Turn the Turn

We start the morning paralysed,
Like stone.

Then something turns –

Reminds us of all the practical things,
And that becomes our day.
And the day after,
And the day after that.

Until you wake up years later

To realise you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere –
Lost your way,
So you try and start again,
Or so you say.

False Down

Six in the morning,
A bus to downtown;
Walk straight up 4th Street
To the corner of Second Avenue.

The sky deep blue,
The streets, pink.
Empty sidewalks, strewn cigarette ends,
And the bar lights off.

But I know,
As I knew twenty years ago,
That behind the drawn curtains
The ashtrays are out,
The lines cut neatly on the table,
And old friends

Laugh together
Until sleep turns
To something between dawn and dusk.

They will stay there until eight, I know,
Because where else will they go?

Never home,
Never to real nightfall,
Which only draws out all the things that remain
Hidden during the day.

You Make a Wish

Like snowflakes in July,
softly,
In case someone hears.
(It won’t come true.)

You can’t wish for everything,
Because there’s too much to ask for.

So you ask for one small thing and wait.

But after the wish is made,
You speak only to the gardenias
At the window.

I Woke Up Today

And you weren’t there.
I woke up yesterday, and then too.
Last month,
Last year,
The year before.

It’s confusing because you’re here –
Your hand poised under your chin,
In thought
Or pretence thought.
And we are bitching about Emily and Wallace,
But also the aunt next door.

I don’t think of you always, but you’re there,
Present, yet absently,
Like the sofa or the cat.

Like that tree in your courtyard with serpentine roots,
Which has witnessed many afternoons
Through the gap in your curtain,
When we sat on the bed you were born on
And bitched not just about Emily and Wallace
But also K and C and A.

I will not call you the next time I’m in town,
Or on my next return, or the visit after.
Some other time perhaps.
Because you’ll be there.
Just like you always are.
And we have always spent our time together leisurely,
Without urgency and obligation.
Only when we wanted.
And you said,
B, I wish I had your courage to say no to others
And hide in my own world like you do.
You said that before you went to the hospital.
You said that years ago.
So see, you’re still here. Only in hiding.

In the City of Tall Buildings

Everything changes.
Everything remains.

One’s only hope was to remain a spectator.

Mistakes had been made.
Prayers spit back.
He said these words – words that he had always believed like a prayer –
Even as they collapsed, syllable by syllable, all over his pillowcase each night.
His life was nothing but a progression of denials.
He’d wasted it here, in this small corner of the city,
And in doing so, he’d ruined it everywhere else.
Behind the Ramble,
Lost in the woods,
Walking on wooden bridges over little streams.

But if he strained his eyes to the west,
He could see high-rises.
They hovered over the horizon – life’s guarantee.

Excerpted with permission from My Dead Flowers, Buku Sarkar, HarperCollins India.