Anumita Vaishnavi |
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Summer Solstice
1. it is the summer of two thousand and nineteen, and it is the longest one of my life.
the time oozes like ripe honey, sticky and sickly-sweet, trapping me in its comb
like a dragonfly in amber. i sit on the roof, the concrete burning my fingers. i
turn my face up to the sunshine. the sweat drips into my eyes.
the fruits are all fat and glistening, fed to fullness by the golden summer. my
sunshine-burns are sticky with mango juice. i cut the fruit open, peer into the
guts. the rot is starting to spread, but i eat it anyway.
2. i sit in the meadow now. i am surrounded by warm grass and fruit flies. the
air smells sweet, like alchemy, like when amma makes ghee and satin-soft silver
cream crackles into liquid glimmering gold.
the ground crunches when i stand. i look down. i am knee deep in annelid-
arthropod exoskeleton. perhaps they died while making love; baked to death in
the over-heating sun. it no longer looks like a mango.
3. the air is wavering with heat, hair frizzing around my face, the tiny curls
giving me a thousand kisses. my kurti sticks to the back of my neck. maybe
every part of me is urging me to love myself, because you never will.
4. the children scream every evening. they play in exuberant ignorance. the
world is ending, but at least somebody’s happy.
the evening leaches into night-time. the shadows colour my melancholy blue.
(you are the only boy i have ever loved, and i hate myself for it)
5. my ribs still cradle this wavering penumbra, like fingers over a diya,
shielding her warm light from darkness.
i can still tell your smile apart from a thousand others, even in the gloom of this
deepening eclipse.
1. it is the summer of two thousand and nineteen, and it is the longest one of my life.
the time oozes like ripe honey, sticky and sickly-sweet, trapping me in its comb
like a dragonfly in amber. i sit on the roof, the concrete burning my fingers. i
turn my face up to the sunshine. the sweat drips into my eyes.
the fruits are all fat and glistening, fed to fullness by the golden summer. my
sunshine-burns are sticky with mango juice. i cut the fruit open, peer into the
guts. the rot is starting to spread, but i eat it anyway.
2. i sit in the meadow now. i am surrounded by warm grass and fruit flies. the
air smells sweet, like alchemy, like when amma makes ghee and satin-soft silver
cream crackles into liquid glimmering gold.
the ground crunches when i stand. i look down. i am knee deep in annelid-
arthropod exoskeleton. perhaps they died while making love; baked to death in
the over-heating sun. it no longer looks like a mango.
3. the air is wavering with heat, hair frizzing around my face, the tiny curls
giving me a thousand kisses. my kurti sticks to the back of my neck. maybe
every part of me is urging me to love myself, because you never will.
4. the children scream every evening. they play in exuberant ignorance. the
world is ending, but at least somebody’s happy.
the evening leaches into night-time. the shadows colour my melancholy blue.
(you are the only boy i have ever loved, and i hate myself for it)
5. my ribs still cradle this wavering penumbra, like fingers over a diya,
shielding her warm light from darkness.
i can still tell your smile apart from a thousand others, even in the gloom of this
deepening eclipse.