pardon the morbidity

it’s that time of the year again when you get busy making lists

of books and movies and people and disasters and songs and deaths

and the best and the worst or something. so what is it this time? and am i on it?

probably not, for they won’t pay you for a list like that now will they? or is it more overtime? which 

means you’ll have to save up all your smiles for the cameras, while i get a shoulder frigid

it’s that time of the year again when wispy clouds

go pink and purple at golden sunsets and the kites fly like crazy into the freezing breeze

and dive and soar and prepare to nest while the rest of the birds sit twittering in the sun

if there is one, that is. and the flowers are all in bloom and the world’s going insane

with brides and grooms and decked-up weddings and food. and social gatherings

and people and small talk to which you have nothing to contribute

no positions to defend no ideas to refute. just mirthless smiles

as they begin to allude to your non-existent job or

your marriage that’s on the rocks

it’s that time of the year again when you miss the yellow winter afternoons

and lazily dozing off in the large lawn at your grandparents’ place having oranges in the sun

and chatting to family over coffee in warm fluffy clean quilts once the sumptuous dinner was done

and lying freezing gazing at the sky filled with stars and a new moon on clear violet winter nights

and the neem leaves that fell fluttering like golden rain in the slanting morning light

that dispersed the fog that cloaked the mustard fields still very green

and the birds huddled up on lank wires and bare trees

and you miss the boy you used to be

it’s that time of the year again when cold bucket baths

leave you chilled to the core and with every mugful as you

shut your eyes you return to the empty naked vulnerable darkness

of long ago nights to a time before you realized that the only one who can hurt you is you

and actually began to love the cold as it seeped through and through your skin

and you take deep breaths between the cold splashing mugfuls of darkness

reminding yourself that there is no warm bed waiting at the end of this

and the dawn at the end of a starless night will bring not warm light

but a smoggy frosty morning and a dusty floor in a room

you wish wasn’t so quiet, so cold

it’s that time of the year again when there are lights in araucarias

standing in for christmas-trees and cotton-snow and weird santas with fake beards

on warm afternoon streets and shimmery decorations in all the shops and bars and restaurants

and borrowed joviality and a reason to sell stuff and party and get wasted and pasted

and an excuse for excess and then the mess as you try and forget

in tireless shopping sprees and endless movie-marathons

and bottomless cups of hot chocolate with extra cream

that you will sleep alone and dream lonely dreams

it’s that time of the year again when you ring in the new and try your best to let go of the past

not that that happens but it’s an occasion to try because there’s this sense of circles closing

and pages turning and chapters ending and books being shut and lists

being completed and things being returned that were borrowed

like you’re going to curl up by the open balcony door

and there won’t be a world anymore

to wake up in tomorrow