Grief lives in a bolted trunk
Cut-outs from calendars, girls,
glossy, golden haired, licking
ice-cream off their noses
your five-year lactose intolerant self
ached so much for the sweetness
In a journal, you scribbled
poems the neighbour called trash
he was 30 you were seven,
As you were young, stories were waves
in your (idea of a) mind when your brother
met ghosts that was a story your school swing
was a story when your mother sat hunched
over utensils on a cold December night
that was a story
Memorabilia of those who left
friends you lost and outgrew
A scrapbook that asked your best
day and worst—you left it empty
Your first love left no gifts to store
no heartbreak, not the first or
the second, the third left books you
regret having read as you grew older
Gradually, the aches grew stronger
not just your fractured foot that put a halt
on your ghungroos and now sends bi-annual
reminders to your body unlike
poems that compare heartache
to storms (these poets don’t know you)
mediocre clichés your heart ached like
a migraine—hereditary gift—when
another left you afraid of ghosts
‘this is surely worse than a headache,’
your migraine protested
So you have kept at it, hoarding
the trunk with live objects and memoirs
you couldn’t live with and couldn’t
throw away like the bangles he gave you
a pair lined with pearls and a chunar
to drape your undressed 27-year-old self
crumpled letters tears curtailed
prose black balls of anger
An assemblage you tucked in corners
and put a lock now you are curious
to see if the jewels whisper in longing
and old sheets crave your ink
It is, after all, your personal Pandora’s Box—
torrents of despair and a trace (perhaps) of hope