The Dessert of a Memory

The Dessert of a Memory

Tuhin Bhowal

A gingery December morning splinters at the knee's cry for aid like a muezzin's first call to prayer.

Another arid affair with the red ball marks another failed score.

Another loss, another scar. At the marble-mosaicked veranda, sitting on the stairs a case of three or four

wails burst eardrums, travels swifter than the speed of sound

welcoming the advent of relief — an ointment.

Why play so hard?

I want to win. Disappointment rolls off the tongue as oil spreads on skins.

The wound is washed as the clot reveals itself like a peach's bad bruise upon its first bite.

The best plum chutneys are seasoned without any sugar, The voice imitates a boisterous politician at the hour of election.

Some fruits are just too sour.

48 Yours Truly

In the bedroom, one eye keeps hovering on the window; another has pranced out the window – spring’s departing as quickly as autumns arrive.

The plum trunk's nude girth stands witness to change.

Dorik never sounded apt for a plum's peculiarity: crisp savannah green from the outside, rotten cranberry red on the inside.

For once, at lunch, my recommendation turns into an ingredient of the recipe – ripe wild pears crunch into sweetness - fragile frost films into a lake.

The knee is healing; the air is becoming thin.

The water breaks, the wind howls, sleep prays

among gardens behind abandoned homes, bushes of torn backyards and flavours in dead kitchens.

Where can one look – when a memory turns into

years

49 Chaicopy | Vol. III | Issue I