How we made it home: I
On the first night it rained so little
that we slept like coarse rags, worn
out at one corner of a city apartment
balcony barely to be brought back inside
again if not to wipe off an accidental
stain on ivory-tinted floor tiles on
which even the least mindless of a
footstep can leave behind a shadow —
especially yours – but never a mark
so stubborn – like mine – that it stays.
How we made it home: II
When the light flickers at dawn
and the crows fluster at its drudgery
and we change our sleep from east
to west, and the heat swoops down
like revenge, and the sweat soaks into
our clothes and we soak into the sweat,
you twirl in a dream about the afterlife
and twitch for a drop of deliverance
till the clock strikes nine and I’m gone
like the flicker and the fluster, in the rain.
How we made it home: III
After all this while, that last phone call
is like salt on a dead man’s tongue;
neither too much nor too little, but glory
is like that – a touch of grace when spring
is no longer spring and winter no longer
turns blue on the skin; moss repents not
the spade anymore, mud requires no more
digging; it comes only when the season of
harvest is long gone; it comes as isolation;
as the consolation of a hopefully dialled
wrong number, frantically seeking the rain.
Illustration : Suman Mukherjee