Hri's Reveries

Maybe in another world, I get to wake up in your arms and watch you sleep. In another world, you don’t feel like you have to lie to me and keep me at a distance just so I don’t end up falling for you. In another world, I can hold you when you cry. In another world, you don’t think a hundred times before showing me the tiniest part of your heart. In another world, we don’t limit the glimpses of our souls that we grant each other. In another world, I don’t write and then delete texts asking you to meet me. In another world, we don’t dance around the lies we tell each other. In another world, we don’t feel like we have to lie to each other at all. In another world, I don’t have needles growing up from my skin and you don’t block out every voice with the noise in your head. In another world, we don’t much care what people say and we meet each other at the right time. In another world, I let you read the poems I wrote for you and you care enough to listen to me when I sing. In another...

October rolls around and brings with it the Durga Puja— my heart rejoices in anticipation, every year. And every year, my mind becomes sick with bittersweet nostalgia, without fail, thinking of you. It’s not fair to me, the fact that your memories are now so closely woven with the one festival I look forward to. This is the first time I haven’t gone back home for the Puja. This is the first time I haven’t seen you during the Puja. I remember, on the first day of Puja, shashthi— I visited the pandal next to your home, and you visited the pandal next to mine. It’s an exchange of worlds that occurs every year. Not this year. I could only see your pictures and laugh a derisive laugh because you are closer to my home than I am right now. I remember, on the second day of Puja, saptami— both of us sang at the annual singing competition in our hometown. Not this year; this time, it was just you. I haven’t heard you in so long, I am scared of slowly forgetting your voice. I remember, on...

I. It is summer again and I love to lie in the cool shade of the banyan tree in my grandmother’s backyard and think of summers long past. It is almost as if I hear the tree speaking to me— in echoes from the thick stem, the roots hanging from the branches as if to graze my skin and unlock my memory. The earth has a mind, I think— one that collects the memories of everyone that ever walked on it and returns them when one stops and rests. I think of summer two years ago when the brown-eyed boy bought a few seeds with the pocket money he’d saved and held them out to me in his rough palms. “You like plants,” he’d said. I remember telling him he had beautiful eyes before taking the seeds and planting them in one of my mother’s earthen flower pots. I thanked him and promised him I’d take care of the seeds and help them grow into strong, healthy plants. I remember the look of satisfaction on his face. Time stumbles and slows down. This is how love begins. A few seeds planted in innocenc...