Nobody tells me to search for you

as if there's a timeframe for undertaking such quests!

My voice sounds like yours, and often,

looking at my arms, I get puzzled,

I feel like these are your arms,

but let's not talk about these now.

So, let me tell you what happened after you were gone.

No one ever in their wildest dreams imagined that you'd depart,

you're in a great rush, weren't you? 

(once you told me) You wanted to visit me

riding the foamy peaks of ocean waves

when in heavy monsoon fragrant kaminis blossom in abundance.

And, after that, so much monsoonal tide transformed into hemanta day hays.

I don't feel courageous to post ads in newspapers captioning "Missing person"

How on earth would I compose the text?

My feeble language gets distorted...

I just have one language to touch you,

and the language drags me at jomin's aisles at the beginning of Magh

when egg-yolk hued days get smaller and smaller, 

and a bosom-full of mist, touching the tips of bamboo shoots drip drops,

they drip, and settle onto a pool on your grave.

The wintry forest, as it touches you,

swears by constellations that they'll move to the furthest south,

and on wobbly knees, come to my shore.

In the meanwhile, your pastures will be cold and numb

at the Maghi purnima's harrowing chill.

And I?

I will come knock on your door,

begging for warmth in my freezing rapturous hibernation. 

Bipasha Haque is a diaspora writer with particular interest in life-the way it is. By profession she is a university teacher.