Chapter 118அதிகாரம் 118 நெருக்கம் Intimacy

Both doves are asleep in the nest; one stirs, and the stir kindles the other awake. Closeness is that waking.

If the arms scoop up a sand doll and embrace it, it crumbles; if the heart embraces it, there is form.

Night after night, the breathing of those who sleep side by side becomes a single breath.

The place a new hand touches hurts; every place an old hand touches blossoms.

To those who embrace, it is a flower on their own shoulders; to those who suffer the embrace, a fetter locked onto their own shoulders.

A root that has worked its way in between stones becomes stone with the stone; what has clung like that is hard to part.

For those who have touched and come to know, even when they are not touching, the hand touches their heart.

A hinge oiled once and not again: rust. A word once spoken, too: rust.

She knows the face, she knows the breath, she perceives it all; the heart, deep within, she does not know.

Claiming the mended bank seeps at its foot, they break the whole dam of the bond.

An embankment holds back water; seepage at its foot is a slow trickle, not a breach.