The Valentine is a Literary
The winter is still holding on, freezing moments.
A text congealed; a letter unopened is dramatic.
Dior’s burnt sienna lipstick, I purchased
from Amsterdam, is intact.
The lips slurp over coffee,
I recite Anna Akhmatova,
woodpecker-like, the cursor of dreams clicks
on the right stanza where we stop
made a vow to make an alternative interpretation
of her love poems.
The reason we are together after a year
is that lost interest in Austen,
and switched over to Lorca’s Ghazals,
and of Agha Shahid, who missed Kashmir,
like a beloved, still seeing in the mirror,
crumpled papers are in drawers,
an epistolary kiss, right where rhetoric begins,
letter writers indulge and boast about,
we are sending counter gazes,
passing through cold verandas,
it seems there is no epilogue.
by Rizwan Akhtar
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