My Poems Are Different in May When I Forget to Remember You

by Aditi Bhattacharjee

Art by Celeste Cortes

as the steadfast patterns on my bedroom floor made by the morning sun

takes over, the room fills in an almost-holy golden, the kind you see

streaming through stained-glass church windows of a romantic comedy

I wake up to the excitement of little boys indulging in hours of gully cricket

under my window, having abandoned all thoughts of holiday homework,

the welcome sound of their childish roars wafting in.

Outside it rises to forty-seven degrees and I am lost in glassfuls of cold

Roohafza milk, the distant radio-static voice of a news presenter floating

from the other room lulls me to sleep and I forget to dream about you

for the first time. Some afternoons demand a trip to the beach where all the

small things gather - shells, slippers, marbles, crabs, pinwheels, and pearl-sellers,

mostly fake. Time loses its vanity against the endless lapping of waves and I,

myself, to a plate of spicy tiger prawns barbecued from a street-side cart that

leaves my tongue tingling the whole way back home where all the doors and

windows are open. The sound of conch shells and prayer bells mark the evening.

I am an atheist but thank god for power cuts that shrouds the house in darkness

when the women of the house set up chairs out in the porch for carrom matches

by candlelight and casual conversation when the little boys come out again

with their bats and wickets and when nothing seems more promising than the very

moment I am in. My poems are different in May when the Jaswanti and the Jasmine

trees out in the garden are thirstier than before. Their heady scent mingles into the night

as I lay on the cot out in the terrace under a sky full of stars, marvel at the roominess of

the pockets in my newly tailored summer dress, and just how deftly they hold the

awkwardness of empty hands, that I forget they need yours anymore

Jan 22 My Poems Are Different in May When I Forget to Remember You