The History Of An Entire Nation
Photo: Karan Madhok
A poem by Ashish Kumar Singh: ‘…even though we have always slept that way, this big word none of us knew the meaning of, made us afraid and we let you bring other hefty men to fix what you said was broken…’
If you enter into our house without invitation and refuse to leave when asked just because you say you haven’t done any damage and that you have been good, that you have repaired the stairs of the back poach and we let you stay the night now that it’s raining and then the next morning, you phone a friend and ask him to come to the house and when asked why, you say he will fix the ceiling that you say has been leaking all night and after the whole day, when the sun starts to go down, you and your friend refuse to leave on the pretext that the work isn’t done and that you need more men and when we say we don’t want to fix our ceilings, that we are people of water and like to sleep as the rain soaks us, you laugh saying all this is nonsense, that we would get sick, that our children would die of HYPOTHERMIA and even though we have always slept that way, this big word none of us knew the meaning of, made us afraid and we let you bring other hefty men to fix what you said was broken and after a few days of work, you start working on the wall now that they are too crooked and weak to hold the ceiling and we watch the world around us change, everything so fast and sudden and after the period of three months, we find ourselves standing in a box totally unrecognizable to our ancient eyes but at least the children are happy with the set of swings in the garden and you allot us different rooms, one for each member and as we close the doors and lay on the newly furbished floors, with nothing but concrete to meet our eyes, we slip silently into dreams, our bodies already shivering with the anticipation of the coming rain.
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Ashish Kumar Singh (he/him) is a queer poet from India with a Master’s degree in English Literature. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Chestnut Review, Fourteen Poems, Trampset, Mason Jar Press, Banshee, Channel Magazine and elsewhere. He serves as a poetry editor at Indigo Literary Review, reads for ANMLY and has recently joined the editorial team at Visual Verse. You can find him on Instagram: @ashish_the_reader and Twitter: @Ashish_stJude.
