the sun was rising, rising still

as if the morning like him was burning

with that desire that desires to delay

all desires, to starch every detail

in a noticeable shade that forces one

to surface when washed with gazes

but he swam on, past holy-named houses

streets that marked precisely the other

streets that sprouted from it— a proud node

of a familiar labyrinth— past the temple

the supermarket, the school, in that order

into that disorder, into a potholed road

through a gap in the yellow morning traffic

the road with gullies that were stubs

& scabs, posters stapled to the walls

with the sweat of poster-pasters &

house-shaped tumors that flooded

every monsoon. a cow was grazing

at the weeds by the open sewers

two girls were playing badminton with

a pile of burning trash where the referee

would have been— the road of the

goddamn real, a cacophony that she

must have passed through to escape

that privileged sheltered silence

of last night, of almost-happened fight

the jaded finger of a faded mural of ambedkar

points him into a gully spewed with pink

& yellow flowers. why isn't, he wondered—

wanted to ask her if he found her

somewhere ahead in time— why isn't

your reality real enough for you, why

this projected nostalgia for the oppressed?

but for now, he could only answer

in theory, what the scattered flowers

pink & yellow, really meant.

~ ajay

12/1/2022