Dargah

She kisses her fingers and walks away.
He is pursued but does not run.
We are made into an archive of human desire but we do not provide explanations and we are not
in a fixed state.
We rattle the padlocks and re-knot the threads, braiding yellow into red and red into grey,
confusing the matter altogether.
He prays for sons and will have only daughters.
She will wake from a dream of green brocade and he will wake to the sound of nothing.
She will split open her heel on a broken bangle and it will cost her more than it should.
The jasmine in his garden will flower when he least expects it.
On the marble path next to the shoe stall, she drops the key to her house and a stranger kicks it
into a heap of rose petals.
He will visit an unmarked grave in secret every Friday for the rest of his life, and she will die
believing the story everyone told her was a lie.
A forgotten offering of mithai grows stale by the iron bars until a child in a sequined dress sees it
and eats it.
The scar on her temple fades but the memory of violence does not.
Will we intercede? It remains to be seen.
Another century of symbols and omens will pass, another century of padlocks and rust.
It is nearly midnight and the streetlights here are always broken.
She presses her ear to the dirt and listens for a heartbeat.
It is the only way out.