Before this year of vermilion sun, all my days were tainted
With the fear of the unknown until the known became this
Travelling, crawling, screaming show of suburban storms
Rolling down the hills of despair behind this old town.
Jet trails on the state lines, holding you and me by our fingernails,
This falling feeling tells me that one of us will fall first and
You tell me that you will catch me, hold me close like
Your mom held you before your sixth-grade recital but
I am not a child afraid of being seen, I am a twenty year old,
All fearless in this adult city, doing adult things, clinging on
To your hopeless candy-tinted, broken glass house with
Hope seeping off the walls but flowing away nevertheless.
I tell you that I am tired but I am not afraid of falling.
When I was four, my aunt used to carry me on her back
as we crossed the mountains. And when she slipped on moss,
We both fell to the ground and she said darling don’t cry, you are
In the lap of the green earth with the leaves of grass and
Grass doesn’t cry and neither does the river rubbing on stones.
I am grass so I won’t cry and I am the life that spills
Colours into existence and you are my favourite colour but
I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t let your name become the
Birdsong that this town remembers in the aftermath of our storms.
I won’t let the remnants of your existence become shrines in my city
I don’t need a war memorial, I need victory and I will fight
Until all my rivers flow where you left your deserts,
And all these days run around the clock fast enough
To catch up with lonely subway trains and empty dining tables
where I have been growing magnolias out of dust.
Shiwangee Chandrakar is a fourth-year law student who loves poetry and constitutional law.
Featured image credit: Pixabay/ArtTower