My ceiling is the sky tonight.

Wait,
was that you calling out to me?

Yes,you.
The one with the lost eyes, the one who's staring
Staring right up at the sky
Almost as if he's expecting it to hurl a thunderbolt right at him
and burn him to the ground.

It's me.
The one you woke up last night,
with firecrackers of memories
and a torrent of luckless afternoons to boot.

I thought I heard you calling me
and so I awoke.
Heart iced frozen solid
lips cracked and forming
slightly forgotten(now) and fragile words of hope.

Who wouldn't?

Wait,it was a false alarm.
It must have been the wind breathing through the curtains.
The switchboard that bent its spine and brushed against my foot.
Unloved dogs seeking solace under my bed
and instead murmuring funny familiar fanciful and forgotten words
that crept their way into my pillow-case.

I stayed awake for a long time,
perhaps hoping to be on a beach.
The floor looked so smooth,speckled and polished,
stretching like the Chennai bay beneath a landing plane.

Moonlight played sail boat with my slippers
and the ceiling dissolved into a sky
of glue-on florescent stars.

I breathed deeply,until I could smell the salt and the warm dust.

It's funny how you were still standing there,
pale fingered.
With your toes slipping
slipping into the sea
and away from the shores that suddenly clung
clung to my feet with an urgency

"caressing and possessing me.."