For the Sonorous

The line of calculus

                  rested on a road full of

huddled songs, and those cycle-peddlers

ran deep into lanes

                  to deliver milk every dawn.

I once saw a Japanese painting

and it reminded me of my grandmother

                  rising slowly upon the wake

of dawn. Life was always on the ellipsis.

A faint migration happened

                  when restless steel vessels

crackled with smells of oil and cumin seeds.

We need barren tracts to lay soil

                   and till the land, claim ownership

to histories of a forgotten place. Beyond

the Himalayas someplace, solace rests.

                   In that place, it is perennially winter

                   where radishes are pickled and stored

                   in the hope of an oncoming summer.

But I heard helpless screams

from the arteries of Jallianwalah Baug

                   every morning since I was a little girl

their smells still linger there, within

the well of decay. I hear them still,

over textures of night, when all light

is gone. All left now of the city, the way

                   it appeared last, was unreal.

Memory is the summation of parts,

a synecdoche for weary colonies

that one erects within oneself.