Who Are You ?

Amid all this soppy nostalgia you come to me like a breath of ice cold air, freezing my lungs in a minute of sordid breathlessness that quite suspiciously lasts for centuries of longing.

You are an idea, a word, a cloud of condensation. Something about you is of great comfort to my soul. I have lived my life as a gypsy, wandering from place to place, stealing affection for a living. Suddenly you are no longer a person, but an ideology unlike Marxism, a philosophy unlike Stoicism, a concept averse to lust. You are a constant, unchanging, like the promise of rain to farmers no matter how long or severe the summer is. There is the hope of permanence, intransience in you. You are the taste of fried nuts, rolled about in my mouth by a mischievous tongue; the sticky sweetness of orange juice that trickles down the side of my lips. You are the warmth of 100% cotton socks, the smell of fresh laundry, the limpid coolness of a furry ball of affection between my fingers. You are the tingly sensation in my nose before I sneeze, the last contented sigh that escapes my lips before I drift asleep, bundled in a thousand blankets. You are the blurr around a star when I stare too hard at a clear night sky. You are the first drop of water that saunters down my cheek, that unravels with grated speed as I weep unabashedly in the rain. You are the joy of sudden warmth to my feet when I get out of bed in the morning, the quiet swelling of my heart with satisfaction from brushing my hair from root to end. You live in every flick of my wrist, every twist of my ankle; I know when my tongue hits the roof of my mouth, I am touching you. I carry you in my stomach everywhere I go, from Bangalore to Mumbai to Nagda, you are another arm with a silver charm bracelet, a head to my tail, a second pancreas, another bubble in my blood-flow, a permanent half-smile upon my lips. And in return, you carry my heart around in your pocket...