This piece is part of the Mehfil folio, which features original art by Jasjyot Singh Hans.

He’s already bathed in sweat,
it’s very hot, after all.
He shows me — work of his dreams
completed just today — beyond
are rooms to sleep in.

When this house lay unbuilt,
no money and no constraints
of diktats of the previous owner’s
incomplete dreams, I told him
— don’t block the mountains with windows
or walls, even — let them come right in
into the house, not like guests
but family.

But his obstinate, mad love for solitude
wants not flowers on the steps below
wants not tunes in middle octaves —
here, only those rooms to sleep in,
only those were built
for a purpose.

There, wind, silence, softness
and that parvana of easy dream-journeys
wants not magical colours
and unfiltered compositions of sunlight
and drawers to keep sleeping pills.

He has built for himself
— for what remains of his life —
a grave as beautiful
as epiphanies, he calls it
rooms to sleep in.

Excerpted from The World That Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia, edited by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal and published by HarperCollins India (2020)