featherveins

THE WORLD & I: Couple Married 73 Years Dies Hours Apart

middle january

middle january. my heart is heavy. i don’t know how to dress anymore. the temperature swings between bitter cold and unseasonably warm. i wonder if i miss the snow. each day is imperceptibly sadder and warmer than the next. maybe that’s what life means. i drive to work. the memory of summer rushes me: humidity, mimosa tree, sweat, luminous fireflies in the sweet, grass, dark of night. driving now past the little lake. the water is frozen in places. a lacy white swan floats across the melt. when people are ready to, they change. they never do it before then. only a few clouds in the sky. sunlight pours in through my windshield. i’m always squinting. i wonder if i ever really forgave you. last night i dreamt that we were on a return flight from paris. i’d fallen asleep and woke only as the plane landed. it was raining. in the terminal the rain came right in through the roof as though it were a screen. i was bone-soaked and looking for you. even after i’ve driven long past the lonely swan i think of him. that’s how it is with me. a flat raccoon in the road can haunt me for a whole day. i wonder if i ever really forgave myself. luminous fireflies. sweat. mimosa tree.

Water - Sharanya Manivannan

olvalx:

My favourite memory of us
is of that day we washed each other’s hair,
standing in the waterfall
of the shower, that moment sweet
succulent as fruit, complete as
a circle, the prowl of knowledge beneath
it bitter and delicate as the powder
on a butterfly wing, powerful
as a secret.

We kissed and drew in water.

Do you remember what I had
said to you, a year before? How could
I not love you? How could I
not? We had just met. You had
a birthmark the shape of Africa
on your chest; my heart had a
void in its vocabulary just the size
of your name. Love is so small. It
could fit into the hole in a bead, the eye
of a needle, and still not seal it.
It’s this world that is so huge.

Now our lives feel reduced
to abacuses.
I count the days it will be before
I can see you, you count
the days it’s been since I left.

This is a city of rain.
And chaos – I smile to myself,
navigating its corridor-like
streets filled with schoolchildren
hitching yellow autorickshaws, drizzle
flecking their eyelashes, the morning
still not arrived in their eyes.

I lick moisture from my lips
and am sure
I taste salt, a kiss of tears.

Pain only appears in
the presence of love. This much
I can say I have learnt
by heart. Here in this place of
chaos so profound it silences
mine,

I wrap my secrets in skin and
hug them close,

imagine drawing out parabolas
of steel and silk from the centre
of my palm to the
centre of yours, like bridges,

delicate, taut
as the webbing
on a bat’s wing,

and wait for you to reach
across the distance and pick
the pieces up, so precise
I could almost taste those
kisses

slippery as our love. Almost
forget how imprecise to desire bringing
shape to a love like water –
profound, perfect, universal.

Nothing else will save us now.