Rohit Nalluri

You leave me every time
With a little more of you.
And every time I think of you these days
I think a little more of you.
Each time our hands touch
And fingers play,
I come away
With hands that smell like you.
And the way your eyes linger over mine –
If I hadn’t met you and your eyes
I would never have known
That one can touch with eyes.

My lips are newly formed
And newly softened
In the fire-warmed embrace
Of your lips.
Every time we kiss
My lips taste like you.
And every time we kiss
My lips smile like you.

I wonder sometimes if I am not stealing you away –
Stealing you from yourself –
Atom by atom, sense by sense,
Wearing you like a single, long piece of cloth one wears on hot, scented summer nights.
(You’d think I should feel some slight remorse
Over stealing you away,
But I’ve paid for you in my own way.
With my entire being I’ve paid for you –
One soul for another.)
I am wearing you like a soul.

I was born with my soul,
But yours I’ve had the pleasure of wearing,
Slowly
And deliberately,
Learning you like one learns a language.
Slowly
And deliberately
Wearing you like one wears age.
And slowly
And deliberately
I find my essence disappearing.
Perhaps I am disappearing into you,
Eyes into eyes,
Lips into lips,
Senses into senses,
Breath into breath.

My soul lifts itself over my skin
And disappears into you,
Every time we meet.
I come away from your hands and home
A little more decayed,
A little more of my half-life spent.
I come away
With a little more radiation.
Disappearing like this is such a pleasant way to die.

Distances between us were always vapor-thin.
Porous to begin with,
They burned away in the presence of our eyes,
Like the rising sun absorbs dew,
Disperses fog,
Melts snow –
Our eyes banished distance.
In this increasing absence of distance,
I don’t know when but pretty soon,
You will be me and I will be you.
And when that happens
We would have gone
From being two people turned inside-out
And outside-in
To being
Absolutely nothing.
We will disappear into each other
Like vapors into clouds,
Like rain into flowers,
Like honey into bees.
Do you see now how a cloud rains down to become a flower?
And how a flower takes flight to become a bee?
And so will we –
Two separate existences,
Two elaborate universes –
Collide one day like galaxies collide,
Softly, slowly, deliberately,
To become one endless night strewn with stars.

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