Remembering and remembering
With a sharp twinge:
They die soon.
Every night,
I hear the Parai drum
Tenanting my dream
brutally playing over my flesh,
Singing curbed agonies.
I covered melancholy with pieces of my body
To narrate a piece of a poem – in my next dream.

In the dark night,
Through the broken path,
With unreleased grief and hungry stomach,
a young boy migrated from his colony
to survive when his aaya 1 Kundukanni died.
She was possessed by an unknown spirit, they said.
– Cholera.

​

On crossing the graveyard,
Vettiyan 2 with a beedi beating the resurrecting bones
while the dead breathe out the ashes everywhere
Forming a pinkish dawn atmosphere over the pond.
And he imagined her smile turning into ashes.
To wash down this grief,
He walked towards the pond.
Seeing him coming,
a four-legged reflection ran, frightened.

In his childhood,
When his toy horse fell and broke,
Anticipating his tears, Kundukanni told him,
“Periyasamy Thatha 3 took it to a nearby village
to make it into a real one.”
He recollected her stories
While walking calmly towards the horse
like a monsoon drizzle with two legs
to quench his long forbidden wish—to ride.

Tried and failed more than once -
He finally won, sat on the horse, and rode.