Shishir Chaudhary

Snowfall

I walk into the café, with a bag

And a few books inside.

And I see you curled up in a corner

With a John Williams.

–

‘Stoner’ the cover says, when you glance,

Confused if I was ogling or reading.

Your sight drops on me

Like a snowflake on the tongue,

Sharp, cold, distinct, and free.

–

It melts and dissolves into me.

I do not want to distract you, in fact

Stoner is my favourite too.

So I turn around, and afraid,

Take a table seven feet away.

–

When the waiter is gone,

And I’ve fiddled with the ticket of the bus,

I zip open my bag

To pull out John Williams’s ‘Augustus’.

–

As Stoner finishes one of his reviews,

(Going by the pages you had read, I guessed)

The clouds rumble again.

The shy raindrops splatter on my skin

This time, the mouth still cold from the last encounter.

–

You look up and at me and the book I have,

Only to blink twice.

Your eyelids must have forgotten, on whose eyes to fall,

The first time.

–

Two smiles are born, together

Yours and mine,

Our eyes back to the pages,

But sights still in each other’s ravine.

–

The clouds left,

And the sky cleared,

But the snowflake,

lingered.

Leave a comment