When they brought down our ancestral home in Downtown Srinagar, All was lost except an old safe, made of the molded memories and iron and painted light sky blue Its keys long lost, it lay un-opened in our garage until the time, The night refused to leave Wular and The sun could not draw the hermit Dawn out of its solitude. When the phantom rain rained on that desolate night, pattering on the tin roof It fashioned a key out of my ragged soul On the shelves made of walnut-wood Hidden under a pile of stock-lies that I needed to survive, the old box creaked with sheafs of yellowing paper And the electric dreams of executioners Along with wills that prisoners wrote With nails on the greying walls of The palace turned torture hall Carefully stuck between moon-blood Stained velvets, an old nose ring and A lifetime of stuffed regrets, secrets And forgotten loves woven into a million Unslept nights, which had melded Into the