All that bravery got us nowhere | Hemant Mohapatra
This unnatural hour that I have slept in still hungry from an unfinished early meal, you appear with your full body and voice and ask me to write again. I am sitting in a car, running late for my piano lesson, and you are leaning at the door, telling me the trees have stopped growing where you live. That you've walked across two continents but the moon still refuses to leave you. ** I hear you've started praying now—cut your hair and stopped wearing blue. They say you suffered for my art, for desire and despair. I suffered for my quietude, for I thought freedom meant something grander. Thankfully, our inequities were even: clear and simple, the way horses grieve. After a while, it became harder to realize I was not talking to my refrigerator. I was, in fact, suffering. ** In the dream, we are now climbing a staircase. I am walking behind you, watching your milky calves stroll in and out of your summer skirt. "What do you understand of love?" you ask. "Nothing," I say. "And loss?" "Nothing." "Then why do you write about either?" "I don't." ** "I write about you." You pause for a moment, but do not turn back. Outside the window, birds are turning into stone. Around the world, everyone is entering a conversation.