Free Verse: Siddhartha Gigoo

Midnight

Midnight isn’t what it used to be—
The colour of your eyes,
the satin of your lips,
the still of your breath,
the folds in your skin.

Midnight is gone,
eaten up by the dream I had of you,
the dream in which I turned loyal
when you were not looking,
and you blamed the night
for my disloyalty.

It was the midnight of your dreams
which brought us together
even though we were years apart.
One of us was not around
in the world we know and see.
One of us forgot
who the one was.

Remembrance is false,
falser than Time’s last promise of you.

Midnight isn’t what it used to be—
The colour of your eyes,
the satin of your lips,
the still of your breath,
the folds in your skin.

Siddhartha Gigoo is a film-maker, poet and the author of two books of fiction, The Garden Of Solitude (2011) and A Fistful Of Earth And Other Stories (2015). His short story The Umbrella Man won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2015 for Asia.