Divorced In Mid-Winter
And in the apartment he doesn't live in anymore,
I visit every morning. Sometimes with garden plants,
or alone in the afternoon. I have still
kept the hundred wind-chimes he once
bought from Surat just because he wanted to.
Every time, the breeze passes inside,
some part of the house breaks into
song.
He wanted to look after the house,
so he turned our room
into a sky dotted with snow.
He hasn't seen snow yet.
The last time he slept next to
me, I thought of him
as a black trunk, sinking gently
into soil.
The time, he told me
He had to move away,
I walked the bridge over
a metro without a jacket. I have
never been so reckless.
The last time we ate dinner
at a cheap Chinese restaurant in January,
he couldn't look straight
When he said he will be gone.
For the first time in months,
I looked at him without anger
I saw him as a tree caught in
a field of live electric lines. He comes again
in memory, and he looks exactly this way.
Four years have passed, the tree is
in the same place, only surrounded
by dried grass.
Still moving deep into the soil.
I never understood the cold,
and how things return into
ground for a season.
But I have never knelt so long on the soil
asking for something to re-appear.
About the poet:
Mit Shelke is a second-year UG student pursuing his English Lit. degree. Currently based in Pune, some of his love poems are set to appear in Ariel Chart Journal. This will be his second attempt at publishing. He is in constant search of bougainvillea but often finds them alive in their last moments.