My Friend Talks of Break-ups in Winters | Gaurav Deka
We carry the germ of turning lovers into objects of longing
by Gaurav Deka
in November
just before we decide
to take the ride
draw his
soul on paper planes
and throw them
off the hills,
she tries to be earnest
we carry the germ of turning lovers
into objects of longing,
confessing a contamination:
a firm declaration
for someone
dying, that it’s close.
this inability, this inability to love…
Isn’t this a malaise?
asks for hope
that maybe it isn’t the truth
that maybe in some others
the illness isn’t fatal, the virus latent
though it doesn’t seem
like a plague in summers
and in other seasons,
during the day
and in-between, I add,
geography plays a role too
citing an epidemiological
analysis that
in the mountains the carotid
is slower than usual,
between the two:
the heart heals much
before the head,
the velocity of blood,
the Chinese say, can be
controlled by breathwork
and for the haywired hormones
as well as homeostasis,
the New Yorker promises
nothing works like Tylenol
On our way back,
she talks of her vaginal cyst
a repertoire of grief,
sometimes blanket rolls
coming handy
between legs,
of male beauty
their wet mouths
adoption theories behind
letting go and having a pup,
of healing and
her brother’s plea at
forgiving the boy, practicing
stillness at the operation table
and sometimes the painless
fading under anaesthesia
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Gaurav Deka studied medicine at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. When not writing, he is a practicing psychotherapist. His fictions, poetry and reviews have been published in The Open Road Review, The Tenement Block Review, Café Dissensus, The Four Quarter Magazine, DNA-Out of Print, Northeast Review, and The Solstice Initiative, among others. His fiction “To Whom He Wrote From Berlin” won The Open Road Review Short Fiction Contest, 2014. He lives in Delhi, India.