A poem for tea cup and Sunday morning ---

For Shabnam Das Manna ...

Your little china tea cup

warmed by steam,

the honey colored swirl

churning out all over again those

 long tucked-away dripping dreams;

you hold it as if

both of you are plotting something secret

your tea-colored eyes

steaming with memories

both fresh and distant

and a few rainy day stories of the past

sitting in front of you on their hunches.

Then the morning

kisses your cheek

like a lover you have known

like a river tickling a pure night

 carries you

to a town

where trees still grow tall in the river bank

away from the newspaper and the car-honks

your tea-leaf eye-lids brimming  up

with a childlike joy

that you have known

but have forgotten lately

and then you are not 30 yet,

so you smile and giggle and

 hope that the world understands your language!

  

Almost Love...

 365 days and a few nights later

I am trying to taste the familiar warmth

and hear the forgotten footfalls

that has become silent like both of us.

We have kept veracity and a few smiles

In a curtain box

planning to take it with us

later

someday, sometime,

when the callings of life will be completed.

Till then we will postpone love.

Now sleep is lonely and famished

as dreams have deserted the eyes and

both of us imagine

a future love
waiting
today...
the day after...
and a day after... 

and this explicitly is the loss of love!