‘you arrive at my front door / in dirty jeans and a kurta, clutching / a shovel and a pitchfork.’

The following poems will appear in Aashika Suresh’s upcoming poetry collection, Hammock in a Cornfield (Dhauli Books).

In the Dali Monastery

The sound of drums comes
alive. The little monk beats softly
then picks up speed
stirring the room from
red red red

to a silky silver.

When the chants begin, a sea foam
green slides in. I shift my attention to
the serpents slithering on the ceiling –
wraps and twists of golden submission.

I sense myself slowly
slipping into this sea of colour –

dissolving first into purple, then lavender
until I no longer see myself in isolation.

The monks are at it –

simple acts of repetition, obscure
gestures and hands running over their faces.
I feel those sweeps, the shiver of delight
and their sweet, sweet surrender.

*

Vandalism

To Utrecht

At 1 am

you arrive at my front door
in dirty jeans and a kurta, clutching
a shovel and a pitchfork.

“I leave at dawn,” you say,
a sheepish smile on your face
as you pull me out of the front door.
I have no time to prepare or protest.

In the eyes of law, I guess that must make me
a voluntary accomplice. The streetlights are off
the hoardings flicker as they often do
and my heartbeat is just as loud as our feet
thumping on concrete. We run past my favourite
Chinese restaurant, and the metro water tank
and the marshlands (filled to build houses
two decades ago). “Not too far now.”

At the bus stop around the corner, I stand guard
as you scurry up the pole, rip three bags open
and let the insides scatter like dark snow.
Two blocks down
we find an empty parking spot;
you dig a pit and sit on the rubble and cry.

You’ve never fancied the city much.
I find a telephone booth to sully.

Ten more bags, four more hours, three more places
later, “It’s time to call it a day,” you say. “Not too shabby,
aye?” We’re wet with sweat and filth,
our palms bruised and hips tired
but your eyes, they glisten.

The sun begins to sneak up on us and you must
go back to where you belong.

Eight weeks later, I will watch as the office-goers
grumble about one less spot for a car, about the state
of the city when the rain runs muddy
how the government has failed to find
the perpetrators yet again.

I will smile
because there will be vines instead of telephone lines
and the smell of lavender and lantana you left behind
will drift down the rooftops. The honks will sound, gradually
growing louder and louder but no one will hear them
above the buzz of the honeybees.

*

Nursing Disappointment

In the quiet of the room –

I pick her up
tenderly in the dip of my hand. She wobbles
like freshly-set jelly. She could slip any moment now
leaving a splatter on the floor for me
to scrub between the tile gaps for days.

Years of tight roping
through days
exactly like these have me covered –

I take her
out for a stroll in the garden;
tell her about the grass that is dancing
despite the chaos in the world. She hears
the crickets, calling out to the wind
louder and louder against the fading
car honks. I let her listen
to the transience. Slowly, I lower my arm
down to the sand.

She climbs off.

I return home –

*

The Centipede

On the underside
of a fanning bark mushroom,
you have made a home.

When I crouch,
you look up
and ever so slightly

uncoil –
two thread-like
antennae, twitch

as if in response
to my greeting.
We do not speak

in each other’s tongues
but I feel
like we’re the same,

you and I –
seeking refuge in crevices,
begging to belong.

You were born
from the dirt and will
return there someday

but I can never
reclaim
my mother’s womb.

*

The Ritual of Living

Break a bone. When life gets in the way,
sit on the pavement and count the gravel
left behind by a speeding car. Pick up
your dog’s poop from the living room floor
and feed it to the garden. A brightly-coloured
mushroom may greet you from it. When your lover
breaks your trust, love him anyway
not because you don’t know otherwise –

but because it’s a choice you make.
Lie by the river at night and watch the insects
buzz around your mouth. Don’t swat them away,
they are living, just like you. Abandon
a poem. Break promises. Cry. Wonder why
the world works the way it does.
When you have no answers, sleep,
wake up and do it all over again.

*

The Story Backwards

That’s how it’s done
in this world. You meet
a person – say in the garden –
and you have to work out
the twenty-seven years
it took for them to get
to that exact moment
under the tree, their dog pissing
on an old bicycle tyre. You learn
their name and their dog’s
and then you’re married in a few years.

You have to piece together
the blacked-out periods. Photographs,
anecdotes from friends, perhaps a scar
that gets them to tell you about a
dark alley squabble they had in their teens.
You would have never imagined
them to be a bully, so soft-spoken and loving
but here they are now, a person
you know from the middle
whom you have to make whole.

***

Aashika Suresh is a writer and poet from Chennai, India. She was shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2019. Her work has appeared in Nether, Madras Courier, Chestnut Review, The Kali Project, Erbacce Press, among others. You can find her on Instagram: @aashika_suresh.

Rituals of Living: Six Poems by Aashika Suresh