Monsoon Rain

What is a poet without the pain?

Without tears falling like monsoon rain.

With bones that don’t ache, don’t shiver and splinter,

With every transgression like a harrowing, cold winter.

And what is a heart if not pushed to the limit?

With pieces placed back together like a jigsaw puzzle and some glue squeezed in it.

Tested for resilience, endurance, resistance to breaking,

And who am I without a heart left aching?

If not left squeezing glue into lungs with cracks to fill,

Saying good morning and goodnight to her picture on the windowsill.

Poems written to scribe away the pain,

And staring out the window waiting for monsoon rain.

Something to understand it, the dark in the light

The gentle pitter patter amidst a pitch black night.

The way it wakes one gently, lulls one into the world,

And waking from dreams of her only makes my stomach curl.

Like the drop of a roller coaster,

Turbulence on a flight in the aisle in the back.

Dropping quickly, quickly like how

She was gone in the drop of a hat.

When the rain comes, it makes sense

I wait for the storm.

I wait for it to end so once again

I can feel warm.

To see the evidence, that the downpour ends,

My limbs resemble the way in a storm a tree branch bends.

Bending, bending, but never breaking,

Limbs left weak and fragile and aching.

Slowly, eventually, the winds stop blowing,

I’m left sprawled out in a field with a heart still knowing.

That I’m a writer for the ache, a writer for the pain,

I wait with a bucket to collect the monsoon rain.

When the air is warm but the sky still cries,

The only thing I view as a perfectly fine lie.

That at the same time there’s warm and also there’s cold,

I’ll listen for her until I’m gray and I’m old.

When the day will arrive,

When I’ll find her on the other side.

We’ll reminisce on the joy and the pain,

And no longer will I wait for monsoon rain.