Myriad Reflections. Shastri Akella

Conversations

The book was returned
on Tuesday at dusk.

It's a smoggy Friday morning today
unreal as a dream

I sink into the sofa
smell the pages

and am numbed with
the scent of her fingers

running along the bare bodies of the page
an unlikely romance

her finger and these pages
drinking in the words

mind squiggled with the tales that emerge
a chapter beginning

heavily underlined
a question mark crafted at the end
personification, of unsure smiles and confused-cat stares


I fell compelled to respond
and scribble the answer
of culture polemics and layered tunics


and so the book connects hearts
hers the origin,
the book a bridge

over which the thought dances
and reaches its destination
my heart filled with the sweet music of its coo

She shuts the book and presses the flap
against her lips
her mind a maze of thoughts

woven from the threads of
hazel eyes, simmering loves stories
antiques, carpets

candlelit faces, drunken carousals
all of which unfurl between
the dog-eared covers

They sense it all
my fingers, as they potter
over the burgundy edge searing

with the hot touch of her lips
the discovery seeps in
like the warmth of kindred sunbeams

that lay scattered
all over the sky
a love story

begun in the proscenium
of the world
finds its culmination here

across deadpan pages
written decades, no, some centuries ago
published in a frozen city
passed from hand to hand
kiosk to sales counters to second-hand road side shop
and sitting in my lap now

the sensations gathering within
of human touch
finger meeting finger
over the little crease she creates over a page
a bookmark, if you like

lips locking,
over the spine where her lips,
briefly hovered,

and conversations completed
in the invisible space
between the pages

The sirens weep
lift creaks into its cockpit
songbirds croon a strangely familiar tune
the maids hum and sweep, hum and sweep
bells clang and the priest chants
I settle into the rhythms of life
and whisper
'long live the world of fiction'