Renaming Love: Three Poems by Ammar Aziz

we found each other
in a silence far from cities,
where only the sky dared scream.
above,
warplanes cleaved the air —
a blade through silk,
cracking the skin of the heavens.
but your hands were a hush
on my chest,
your mouth
a petal-drunk delirium,
tasting of dust and rain.
the threat was there —
a metallic tang in the air —
all grit and tremble.
but so were we,
urgent, unashamed, naked:
your warm breast
in my sweating palm,
your breath petting
a bird caught in my throat —
we kissed like rebels,
moaned
in the valley blacked out
by sirens.
before the flames,
we caught fire:
bright,
brief,
beautiful.
and when we broke,
we broke into shimmering atoms.

it will feel like childhood eid:
a rush of sweetness —
euphoric, like a kite
slicing through lahore’s spring —
sky oozing mango pulp,
air jasmine-scented & wide.

i’ll feel at home —
even far from my house
with impossible architecture:
rooms rearranging themselves,
walls that shed skin,
the front powdered
like an aging bride
whenever a wedding erupts in the street.

when we kiss again,
it will remind me of a child
peering through a fogged mirror,
his mother’s silhouette behind steam,
the sound of water
slipping down skin —
that was once home —
a lullaby unsung.

and if we never kiss —
what else will i lose?
not just a sliver of language,
but the part that births itself:
new words blooming,
only when I taste your tongue.

if lahore’s krishannagar
and up’s allahabad
made love —
they would meet at dusk,
beneath a sky too tired to judge.
they would strip their suffixes
like old shawls,
and place them by the river
not allowed to cross
the radcliffe line.

no longer ‘nagar’,
no longer ‘abad’,
just krishan
and allah
and an impossible longing

but their names have been changed:
krishannagar is now islampura,
allahabad, prayagraj.
and i can no longer smell
their streets’ adolescence,
only borderlines
drawn
with municipal ink.

i try to cuddle them,
but how do you touch
what has been renamed
by hands that only erase?

they rename the towns
so the dead can be displaced twice.
but the ruins know.
the drains, the rooftops,
the paan-stained walls
with lovers’ names,
the shy mosques
and meditating temples,
remember.
they do not forget
the warmth of krishannagar’s diwali night
or the fragrance
of allahbad’s dreamy azaan.

i want to believe
cities and street can love.
i want to believe
beneath the new names,
they are still reaching
for each
other.
not with maps,
but with memories
of love.