Lover, My Country
Lonely for you, I nuzzle the nightshift.
Red sea in a wine glass. Wanting to die,
then wanting to want to live. America
is a winter, a mind in a thimble. Wild
in the moonlit dark, I thought I was
dreaming. Come morning, a blankness—
what was once the sky and is now
an answer. From my place in that limbo,
I shuffle the years back. I close my eyes
and see you as the bulbul would, swimming
in its noontide. Hips of Ghats, ghazals
in your hair. What song could fill this distance?
The air between us emptied and plenty—
enough to keep me living. I don’t want to die
in America, and in America you die.
