By Akhtar Purvez Mir
They told me thought was proof—
a lamp inside the skull,
and wherever its light fell
I should call that myself.
In Gotilpur, my village in Kashmir,
Nar Koll keeps darker knowledge.
At dusk the little brook gathers the peaks of Apharwat,
breaking the mountains over stone.
The mountains remain.
Their reflection does not.
The name loosens from the man,
the man from his history,
history from the truth
it had worn for years.
A thousand footsteps harden one road.
The other
keeps its grass.
Saar Taeth—
a pot beneath the water,
fingers tracing the rim.
Then footsteps fade—
and then the water again.
The same pot,
or perhaps another.
Logic would have stopped after the first.
She returned.
Who decided
forward was the only direction?
Do we trust it
because it arrived unanimously?
Certain—
just before being wrong.
Lost—
when everyone praises the direction.
Alive—
when something within
has quietly died.
Perhaps identity is not a house,
but the distance between arriving
and already having left.
Conclusions make poor possessions.
Questions prefer unlocked doors.
Doors—
one opening behind another,
each room holding a different witness.
The world prefers nouns.
Rivers fastened to maps,
people to versions,
love to promises,
God to sentences,
the living to whatever they once were.
Reputations outlive truth.
Promises remain after love removes its coat,
and leaves.
Sometimes thought is the sound
of a knot
loosening—
until even the rope
forgets its purpose.
Perhaps Descartes needed certainty—
or certainty
needs Descartes.
Yesterday still answers to the name.
Memory reminds me—
this is what happened-
or not.
For hours, contradiction sits across my table.
Neither chair moves.
The mirror insists the man before it
must be the one.
Something behind him
has already disappeared.
I walk backward from the response
until the question
becomes visible again.
And when a place remains
with no name to answer—
I occupy that space.
I think—
therefore I am not.
