Relative Years

We toasted our first year with glasses of tap water
And discussed our plans at length.
We marked our calendar
And wrote down other particulars in our diaries –
Height, weight, Color of eyes at dusk,
The number of finger-steps from your breast to belly button…

You started losing pages
From your loose-bound diary from the second year.
We measured the duration we could stare into the others’ eyes
And made plans to make rose wine.

A very long monsoon set in the third year
It stayed till year five!
You lost a few more pages from your diary
When the river beneath our bed overflowed.
I started to grow a small rose bush.

Fourth year saw our room damp and we burned frankincense.
Small dots of mould grew on the my specks
We skipped breakfast and ate a lot of eggs.
You purchased a new diary –
Meanwhile my roses thrived!

You were away, a lot, the fifth year.
We met in between weekends and beds –
Sometimes between moonset and dawn.
I made the wine mixture and stored it in ceramic jars.

The rains stopped the next year
And you were home a lot more –
We kept bumping into each other
And used the word excuse-me extensively.
We threw out the old bed; bought a new one –
And started to miss the old one soon afterwards.

The seventh year we sipped from the aging wine.
We made short toasts and sat down to long breakfasts
We gazed at each other over plates of pretty poached eggs –
The dark glassy spot in your pupils,
Where once I saw my face was now hidden by
Yellowing dots of drying mould on my specs
While you stared at a bee
Ruminating on my left glass frame; preparing to fly soon.

We had forgotten to turn the calendar
still set on a day seven years ago.

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