Slow grows the moss here | Reena Prasad

I watch from behind a banyan
you alight from a red and cream bus
and saunter into letters that would not write themselves
decades later
The spit-spattered shade of the bus stop, fairly new
for it never figured in any of the outdoor summer nights
when I fell asleep with stars in my eyes
high on the scent of crushed jasmine
nor in the warmth of a winter kitchen
where hot rotis flew off the coal stove into waiting plates
their smoky edges slightly charred by leaping flames
while a stray blush glowed red under a falling fringe
nor in the intervals filled with a growing awareness
of a looming sunset we would walk off into
once someone put up a banner of “done with childhood’
 
In this unfamiliar land growing like a willow in us
a land we loved to hate, a land that loved to divide
we met after three years of polite small talk
and eighteen years of childhood banter
There is still a red and blue school bag on your back
a thick fringe of hair on your forehead
mischief in your laughing eyes and I shake myself
like a smart phone updating the view
For a few moments, I forget this land
that tried its best to make us strangers
throwing its sandalwood-scented disparities, towering gods,
discordant chants and plastic moral chappals at us
as we stamped upon umpteen pairs of burning peepholes
shook off the ghosts grabbing at us
and drowned buzzing doubts
in a green pool of uneasy silence
 
But nothing we did that afternoon
could stop the growth of the malignant willows
that pushed out roots from every little space between us
Your breath on my cheeks, my hand in yours
yet we were dragged apart by stubborn wood
planted and watered by the crab folk
who could never grow past their petty differences
 
The crows watched as we crushed our remains
into carefully crumpled balls of conversation
tossing them into absent dustbins
cawing their pleasure as we turned into shadows
and vanished into the city that dined on our dreams

Reena Prasad is a poet/writer from India, currently living in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Her poems have been published in several anthologies and journals. She is also the Destiny Poets UK’s, Poet of the year for 2014 and one of the editors of The Significant Anthology released in July 2015. More recently, she was adjudged second in the World Union Of Poet’s poetry competition, 2016.