An autumn afternoon
you're taking too long to cut the apples
uneven, peeling them much below the surface
the sofa offers its hand to rest a head on
outside, the slow drag of the world
steers both towards and away

Of late, it's the yellow in the leaves
marble cooling on bare feet
cycles, slow and quiet on the dust
knocks on my window from a brown eyed bird
the ring of a new text just before sleep
your apple peels piling
red sheathing yellow
skin holding on
to too much of its flesh.

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There is a pill bug
impressioned in the soil, my shadow
towering over life and its grave.

Many thousand years from now
if we somehow survive this
someone will split a rock into two
and perhaps find this mold
of a life so terribly cluttered in a body
that has now decayed
and will wonder perhaps about this day
how sunny and warm
making us crawl out of our homes,
open in a world that made something so small
hide itself beneath plates of chitin.

Imagine a dozen and more legs
and still being buried close to home.

I am walking well into the night as the day grows heavy behind me,
already a thing of the past.

A tiny heart throbs
silently beneath my soles
as the shape of a pill bug fades
a little more with each step.

-

Long days

-

My bed.

I still sleep on one side of it
even when it's sized for three
my legs tall enough
to spill over if I stretch
shaded by two browns
both stamped by dust of yesteryears
it sits with an ancient calm
cramped on the inside
flooded with smell of
the last few months
winters sublimating at a corner
and a small space for this summer's haul
covered by plywood
of the same colour, just thinner
you may sleep on it
not knowing or caring what's inside
a colour block bedsheet demanding both of your eyes
On days when it becomes too hard to sleep
I'm reminded why my bed is a little too much like me.

-

Appi and the oak tree.
(Short story)

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We are a family of two daughters.
I count us on my fingers
as the winter night turns our feet cold.
Two daughters in a quilt
waiting for the other to sleep
so that they can slyly snatch
each other's share of cotton warmth.
On rare nights
the space between us
is filled with stories of maa
of when she hung posters in her room
of cricketers and bollywood stars
or sneaked her way to the cinema
or laughed
without pause.
The quilt is warm enough for us all
on such honeycomb nights.
I turn my smiling face away
and count us on my fingers
one, two, three.

-

•Just a few feet away•

-

A day before I died

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A final ode to 2020.
(Caption)

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