Glass Palace

There’s a place

Where tamarinds and flowers grow and crickets breed

Somewhere in the city

It breathes like a secret

Away from the humdrum and bonhomie

Trapped

Inside a bubble of gray-blue dreams

There was a glass palace there once

That glistened in sunbeams

And in drops of rain

And it was a strange house

With a strange attic

That reeked of rivers and storms

There’s nothing sadder

Than a house standing in rain

Like a lonely old couple with sticks

Yet once

There used to be cherry trees

And spring

Dancing like lovers

In its balconies

And golden blossoms that flamed

In autumn’s sun

And burnt

And clouds that crowded the skies

And melted like small wisps of dreams melt

Into morsels of memory with time

There, I once wanted to live

With a man who reeked of

Rivers and coconut trees

Away, after nightfall and away, before

The breaks of dawns in summers

To melt like clouds; and to waft like wind

In springs.

And is there anything sadder?

Than a house waiting in the rain?