Searching with Words | Rajani Radhakrishnan

The idiom of childhood
seeps into this borrowed lexicon,
like the leaky roof drawing patches on the wall
smelling of another rain,
smelling of grandfather’s only black coat
that he wore like a second skin;
when it hung on the nail behind the door,
he was shrunken, diminished,
swallowed by loud kitchen voices,
rambunctious brass and copper pots,
their warm bottoms patterned with soot;
his walking stick stands in my cupboard,
older than me, than him,
head bent in a way his never was,
even the night by grandma’s body,
preparing her, preparing himself;
I search for him with words
in a language he never spoke,
that can state he laughed out loud
watching cartoons with me
that last summer,
but cannot translate
the way his whole body shook,
the way the sea trickled out of one eye,
his face contorted into something
that I now call joy.

*Previously published in “The Quiet Letter” in June 2017. Republished with permission from the author.