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.
