Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

When it rains, the dead descend, you appear,  

the smell of rainwater in your hair, 

wearing the ring I placed on your finger, 

a scent like heat and a voice not yours, a 

child’s voice singing of age-old danger, 

in Hindi, a lover’s lament from Pyaasa. 

Your lips, clear of the color you wear, 

are not new to me, are lovely and bare, 

and our old argument still burns.  

How soon will you forget me if I die? 

By the river in this room and the way it returns, 

I swear, If I forget you, let everything die. 

When it rains the dead ascend, disappear 

where we cannot follow, into the living air. 

 with a first line by Michelle Yasmin Valladares