Irreplaceable

I slept off early last night, not that I was sleepy but the pain of separation was too intense to handle.
There was no way I could know anything about you.
I tried to read, work and be engaged, but nothing helped. The longing to talk to you surged like high waves—rising with the wind and tossing over the boats.
I tried to watch the Test match highlights, but cricket too couldn’t help. And, I realized that nothing can replace you.
Nothing.
If anything could, it would have been done by now. But after all these years, the feelings are exclusive and intense. The longing to be together, just be next to you—perhaps, looking into your eyes long and still, listening to your stories and laughing over your endless jokes, admiring your wonderful sense of designs and colours, sharing your taste for fineries, just caressing your feet and those beautiful fingers, or just being with you, which in fact defines me.
But I was far, far away from you. Shut out from your vibrant world.
I’m sure you feel the same way, and I know how passionately you want to be with me—listening to my poems, urging me to write and write more.
If you think the tears that you’ve shed are in vain, let me tell you, you’re wrong. Such love cannot go unnoticed. God is not so stone-hearted that He wouldn’t care for our love.
But as He said, ‘In due season.’
Ah, yes, but this separation is painful, the fact that we are there for each other is comforting.
Like a drop of water in the middle of a desert, it cools down the inner being, and prolongs life.


* * * *

I had a very strange dream last night. I saw myself in Africa. I don’t know which country, but as in every African country, it had a forest.
I was riding a bike along the streets which all of a sudden detoured and now I was moving along a road which had tall trees on both sides. After some time the road took me to a smaller one and then into a grass land. All of a sudden I had two of my friends—not sure who—as my pillion riders. So we were three on a bike.
Then, in a flash, I saw an elephant running towards us. I turned to my right and rode the bike as fast as I can, but the elephant too was fast. It sprinted after the bike, stretching its trunk. I turned the accelerator to the full, but the elephant was nearing us. And, finally it plucked the last man off the bike, and I rode off.
When I woke up, I was relieved to find myself in my bed, but its linen was so crumpled that it looked as if someone had wrestled on it!