Who Caught And Sang The Sun In Flight
by Arundhati Subramanium
You spoke with conviction
of the terrorism of the state.
And I, hesitant,
of those fraught landscapes of the mind.
The vodka clouded sentimentally,
a cordial of fuzzy peace,
making us believe, almost,
in a shared folklore,
a common heritage of warriorship.
That traditional repertoire of ripostes,
slippery pink with undergrad wisdom,
some kisses, moon-chilled, inevitable,
in a darkened car,
photographs, mirth-riddled,
fast fading into generic sepia,
and cups of tea, burnt orange
by the rage and sunlight of college cafeterias.
But on nights of black slate,
buses, old insomniacs,
have long had the habit
of erasing pedestrians,
sometimes friends.
Like you, they rarely equivocate
in matters of life
or death.
And so, comrade with an alien vocabulary,
seeker on a journey I almost understood
in a sly, crustacean sort of way,
one night you flattened
in an instant
from rebel,
splendid, young, tormented,
to reminiscence.
And the vodka doesn’t taste of sunshine anymore.
