The hills

They say the hills have eyes
Iridescent, all knowing, and deathlike.
But what they do not tell us about is the
ferocity of the voices
that keeps echoing sporadically.
The taste of your tongue is forever etched in the memory of the mountains.
This one time I took a rock inside my mouth and thought I was about to swallow the weight of my being.
And you laughed, and it felt as if 
the birds were singing again and 
the stars were aligning only for us.

It was all happening too fast, 
concealed from the people around us. 
The furtive glances cast at me were stories 
on their own.
I buried my secrets in the nape of your neck 
but you held back at first. 
And I lived a thousand lives 
in the time it took your breath to reach mine. 
But the secrets that passed through your lips 
to my ears have lost their meaning now.
They have a certain cacophony in them.

Years have passed and the distance 
between our breaths has only become longer.
Sometimes, words are on the tip of my tongue 
but I have nobody to tell.
I contemplate death now like you so often did
and look for the tenderness in your hands 
among the rocks in the mountains. 

Nawshin Flora is currently daydreaming about catching up to her never ending TBR list. Remind her to get enough sleep at nawshinflora@gmail.com.