked with him
as the smell of clove engulfed our bodies-
our conversations.
A black little cigarette would
wrap around
its aromatic tobacco
sheets of history
and burn them
and we
intoxicated by our own past
and freed by it
at the same ‘fucking’ moment
would wrap our arms around each other
and kiss
and kiss and kiss,
until
our breath would become one
like the identities that we shared.
‘Black is beautiful’,
We wrote on each others’
once-colonized bodies
through our silent lips
because the language was taken
and the voices were oppressed.
He loved and hated his name
and yet kept it;
it reminded him of a past that
he didn’t ‘want’ to forget
and whenever we talked
I realized we did search for
many such pasts
that we didn’t ‘want’ to forget.
A love like ours, then
is not just between two people
It is between histories
‘Shared’ histories
and the loss, hence
of either
is irredeemable.

Ankush, 16/10/14