Lightning at Buxi Cliff by Syed Kabeer Hassan

Water fell from the sky, made being abandoned less personal.

SYED KABEER HASSAN
Lightning at Buxi Cliff

When it rained too less,
  Shams said “it’s as though the clouds 
                                    flicked its moist hands at 
                                                            the city and left.”

Now that the faucet is turned,
I tell him,
                                      “No one has such small hands  
                                                          not even the rain”



For rain is between the clefts of his large brown fingers— 
                  riding along the creases
                                           washing every destiny to 
                                                                    his pale wrist.

                              
This was something no one forecast;
                drops denting upon the fuel tank, radiating
                             far-reaching metallic reverberations,

our pupils being drummed, edging
                                    memory out in tears—

he is taking the longer route, 

so I could wonder
                   who would pay the price of grief as it coils up 
to the origin. Or how if atoms had satellites, they would 
find it anomalous—
                 my beard plunging into the mesh of his shoulder—
                                                 
he accelerates.

                                                            When I first steered a motorcycle, 
                                                                                   it was also monsoon.
     

   Water fell from the sky, made being                                
                      abandoned less personal.


Where were the winds then? Whirling dead straws like boomerangs
                                                                           out into the night.

Dead that was the world, and no time to change the plots,
                                           I sketched only the foreshadowing—

me and him on the bike, for the hundredth time,
                                                           our headlights limp. 
             Glimpses I’ll recall
                         if I live a life as long as his:
                                           trucks waking up 
                                                          then bursting,
                                                        
            but I could only hear the sounds like it was home arriving,
                                            I saw only his back,
                                                                         the stripes on his linen.

It wasn’t home though. He took a longer turn.

                                    Home was where we possessed the bodies
                                                    and the ceilings held the remnants.

where I lay down with a pillow
        between my legs as I swam
sideways in the bed

and the wind pushed the curtain into a cape of someone
                                        flying high above the hooks to bring me
                                                                                        back on the road
                                
again, his hands busy with the rain, the clouds rumbling.
Someone taking a screenshot from the sky.

First published in Two Thirds North.