(you can start scrolling)

wallpaper: the sun lingers

only just, on the back of a squirrel

drinking dew, everything else

is fog fog fog

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scene: she tugs at her grandfather's

polythene skin, which wants to take

all plastic, but has no more body

cut to: his ashes floating into gunshots

while bulletproof butterflies flutter

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prompt: the same attitudes wear new butterflies

to tell you— imagine if grass stiffened when dew

rolled down, how fast and thick the clouds would be

and how quickly the pond will fill up

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morphology: the shape of commas

like tadpoles, full-stops that grew tails

smudged by a wet touch

phonology: as you go into the mouth

the roundness reduces, like rocks

pebbled in riverbeds, soaps touched

over and over again

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haiku: with a snakelike gait

rain pierces the lilypad

nervous frogs watch by

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frequently asked question: to a faraway brook

ask the pain of two drops

refusing to let go

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did you know: the petiole

is the slender stalk by which the leaf

is attached to the storm around it?

what a dark and narrow path

we come out of and how hauntingly

similar the journey back?

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statistics: at dusk the mother chicken

does not return with all her children

(eagle 25% wildcat 25% civet 25%

human 25%) and the dried yellow

drumstick leaves are swept away

by the windbroom of stepmother nature

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soundscape: the dog fight in the hills

comes to us in winds

panorama: our eyes are citizen

wherever the leaf falls

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reality show: a mynah descends on a branch

dislodging a barely-held leaf that makes

a squirrel running on the roof pause to wait

and watch the swirling leaf be caught back

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theory: every falling leaf is a sigh

a part of autumn's broken blanket

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climate change: the men have rolled up

the deserts, the women have gathered

antarctica in cubes

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archive footage: when the caveman entered

there were poppies— he had a three-battery torch

he could hunt an antelope with, he had a memory

of the cavewoman blushing like rock's red-gold

patches preparing bed for pioneer mushrooms

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documentary: virgin mary and infant jesus

carved in radishes in oaxaca, mexico.

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definition: transmutation is a snake slithering

to your feet, molting and becoming an anklet

is a krishna bee come to butter-loot radha jasmine

but making love instead

hypothesis: the law of nature is leaning—

the bee on the flower on the hill on the sky

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how-to: it is easier to keep track of the sun

if you saw it rise in the morning, once it

coughs on your shoulder, let it dry

under the eaves where the sky is on the grass

paperweighted by a sparrow's dirge

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do it yourself: to make a sparrow's grave

you'll need a lack of direction, an alchemy

of a sneeze's atlas on a glass surface

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obituary: it is raining—

only the elders of the desert chant

when it's raining

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zen: felt like a million birds crying in the tree

turns out a single bird singing a million songs

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nat geo compilation: in the trees

there's a decade in that one note

the koel likes to hold, its eyes red

like sunworn lobster shells, held

as white-throats drop anchovies

like punctuation, like leaves falling

in alliteration, of an army of ants

on mango leaves, of half-eaten papayas

tumbling down after a band on monkeys

and leafminers tracing labyrinths

of unknown countries and eagles flapping

once to prove gravity, twice to prove life

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personality quiz: if we could

like salmons, return to spawn

to be mayfly and jellyfish together

(the scroll goes on forever

but you don't, so exit for now)

~ ajay

17/2/2022