I lost a friend
Where the road turns
Towards the city
And hides a declining Sun.

This friend is not first to be puffed off
With the cigarette
Since I begun smoking
with the young boy
who served in our family
and taught me woman.

He taught me the triangle
Showing his finger at the barren field
Where hardly a milkman could count a grass patch.
Still I lost him
Under the window shade of
our newly married neighbour.

Amongst the war of
promises, oaths and tears
I have a list of thousands of
those who died of effeminacy.
I have a list of thousands of
those who die in search of a voice.

Yet I lost him
Among the ashes
and the burnt-out ends in a tray,
there, the silhouette
plays hide and seek with me,
with the bending photograph in a frame.

She was in a white frock that day
Yet I lost her in a Thursday
Or in a Friday of a week
I don’t remember exactly when,
She joined them,
Accompanied them
Or followed for a pilgrimage
of a family.

I don’t remember when I lost her.
When I lost another friend.

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