No midnight's dream declares summer for me,

I scout the light seldom

To see the marigolds grow humping the walls under the bridge

For I and darkness live mutually

Like gobies and shrimps, and I the shrimp and the blind

The days that bridge the transitions

From the cold to hot and then monsoon,

Dressed in sarks of change, do take a chance at my nose,

Rendering it incapable of smelling the musk roses that bloom at the nose of may

I know it's summer when my mother makes chapattis* and keeps them in a hotpot,

Placing it within a container containing water

Like islandifying an islet, to isolate it from the marching red army.

An army with soldiers drunk with kokam sharbath**

Dark in their bums, skin burnished by hardships of an anthill, antlers pointing up- at the future or the doom

But now I've lost summer's symptom,

The red army nibbled away the bread yesterday,

In this supposed winter

I thought the army is busy warming the dark in their bums

and watching grasshoppers and their guitars freeze outside in snow

Was the story fictional?

As fictional as climate change...

*A flat bread

** Kokum is fruit, which is preserved with sugar to form a bright red squash that is diluted with water and used as a beverage

~Ajay

16/12/17