Aditi Rao

---

Cityscapes 
Mumbai 2013 

1. 
At the train station, a taxi driver shouting 
for pilgrims. In the train, stories of pilgrims 
visiting shrine, over and over. They find god 

napping, are asked to wait outside. 

2. 
The city smells of earth and thunder, fish 
and hair oil, coconut and sharp green chili. 

In the corner, a landmark named Land Mark, 
stark shadows painted on dilapidated walls, 
a billboard advertising Good Luck Hosiery, 

palms grinning in the backdrop. 

3. 
Guilt is a railway platform 
pungent with warm bodies. 

4. 
Here, each street contradicts its neighbor, 
red light to burkha in twenty-three footsteps. 
New name scratched over old, Victorian building 
named after Shivaji. Even the trees 

wear their roots on the outside. The maps 
are onions, layer upon translucent layer. 

5. 
A child selling hairclips on the slow train, 
swinging from handrails overhead. We catch 
each other’s eyes. She offers advice 
for my acne, a balm I do not know, 
available, she promises, at The Medical. 
At my station, she hangs out of the open 
train door, DDLJ ishstyle. 

6. 
By the road, an abandoned swing, 
boat-shaped. Scrawled on its side, 
The Titanic.





This is not a Saccharine Love 

I love you precisely, like your fingers 
tracing circles on my wrist, the largeness 

of your hands. Like the gaps between 
worlds we sometimes fill, sometimes 

fall through. Like corridors and swing doors, 
an invitation into deeper. Like a snake 

learning to shed, grow new skin. 
I love you like salt and reaching 

into ocean, claiming 
what always was.





Half a Monsoon 

This holy month, I will return 
to the mosque where you and I 
watched the rain last year, 
quick drops tumbling 
against sandstone, jumping 
at red touch. Where children ran out 
covered corridors, filling coke bottles. 
Where the rickshaw puller turned 
to look at me, then the sky, then 
laugh: This is the flavor of home. 

Halfway through the days you and I spent 
learning each other’s lives, you said the rain 
in my city is new and horizontal. We talked 
about our meanings of rain. Today, it is mine, 
the extravagance. It is more than soggy socks 
and half burned laughter. 
 
This year, we have waited longer than usual 
for the city's greenest bath. But now, as grass 
glows and cars stall and trees grow grimeless 
and mosquitoes prepare for war, drought 
is a theoretical knowledge, like you are 

a silhouette against a skyline I never learned 
to love, the other end of endless blue. 

                                     Yesterday, when you lay 
across my computer screen, I remembered 
soaked evenings at my house, the games 
lemonade won, the way wine turns you 
into a child holding a lullaby.





Breath 

I am here now, slowly opening 
your chest, searching for a bone 
I will grow from (ribs are interesting 
only as cages — a stolen bar 
will help you breathe easy). 

I am less a cat with nine lives, more 
a lizard abandoning her tail. You 
are precious but disposable 
in the face of danger. You 
are danger. You see, your laughter 
fits too snugly against mine, no room 
for in-between breath. You see, I need you 
to know imbalance. 

Let me try again: look closely 
at the algae, the centimeter thick promise 
of land. Look where the frog 
jumps into the black 
underneath. I have always been tempted 
by grassy welcomes. I cannot blame you 
for taking advantage. 






The Art of Losing 
              To Elizabeth Bishop 

Elizabeth,
                      Have you heard of the room 
on 23rd street? It is a loosely kept secret,
a place where lost things go. Bundles
of faraway winters, scraps of a day
carefully folded, recipes, gossip sealed
in cellotape and staples, broken bridges
between mainland and green-blue orphan.
Have you seen how they hide, spill
out of each other? Read the ransom notes? 

I need help, Elizabeth. I need to learn to wink
at lost letters, laughters, lovers ― your art
of letting continents slip through fingers
(no broken bones). I need the clocklessness
of missing pasts and futures. I need to throw
houses like boulders. I need not to chase
them down on all fours. Teach me your secret, 

Elizabeth, how long does it take? I mean
the unstaining. How long for the melting
of little leaden balls lodged below ribs?
How long before faraway frost fades 

into green? Before cellotape and staples
dissolve, before a letter is reborn
as spoon or jellyfish? How long, Elizabeth?

---

Aditi Rao is a writer, educator, and dreamer. Winner of the 2011 Srinivas Rayaprol Prize for Poetry and the 2013 Toto Funds the Arts Creative Writing Award, Aditi's poetry has appeared in Four Quarters magazine, Muse India, Cha: An Asian LIterary Journal, qarrtsiluni, and other publications, and her essays have been featured in People Building Peace 2.0 (published by the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict), Moments that Speak: Images and Stories of Connection (published by the Earth Charter Initiative) and InfochangeIndia. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Fingers Remember, will be released by Yoda Press in August 2014.

www.aditirao.net