Tabish Nawaz

Tabish Nawaz teaches Environmental Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. He has authored a short story collection Opening Clouds, Fermented Rain (Hawakal, 2020) and a poetry collection The Ornaments for Silence (Hawakal, 2023). He lives in Mumbai.

 

 

Mediation

 

After exchanging serrated words,

an edgeless silence descends,

we come to its terms withdrawing

to our bed

keeping distance, arranging

the words into a fence.

 

We remain up and guard the barrier between us,

wishing for the first movement from the other side

for dismantling the separation,

until we both sleep.

 

Once asleep, our bodies

exploring the language of touch

seek each other out,

remove the barricade words made,

make us fall into each other’s arms.

 

Penrose Stairs

 

All love dissipate out of the same well,

frothing into the flame, flaring

across the islands of bodies

floating over a lonely wave, diffusing

into each other staring at the gradient,

until the febricity of one is equal to another

and another to another and so on,

interconnecting the pores,

all love permeate back to the origin.

---

Setu, November 2023 :: Voices Within 2023