The night and its people

The slope of the sandbar, its casual bulge

of men; they staggered, clutched at hand, at knee.

A need perhaps, to know they were still pieced

together on that falling slope, still firm:

affirmed by gravity. You dismissed them

as drunk. We left them for a girl at a bus stand

stranded between crouching trees. Their hands

patted the air above her, waving cars

into the dark. Her eyes, cigarette burns. Her hair,

was coiled-up smoke. Her heels dendrites, dragging

dregs from some corner of the night. Smoking

later in our room, you claimed the ash as age

lines. Aging ankles, my dendrites. That there

is nothing to the night, just drunks and whores.

****

Growing up

It is when you find your body is discrete:

your head, a tilted alembic. Your neck,

a funnel. Sometimes you hear your voice rising

like steam from furnace lungs to hiss nothings.

On coffee tables, your hands seem helpless birds.

They flutter into air and sputter to a stop,

undecided. Some nights, your bones lean weary

into your skin. You learn to appreciate

their weight. Toes squat like pebbles.

You see them settle into the ground

wherever you stop. You worry sitting

will root you. You never sit alone.

You like the idea of not being an island.

You find grooves where your face has learned

to set itself in a smile. You find you smile a lot,

that there is little else to be done. You find

you cannot remember how to look at the sky any more.

***

Krishnakumar is a poet who lives in Mumbai. His poems have appeared in Cha, Muse India, Kritya, among others.