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| Screenshot from The Guardian, 05.11.2023. |
I’m
thankful you’re not in a war zone.
That
our troubles, though quite sufficient
don’t
include that brand of violent –
they’re
lower key, more mundane in tone.
I’m
so glad you’re not in a war zone.
Though
to be honest, the ones who are
don’t
seem to be altogether foreign -
their
sorrow’s a long familiar cadence
and
half my own, the distance not too far.
We
think we are not them, but we are.
Whole
histories lie in torn curtains, crumbed rust
on
exposed steel, in cracks on the stair treads,
in
your own careless thumbprint on the dust,
a
barely there spider web’s single thread
caught
briefly in the beam striking the bed.
Ordinary
lives summed up by the contents
of
desks and drawers, by tattered bookmarks
showing
where they’d stopped reading, sure they’d meant
to
go on, only it had gone too dark -
pages
spelling out their exits’ exact arc.
A
weekly crossword has been left half done,
you
can’t quite bring yourself to complete it
because
that feels like a small desecration,
as
if that’s tampering, it’s not your remit.
You
waver, you neither write nor can you quit.
You
want to clear the space out and rearrange -
the
useless old teapots, the dulled silverware.
No! - you can’t bear the thought of the slightest change.
Let
the lifeless represent the life lived there –
the
half done crossword, the same cracks on the stair.
Not sure where that came from - except that some of our old window stays had to be replaced because they had got so rusted that the shutters couldn't be shut. It's 60 days into the homecoming? more than halfway to 100 and it's been a lively time - in a good way and also not in a good way.
I've been to the wholesale hardware market and shopped for stays (because the style we have is so ancient that it is carried only by the bulk distributors, it's a 50 yo house). I've shopped for textiles, storage jars, frames, planters. I've got the last remaining items on the furniture wish list finally done, I've got the passport done, I've got my first dog bite - so that last one takes care of 'experience something new' for 2023. Anti rabies shots - yum! :)
We are still jumping through the various regulatory hoops and this time around my stores of patience, never very robust to begin with, have worn really thin. There are so many safeguards yet the mega fraudsters go scot free while ordinary folk like me are driven insane, one needs to sign forms in triplicate and a password to sneeze even. It would be comical if it weren't so uber tedious.
It is of course Gandhi Jayanti (birth anniversary) today and the festival season in India begins on the 14th. So the good times are set to continue, as family from Mumbai and Lucknow will be visiting. And cousins are here to attend from the USA as well. There's the spookfest challenge at WEP too...like I said, happy-busy month, hopefully.
Happy October to you too and happy festivals, whichever you may be celebrating.
