The Shadow Lovers

Photography: Rathin Mitra

Running through the street
With a storm under her feet
She reaches the old man’s den

The timepiece, oblivious of when

Knowing he would understand
The ruin of her castle of sand
With hope she pushed the door
In need of his unusual lore

In the stead of him she found
The room oddly crowned
With a heap of broken records
Which seemed to play unheard chords

Passing through scattered yellow hardbacks
A smell which every paperback lacks
She sees her old man on his bed
With almost no wrinkle on his bald head

He always looked as young as a lover
Resembling a Marquez story cover
Who only became younger
In the company of her female hunger

This time she came to let him know
Her story of the lowest low
That for long she was ailing
In her last days she was sailing

She tapped him on the shoulder
To wake him up from his slumber
But he lay there on a bed soaked with urine
With ears which were not too keen

She called him for the next two days
But he was lost in his deceased haze
He never woke up to hear
Or to hold his ailing whore near

In a day or two she too took the cue
To start a flight, brand new
Amidst diseased books and infected laughter
The corpses lived happily ever after.