Hello Again/Mihir Chitre

To P who went up never to come down again;

B whose truth stabbed my conscience;

C who kissed me at a half-lit eight

when the sea was receding into the west;

S whose breasts glittered like headlights

from behind the midnight, her bra,

While the world overtook us from the wrong lane.

To T who asked for a poem I could never find;

M whose eyes lusted for mine

on a temperate evening in Kala Ghoda

as I tattooed my palm on her waist;

D, the November that ended on the twenty-second;

E, who e-shopped through a gimmicky summer

before running herself out of fashion;

D1, the Radha of an imagined Vrindavan;

S1, the toss I called wrong;

Here I stare at you from the pages of what was.