My eyes are cloudier than the day,
cloudier than time, than disease.
In my throat the mountains,
and their requests to move.
Sadness lays eggs easily –
its reproductive cycle like an insect’s.

I wipe my eyes again,
as if these tears were blankets
I was folding for a future season.

In front of me are backs of heads,
as if the Kanchenjunga were a painting,
and Batasia Loop a museum.
Over their heads I expect to see it,
like a letterhead, but it’s not there.

My body’s absorbed my heart like blotting paper.
I crouch in pain, I’m about to burst –
as if I were a pipe whose water’s solidified.
Sadness feels like that –
hard; a hardening of what once was soft,
liquid and delightful, like love, or bread.

The Kanchenjunga doesn’t appear.
There’s disappointment.
It’s as if the mountain hasn’t kept an appointment.
Umbrellas open like rusty guns –
they carry the crowd like boats,
and soon, as the rain grows fluent,
ant-like drops stab the skin,
like ambulances without adjectives.

Wet, like a request, I sit by a culvert.
I wait, like a utensil,
collecting water that has no use.
This, too, will harden inside me,
like the icy peaks of Kanchenjunga –
sadness always finds its tourists.