Shifting homes

So how is it like shifting homes? The boxes are labelled,
 clothes, books, miscellaneous, there are your dolls in
 the other one, do you remember how you occupied
 a whole room with them and their stories, and you hated
 anyone mishandling them? Do you remember how in that
 corner you discovered the joy of reading and the immensity
 of the worlds you stumbled over in them, and in that corner
 your brother had picked up a lizard  as a five year old, crawling
 on his knees, as chubby as you please, now he is older, leaner
, do you remember how you thought you would be possessed
 by an evil spirit if you touched the tall tree in the backyard,
 they told you it was a sacred tree, there had been rituals to
 cleanse that house of evil elements, you remember Mum
calling you back for dinner when all you wanted was to keep
 on playing, running, you bruised your knee many times,
you still have those marks, you can't get yourself to discard
 the terribly old tshirt you got from Disneyland so you keep
 it in those boxes, then there are letters which you wrote
 to yourself from school, you used to treat your sister like a doll,
dress her up and pretend you were magicians, you can't
remember the last time you played, sometimes you don't
 even realize the extent of your missing and mourning, the five
 years in this house will be forgotten in a matter of time, new
 people will inhabit it, but all the falling in love,bursting into tears,
 laughing uncontrollably and growing-up you did, it all happened in this house.

So the writer and the poet say

It gets all right in the end of the story, the writer says
Monday begins grudgingly, resentfully, dread spread like
 poison in your purple veins, green at your wrists, sometimes
 you walk past it like a somnambulist , nodding , obliging them
 with a smile, your eyes light up at moments, dulls and becomes
 heavy lidded when overcome by afternoon sleep, but you don't
 sleep. Tuesday gives you rain, mugs of coffee and blankets
 of love, you hum old tunes into his ear, he smiles back at you
but you despair as the day comes to a close, parting for the night
 leaves you feeling slightly cold. Wednesday rushes past,
you devour written words, news of faraway lands, stare at
 faces of people with brown hair, black , golden, criminals,
 politicians, starlets, you imagine the houses by the sea, the cruel
 mountain tops, quaint houses and  cobbled streets, the Kumbh Mela
 at the banks of the Ganga. Thursday is for old acquaintances,
 reminiscing about childhood idiosyncrasies, a biscuit divided
 among four friends, prank letters written and received, ghost stories
 told. Friday is spent with a book, soaking up the warmth of the winter
 sunlight, nibbling on strawberries with chocolate cream, you are amazed
 at the heightened sense you feel of the world around you,
 overwhelming in their incredulity. Saturday tortures you with deaths
 sometimes, the vast scope of the human life, its various possibilities
 yet so limited sometimes, its heartbreaking misery, you miss
 the embracing magnanimity of home, of Mum braiding your hair when
 you were a little girl, of pushing your sister's tricycle, of going for
evening walks with your brother and your dog.Sunday morning makes
 you restless,waking up late never became you, the not-knowing of
 the rest of the day, but he will come to you or you will go to him,
 nothing is too hard to solve, even imagined grief passes,he imitates
 your scowl, you are laughing again, he is laughing too.
 Even the poet says, it gets alright by the end of the week.

In you all things are changing, less fire, more water,

 sometimes you wake up as though you never slept at all,

 you are falling back behind the lines, it reminds you of

 retreating armies, you think it cowardly, you are most

 cruel to the weakest, you don't really know if you are

 finally letting go or clinging to things you should have

 let go long ago, you sift through memories of others-

 a slave in ancient Greece, a Sufi saint in Ajmer,

 a concubine in China, you are all of them and none

 of them, you wonder if that is the fifth dimension

 he told you about? You, who once fell in love 

with the crowd in Times Square, New York, gets

 a headache when assaulted by loud voices, the movements

 of too many people disorients you. You seek out the sunlight,

 you look for love in corners of books, you turn out

 cupboards, run that deserted stretch of road, you are

 changing, fighting, swallowing, choking until you are so 

exhausted, but it takes you so long to fall asleep, hours go

 by and you wait for the enveloping peace that only 

sleep brings, you sometimes end up crying because

 you are losing out on people, people whom you love

 and people who love you, you can see them trying so hard

 to pull you up but you are unable to stretch your hand, 

you are retreating and you don't know how to go back,

 how to reverse it and go back to that point

 where everything would be alright again.

Waking up, walking to your door, waiting for you

I don't know why I suddenly feel homesick
or some sort of sick, like something is missing
and it's breaking my heart not to have it, only
 that I don't know what it is. Some things I am
 learning to admit to myself, for instance,
I am needy in quite a pathetic way. Maybe
 if I had your arms around me or even just
 a few of your words whispered to me, if I was
 running around getting the cake knowing that
you are in the room next door, your living
breathing presence, not two kilometers away
because it is simply cruel to be parted by ten hours
of the night and several more of the daylight hours.
 It hurt less when you were two thousand kilometers
 away, sometimes distance doesn't sink your heart
 the way nearness does. Ask anyone. But then how
 would anyone know? How can anyone feel the way
 I do about you, that in this moment suspended in time,
the world is blurring, other people are but specimens
too bland, too interesting, too old, too new and they
somehow couldn't arrive at the perfection at which
you somehow did and here I am
 waking up, walking to your door, waiting for you.

The coming of an end always leaves you

with a falling heart, even the desired end

 after which you assumed all the delights

of your deprived life would rush back to you,

sweep you of your everyday-wake-up-and-read-eat-sleep

routine.You are leaving behind something of yourself,

and this isn't the first time nor do you think this will be the last,

the places you have left behind, the little rooms, the shelf of 

overflowing books,the beads spilling out of your drawer,

 tablets competing with your clock for space in your bedside table, 

the waking up, the putting to sleep, you know that with each end

 you are letting go or being let go or both, hands that were wrapped 

around you won't catch you when you fall, you get on the plane

 like you always do, and you can't help feeling empty

 because some things were getting mended, and being let off 

such misery can be overwhelming, you have always wanted

 this end, counted the days to this end,

 but with it you are losing something you don't quite know.

To make way for the new

Some things you understand
Like the harvest every hiyangei
The toiling in the fields
To celebrate the bounty of the earth
With Lai haraoba, to appease Ema Lairembi
Your daughter is getting married
You have little to give her for her awunpot
You search the till for the little savings
But found nothing but despair
All you have is the house of mud,
And the black earth sustaining lives
The ways of Epa-Epu of living by the land
are but ancient relics found in phuga wari
The old ways are dying
Last evening you looked like a woman
 who lost something she can't quite remember
You gave your grateful daughter
Lik, khuji,lei made of pure gold
You had given up the old ways
To make way for the new.

You are always counting

You are always counting days left to go back to him,
counting the distance from the room in which
 you are hugging yourself wrapped in a red cardigan
to the street where he sits on a platform
 smoking a cigarette, perhaps 2696km give or take.
You count the two languages that set you apart,
 the one language you both share even though
 you both know how to say that one line
 in each other's language. You count the dishes
you eat which he might be alien to, nga for instance,
 not to mention eromba and soibum even though
 you are quite familiar what what he eats.
You stop counting because it's tiring to count so much,
and you need to tell him you can't wait to see him.