घुड़सवार

Do you see the essence,

lost in a bad translation,

wordmangled in this poem?

I’m a lurker in words,

unintentionally deceiving

—an open book in a foreign language.

Do you see me in you?

Look at the mirror,

do you see me?

I make you believe you’ve seen me,

if not overlayed on mirror images then

through pen strokes, I never meant.

It is just a page,

through which you can’t see the one underneath

—a fault of the medium, you say.

But, someday you’ll meet someone.

Someone who looks like me

then you’ll see his skin as makeup.

Never was he, I

never will you see me;

lonely in separate lands.