By Tanvi Kulkarni
I too have come undone under the scathing sun. I know, I know, I know. When our eyes meet, I am a version of my own past staring at me- sitting and crying on a discolored and battered brick in college while my best friend holds me. Heather Christle in The Crying Book says that tears are a form of communication. Across the cafe, I am saying a sorry. Are you also looking out for me? Your friend wraps her arms around you and I do not know you but I am relieved. There is a kinship in how your grief is immediately a subject for me- I suddenly care.
I have no knowledge of what ways language has failed you today and what ways these tears are a rescue. When I’m out of the cafe, I scour for flowers to buy you- a stranger’s grace, something I, too have been saved by in the littlest of ways. I can’t find any, and as I’m almost home there is a faint regret in my head the shape of your wilting, human, grieving face. I wonder if our unbecoming in rickshaws and cafes are requests for love from this world enveloped around us. I reckon yes.
A line in Christle’s book goes like this: for just a moment, we have moved inside the poem. Look, I have built this poem for you. I can finally give you flowers and remind both of us that we are not alone. There is no sorrow more human than that which breaks you apart in a public cafe. Look, in this poem I don’t know your name, but you’re safe.
Tanvi Kulkarni is a 22 year-old writer and artist based in India. She has been writing since she was 12, and a little over three years ago, published ‘Small Wild Epiphanies’, a collection of her poems and prose. Her work can be found in Jamais Vu Zine, The Local Stew, Irshaad Poetry, Sutradhar India, and is forthcoming in Cathartic Lit, among others. Her work explores themes of chronic illness, the universality of loss, love, kinship, and kindness. You can find her on Twitter @tomatopicklee and Instagram @tomatopickle.
