Grandfather | Swastika Jajoo

Grandfather, we will build paper towns
of memories left unconsumed in the glass bowl
and we will breathe the syllables of the stories
you told me each night, whisper by whisper,
into its fortifications.

It is as if you could recreate a past
I never had through simple retellings.
I would hold fast to the faltering fragments
of realities that were only shadows shimmering
against a dying light: yet, it was light
in some form, manner, shape, color, it
was still light.

Grandfather, our fingertips are covered with
the paints of winds, fires, earths, seas and skies
and everything we touch assumes elemental forms:
there is freedom in the knowing of it, and more,
in the owning of it.

We are drifting through an oasis of our minds, we are
dreams of different shades beginning to converge.
When you reach out for the wooden stick that must
carry the weight of your seventy-nine years, I
give you my hand instead, and hold tight,
and hold still, as if journeying through
all of your years in one passing moment.