Absence is she, my earth, wet with mid-summer's dew, dazzling bluegrass and firth. It is midnight, a fellow passenger wakes me rudely. I am already in Srinagar. Cars, tongas, people who came to take relatives home have left. The courtyard of the Tourist Reception Center is bordered by red, red rose bushes.
Wild flowers grow along dank walls.
Screaming fury of a night train bearing a sweet name brought me from Delhi to Jammu. This is my home. A hindu woman in pale blue silk, found dead underneath a Chinar tree, four kilometers from the Tourist Reception Center. Strawberries sown into silk blink at police lights, clinging to hope. A thin moon wrings her hands, leaning over a weeping willow.