As Luck May Have It

Retracing steps I left on this page some years ago.

The granite steps still wet from morning dew-

Or nightly showers, I do not know.

The house was different then.

The tiles had more colour in them.

The other house was stark white

The balcony opened into the street

Red and yellow wavy bricks, cobbled steps

Across the street

A little hand and a little smile

A little happiness, and a little vanity too

She loved the rain as much as I do

A fading memory memory comes to view

A sky so huge, it could swallow me

A downpour of mist and spray

Descending like mighty famished waves

Over the gray pavement where I hid 

Behind the cars, sometimes inside them

A little chubby troublemaker

With a face I'm glad I no longer have

Long hair, up to the thighs

Braided forcefully, she pulls it open

Devouring mango like it's time

Smiling unapologetically

She had the confidence of a pharaoh

And the brains of an ape

They loved the way she weaved stories

Out of random people she saw

Until all she knew was how to please

Never when to let things go

Then she moved

And for years, a blur

For once she knew the force of eyes

Now the colourful tiles are broken up

And replaced with shining white

They leave the room where she was brought

When she first learnt to open her eyes

Now all is changed, the pavement levelled

The terrace does not have its passages still

She has lost the home she once knew

The other house is put up for sale

A new one, a whiter house

Will take its place

The silence in its corridors

Does not fill the space of kiddish games

Where she moved, she no longer lives

She moved again, to the edge of time

Where sand stands still in the air

Thickening it, sickening it

The wind moves unrestrained

Storms, hails and rains-

But she still loves the rain

And yearns for it as the days dry up

The first rain of the year

She sits listening to rueful verses

She has dishes to do

Dishes she left convalescing in the sink

Sugar sweetening the coloured water

Ants conglomerate the event graciously

She turns the tap, the flow of water

Drowns the little crawling creatures

Now only specks floating

She left unsettled bitterments

Rotting on the porch

The house howls in the night

The wind escapes and changes shape

She wakes in the night

Pacing like a ghost

The room erupts in dark flames

She moves away to see better

Fallen debris from gulmohar trees

The red flowers trampled underneath

the passing, youthful tread

Petals blacken at the edges

Lay on the ground like rotting flesh

A carcass of a subtler kind

Little feet stomping over little buds

As they go

She stands still

She retraces the steps 

She took when she was but a child

On dew-laden or rain swept steps

Of granite.

They are no more.

As luck may have it.

⚜

"Pink, small, and punctual,

Aromatic, low,

Covert in April,

Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,

Known by the knoll,

Next to the robin

In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,

Bedecked with thee,

Nature forswears

Antiquity."

May-Flower, Emily Dickinson