August Twenty-Twenty
This has been the longest not-August,
the unwieldy-est still-March, my windows fogged with tomorrow’s forecast and
the receipts of the past. I wish
for nothing in particular. A return seems unimaginable, but an un-return sends my trembling fingers to the
blurred edges of time. I am asked
to let go, so instead I sit at the ledge
with a hand dangling outside, collecting rain for warmer days, when perhaps
we will lie – backs flat – against the yellowed
grass and laugh about the year we thought
the world was going to end
again and again.
*
panthers in the city
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*
two winters in Dilli
i
dust is being / crumbling skylines
ginger my tea / the ash
lingers in my mouth / roof thick with
grime and pigeon feather /
in the winter of our bones / a future of decay /
ii
February / they come preying in broad / battered sunlight
the roar of orange-blue flames drowning out the
dying embers of a working man’s firewood in the
harshest of winters /
toes twirling into the down of the rajai
we mull over the Air Quality Index / we joke
soon we will be wearing masks in the living room
crumbling skylines pepper my plate /
iii
it is October / fingers snagging like wool / pink against
hair / we stumble into the pharmacy / a man eyes a
packet of sanitary pads fearfully / his mask a bird
perched precariously on the bough of his chin/ we
escape soon enough / snickering / grins drowned out
by the noise of cotton/
names snag in our throats /
in the winter of our bones, decay /
we shimmer / oblivious /
blue and bright in the wind / thick with
grime and pigeon feather /
love in the time of –
iv
what happened last February?
v
dust is being / the plague floods the plains and the
plague carries us away / but this city remains /
vi
what is a February?
vii
what is a pogrom?
viii
toes twirling into the down of the rajai /
you reach across
thumb the tip of my nose / i sniff
the lingering stench of a crumbling
skyline /
ix
in the winter of our bones / desecration /
god buried herself under the fractured minarets
and its mortar settles white and flaky on our scalps /
a reminder of the losses we do not number /
x
i count every day we stay apart /
xi
i stop counting /
xii
what is dust?
xiii
it is November /
i don’t balk at the taste of crumbling
skylines anymore /
i am too busy burning the rajai that
has stiffened in your absence /
its ash settling smog on my shoulders /
***