What happened to your wife, the dancer?

When it rains, the dead descend.
You appear, so real I can smell the rainwater in your hair,

can touch the circle I placed on your finger.
And the box that our future was wrapped in,

does the scent of happiness still linger
on the paper, the velvet, the ribbon?

Your lips, clear of the color you always wear,
are not new to me, they’re lovely and bare;

and our old argument still turns, it burns.
How soon will you forget me if I die?

By the water in my eye and the way it returns, I swear:
If I forget you, let the world die.

When it rains, the dead ascend. You disappear
where I can’t follow: into the upper air.

- Jeet Thayil

Thayil’s These errors are correct is a haunting collection of poems. This one, in particular, sears right through me. Here’s a review I had written.