A Ghazal for Naga

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If I were to marry, I would marry you– your mother’s dupatta, blood-red and gold,
draped across your shoulders as you stood knee-deep in the Sea, colder than a snake.

My father’s white sherwaani is my second skin; a security. The unknown writhes reptilian.
I am fearless; the boa of memory does not constrict me, it coils, a nostalgic snake.

You are another degree of descent; you speak of deserts buried beneath our Sea.
There the fangs of our fathers are mountains, you say, the depths are as patient as a snake.

I kiss the tracery of veins beneath your wrist. The sands are not kind to such reminisce.
My tears dry in Sindh’s sun to the dust of crusted salt, pale scales on an ancient snake.

Karachi’s cold azaans creep upon my bones. You demon-lovers weep from abandoned rooftops.
You are Indus; a liar, shifting with each millennia; a desert-forming snake.

Copper amulets shuddering on your arms, anoint me in the bone-dust of Mohanje-daro.
Wed me in the Sea, eternity coiled around us. Thus, Metamorphosis is named the first snake.