An Appetite for Love

Lately

I have developed

An appetite for love

In love

I want to turn

The whole valley

Into a paper clip

In love

I want to drink the stars

Eat the moonbeams

And lick the spicy roses

In love

I want to turn this starry night

Into your curled eyelashes

I want to churn all the Chinars

Into a refreshing Kehwah

In love

I want to wriggle your dyed scarf

To doves

In love

I want to sculpt you

Out of dense clouds

In love

I want to turn all truths

Into one simple joke

And give tongue

To all the silences

In love

I want to give memories

A sound mind

So that they don’t fade away

In love

I want to write you

As a Ghazal

Rhyming your breaths to mine

In love

I want to be your loved earrings

Dangling the universe

In love

I want to politicize myself as a rumour

In love

In want to be a character

From One Thousand and One Nights

Accustomed to magic

In love

I want to be a well decorated Tonga

Taking passengers from Dalgate to Nishat

In Old Srinagar

In love

I want to be the sole owner

Of Borges’ Book of Sand

In love

I want to bore you so much

That you fall asleep in my arms

In love

I want to be that rusty dustbin

Often seen

Smelling the garbage

Of torn letters

In love

I want to be a dead mother

Missed deeply by her children

In love

I want to feign sickness

Bedridden

In your castle of care

In love

I want to be a dervish

Lost completely in whirls

Or an Ustad skilled enough

To play with the surs

In love

I realize

Little can be attained through hate

Much lost in anger

In love

I want to pretend you love me