they would be waiting

i would be going back there soon ah kadakkavoor
my gran is terribly fatigued of senility
not always hungry but fed on bananas
the rains are thinning the season should end soon too soon
now it is not a cold nightmare that i would go there
the black pepper vines the white dahlias would be waiting
the black clouds would be like quarelling cousins argueing
my necktop archives would be juggling sights and sounds
teethlessjawy smile of midget woman mud puddles
children rolling toycarts sounds of train in dark tunnel
stripes cross stitching people walking talking walking
the flirting dragonflies purring cats would be waiting
the heady smell of the coconut husk in kayals are
coming back and i am going back to where i should
the black peppers were plucked white dahlias had wilted
children tie dragonflies to threads and make them lift stones
children stone the psychic cat shredding the newspaper
i think life is nuts lives are always like handwritings
written shabbily and interpreted differently
even hard thinking lets you down finding how people change
gran is fed only on bananas by her daughters
so that she would not purge often so that she would die soon
i did not see father cry but i know he had cried
he really had when his mother lay there dead
i would be struggling how to speak with someone what look
to put on my face and what to do and what not to
amongst certain awful moments when you want to
but you just cannot cry your heart like in childhood days
sorrow in desperate desolation in reasonless vengeance
now into my heart storm is it the usual norm
i did not hate you because you did not tell lores
or you did not sing me to sleep you were old too old
you hardly spoke to me and memories of the sort
that are kept not for for forgetting hardly you evoke
but was it ever dastardly a norm i do not know
to love someone you rarely remember sitting with
ofcourse i was away to be familiar with
aging raging oblivion was cheeky i agree
and the season ended ah after one drizzly day
the mating toads marched back and dogs limped away

posted by akhil.

*
For Smita, for pressing me on, for more.
You're the reason, this is.

P.S.: Initially conceived as a story.
*
glossary:
kadakkavoor: a place in kerala.