by Kushal Poddar
The lane makes a bottleneck.
We have a name for the narrow isthmus;
we forgot that; perhaps the lane’s purpose
is to pour the world into the house at the end,
No. One hundred and ten.
I desire to apprehend if you still live there,
keep the books you borrowed from me
decades ago on an evening remembered
for hidden feelings, fog muffled streetlights
casting unstable shadows of us on my celadon wall.
My mother coughed and coughed as you depart.
I recall you bent, hands fisted, books in your tote.
You didn’t acknowledge that you would not return,
no one could. We stopped and watch a starling caught
in the orange cat’s maw. The cat spoke
with its mouth full. I didn’t know the tongue.
Kushal Poddar (he/him) is the author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. Find him on Twitter @Kushalpoe & Instagram @Kushalthepoet.
