Long Enough

The rains have found this city again.

This morning, I woke up in a haze

of receding dreams and

sputtering rain.

Haze. Heh'.

Water on dust makes

everything all right. Or

so you'd die to believe.

The streets awash with

a new old wonder, 

a sparkling champagne sky, those

bougainvillea twigs out

of the launderette,

that whistling skysalt

scent.

Why should anybody

complain?

I don't.

I'm not ungrateful.

I don't plan to be.

But between the stray

drops on my knuckles

and the dead street

in my chest, I

remember

a couple of bright eyed

kids. Waiting. Under

street lamps, basketball hoops,

big trees, small trees, 

open skies and

ones

acrumbling,

fingers and breaths

in a tangle, waiting,

for their

first rain

together.

I start up the laptop and shuffle through my

applications for Mumbai Mirror and

HT. I imagine the rains choking

on their terribly
pretty lies.

Next year, when the rains come 

invading,

I want to have been out of this

godless place

for 

long enough.