A Lost Soul Poem by Shilpa Philip

Where do I end
Where do you begin
You are me
And I am you
One lost soul
Axed into two bitter halves
If Rumi ever forgot to remember
Shams of Tabriz
If a butterfly ever forgets
The colour of the daisy
It made love to,
Maybe i'd do the same
Maybe I'd do the same

Love is a sprawling supernova
All bright at once
All stardust at once
The tears that thought you bereaved
Don't they know
One can't lose ones own heartbeat?
Don't they know
The constant ache
That jabs you in your chest
Are outcries of them times
You now try to bury alive?
Don't they know I ll always
Have you inside the curve of my palms?

The lashing tides of time
Can hush wailing
into silent lamenting
But can they drive into nothingness
The world I made for you
And you for me?

The raging tempest
Which once tore us down
Now a gentle breeze so shy
Will it fail to evoke a fragrance
Known only to you and I?

Pain makes poets out of laymen
And love makes drunkards out of the genteel
If the potion of our love
Seeps poison into blackened veins
Why did it taste like sweet nectar?

With the bowed eyes
Of a mourning widow
Springing Firth a concoction of
Grief and kohl
I watch my heart
Madly whirling like a dervish
Impervious to coaxing
To words and to balm
The leap that eased into an abyss
Of bliss
Now bequeathed severed fingers
And broken bones