Jade

What valley do you return to,

When you get burnt by your sun?

Where is it you go to heal

When all your battles are won?

 

Mine are hills of jade -

They calm each broken heart,

When emptied of all my dreams

I return to that quiet start

 

They are hills of monsoon fresh

Bleeding with waterfalls,

Soft with rugs of jade

Melancholy in their calls

 

But they too are not eternal souls -

They die in summer’s red

It’s when grey clouds come to brood

They wake again from dead

 

They remind us: we cannot always win

Sometimes, we need to cry as well

It is after, when we wake

We have stories rich to tell

 

It is this green refuge

I return to heal my scars

Come, we’ll lie on rugs of jade

And listen to the stars

 

While moist earth fills us back

Tears once emptied dry,

These are the hills that make us smile -

So we can once more sigh…

 

5^th January, 2026

 

Dedicated to the Western Ghats and its undulating hills and valleys that reinvigorate themselves every monsoon, and in the process, all those bystanders who find themselves caught in those rains of restoration.