Schoolday Morning

Waking up to Mondays was cold feet
on the marble floors of an old home,
my eyes locked as if morning would burn
the innocence I wrapped in my blanket last night,
my eyes locked until cold feet were warm
under hot water amenable to philosophy
best suited to the space of an empty mind.

Dressing up was an exercise in lassitude,
my red shirt was hypnosis made cloth,
and the steam over my tea was poetry unrealized
in the rush of a monsoon schoolday --
my mother's voice has turned sweeter
since the years she drove my punctuality.

The weight of geography dug into my shoulders
and if I would've known Atlas, I would've smiled,
but I simply stared up at the Ashoka trees
and the blotches of indigo fading behind,
I knew only to look upward in those days
and would let the sharp chirps seize me,
until every broken façade felt right where it was,
every bicycle trundled at the speed of my waking,
my waking would come, I knew, in minutes,
but all of the world was a hallowed portrait until then,
the black road shone with uneven cuts
while the vendors opened their stalls
but the aroma of chaat and dabelis was to come,
the old lady by the tiled cross was to come,
the confusion of noonday industry was to come,
and with it would come the many lives
that made me smaller and less defined,
but I wore the morning like a blanket,
wrapped it about me until evening came,
and I was nobody but for the Ashoka trees,
the aroma of chaat and dabelis,
the chirps of retiring birds in their eaves,
rains now claim all my memories
except for the one cup of tea
that still looks like poetry.

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