Art: Ritusri Halambi
i.
You have brought me flowers
like evening brings you home
(a boy and his bicycle
wouldn't leave your side
till you bought them;
30 for 4, 50 for 8).
On the bed, at night,
I spread the ebbing blue of the lilacs
between my temple and your back.
Three flowers short
of bridging the distance,
I fall asleep.
The way our silences have grown
into the walls of the house
reminds you of the year
when tufts of periwinkle
dug their obstinacy
all over the ungiving terrace,
consoling the summer heat.
And, it reminds me of how
I spent the first afternoon
of a summer vacation,
clutching a can to my ear,
waiting for a voice
to travel down the string
from the other end
(the limp end)
of my tin can telephone.
ii.
The boy parts his hair
towards the left now–
it makes him look older
(13 instead of 10).
On a cycle, he wades through
the sleepy indifference of his city,
scouring the cemeteries
for flowers people have left
on the graves for their dead.
On kinder days–
when the dead are remembered
and the living are loved–
he makes good money
selling the pilfered flowers
at the city bus stand.
He's a little distracted today
by an elusive whistle
he has been trying to perfect.
But, he does not lose his balance
despite the two plastic bottles
tied on each side of the handle.
(Tahir Bhai has taught him
how the water keeps
the flowers from wilting.)
iii.
It has never occured to him
to learn their name,
but he has grown
the same blue flowers
for the last ten years.
What is left
in his modest kitchen,
the man takes to the patch
of loosened soil in his backyard;
offering the plants
most of what he allows himself.
He leaves for work
an hour early today
so he can take the 8 flowers
he woke up to this morning
and lay them down
at the chipping headstone
of the corner grave
in the now crowded cemetery.
Art: Ritusri Halambi
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