Blackbeads

Sixteen full beads from thirty two lives

A few among them perhaps half burnt

In a passion for deathly desire to be alive 

And just as few maybe shriveled in boredom

Should I seek to find each of those blackbeads 

Which were lost at my wedding under the stars?

Must I draw out secrets from half-smiling sighs

cascading down their hidden, heaving hearts?

I did wander on silent-movie lanes of slick memories

And came upon a red pair of perfect anger circles 

But no thread passed through their loneliness 

Did they paint blood on themselves soon after they left

Their brethren, those fourteen witnesses of marriage?

Who fought, and begged; laughed and hugged 

played in perfect morsels of a six-month old's palm

And on insolent evenings, played jasmine string songs 

But all through one night, our black beads hummed 

My full breasts could bear no more, blue-black hues

Until all at once you broke that thread that bound us

I walk around now, with emptiness clasping my neck