ambulance season / pandemic poem | Anagha Smrithi

the jasmine flowers bloomed last night 
their cold white bodies  
       opening and opening 
into the flat palm of the dark. 

if love exists, maybe it is like this; an unfurling 
that takes place in silence. 

now it is morning. 10 AM sun. flakes of dust in the warm air. 
I crouch down to greet the flowers 
     they sway, back and forth, back and forth in the wind, 
heads shaking as though with laughter, as though they could lift 
their small mouths to the sky. 

                                                  how badly I want 
to join them, laugh in the secret way of flowers, 
plunge my limbs into soil, press my ears to the damp earth 
      and laugh. but I am tired. it is almost July now. the months
arrived like train carriages, all at once. all summer 
I lay on my side and listened to the sound 
of ambulance sirens rising through the rain. 
soon our flowers will die; petals coming undone, 
floating down to the earth. and once again
I will find myself unable to mourn. 

next season, only the flowers will return to us. 
(nighttime. rust in the city sky. a single jasmine bud 
curls open; latticed by stray light.) 

by 	then, 	we 	will 	be 	half 	asleep.	in 	this 	dark
we	 too	 unfurl	 in	 our	 own	 way;	 
each	 of	 us	 falling 
into	 our	 own	 private    sleep,    but    held    by    the    same    silence.
moving    in    and    out    of    broad    shadows,    our    bodies    reach
for each other, even while dreaming. 

now     we     will     sleep 
all through July.  and we will go on 
like this, outliving all our flowers, 
for we still have other seasons- 
to live and die in. 

Anagha Smrithi is a 26 year old writer based in Bangalore, India. Her work has previously appeared in Anthropocene, Hellebore Press and Nether Magazine, among others. She writes about the body and everyday spaces. For more of her work, find her newsletter on the poetics of everyday life over here.