By Tishani Doshi

Ultimately, we will lose each other

to something. I would hope for grand

circumstance —  death or disaster.

But it might not be that way at all.

It might be that you walk out

one morning after making love

to buy cigarettes, and never return,

or I fall in love with another man.

It might be a slow drift into indifference.

Either way, we’ll have to learn

to bear the weight of the eventuality

that we will lose each other to something.

So why not begin now, while your head

rests like a perfect moon in my lap,

and the dogs on the beach are howling?

Why not reach for the seam in this South Indian

night and tear it, just a little, so the falling

can begin? Because later, when we cross

each other on the streets, and are forced

to look away, when we’ve thrown

the disregarded pieces of our togetherness

into bedroom drawers and the smell

of our bodies is disappearing like the sweet

decay of lilies —  what will we call it,