How long can I stay, in the grey autumn lights, shifting through fallen leaves

While birds take their long flight home, casting no shadow on the ground

In harmonious joy, in bleak twilight, they soar, little black dots.

How long can I wait, while the last train winds its way around the bent tracks

Faces pass me by, sad, painted, beautiful, unfocused, all indifferent, all erased

By the slow cold draft encircling the fast deserting stage

How long can I linger, when you hold the pain gently within the steady gaze

That looks beyond me, to open fields where crops trace sinuous patterns in the air

and desert me in my dreams, till you are no longer there.

Sweetest downfall.

It was a folk lore that the bride went away with the strange dark man from the mountains to see the sun step down and stretched infinitely till it died a pitch dark death. The bride stood, braving the wind, secretly guarding the simple happiness of being with the man with piercing eyes and rustic ways. They stood, her back rested against his arm, carefully casual, watching the landscapes in their hurried retreat. The sun set, the path was lost, the roads now newly learnt led them back to where they had begun. Now that it was time to say good night, he looked as indifferent as he could and she overtly happy to find other company.