love

Jayant Kashyap

We only seek the blessings of those we love.

Catacombs, Paris

When our lovers died, we gave them a piece of land, a cloth, a kiss, and prayer beads. So god would be kinder.

And warmer when the snow touched them coldly.

When it didn’t work, we took them elsewhere in nightcoloured clothes, and sat down to pray for days on end.

– We made rosaries out of skulls, filled the tunnelled walls with mirrored convexities of their faces,

later our faces. We remembered lines from almost burnt journals: Nothing dies in the land of the dead. So

cold even the snow’s unusual coldness doesn’t seep in, or stay long. We found in older letters words quietly hidden,

like history isn’t kind to the weak or to women; or history isn’t kind. So, now, we light up candles to make warm

the silence. We sing for them songs they have never listened to before. We leave words of grace at their bony

feet, kiss again their rusty cheeks goodbye. They understand that only some words can be so old, like

eyes, love, death –yeux, amour, mort.