Umang Kalra: Shadowless

Where a City Holds Longing

i.

I need to stop writing about when the skies were pink. I forget the days of gold

and the earth-struck ocean from when everything was too blue to ever change,

the quiet mornings full of the worlds I was too tired to love. Where do I put

all of this loss I am still learning to name? How do I go back to somewhere painted

pink and shadowless in my dreams? Will it know my scurried breathing among

all of the flowers it grew all over the ground I walked? Will you be waiting?

ii.

I say, this & everything is all for you / this city /

the sky / this earth / the glowing, golden, glistening

apocalypse waiting / I say, let me look inside

of all of the secret sounds / violet love learning

what to do with itself / this shivering forest of

stone / do you love it differently? do you

love it in the way of the promises we make

in bed? do you love it in the shadow of something

brighter than its old fondness? do you love it

in the sound of the shaking earth? are you waiting

to save it from something glorious? where does

all of this wonder go? do you love it the same

as the ground that grew me flowers? do you love it

in the way of the root, the seed, the growing fissure

in its stone? bring me this affection of the trees /

till the soil & pour it water / & I will wait for our city

to unfold into

something

resembling me

iii.

I am so soft for all this light, so full

of shine I forget it is neon, so full

of aching I forget it is dead. One day I will unearth

the madness we abandoned in the ground.

Some day, the sky will cave and ask what we did

with all of the quiet that we named

longing. I must begin from nowhere: this

slow-forgotten memory crawling

in the way of that golden year won’t live long enough

to grow into the wilderness it wants.

iv.

I will come home for the browning of the trees, all the

spring-softened futures forgotten on the pavement,

the endless growing of the forest encroaching into

where we buried the end. Call me something sweeter,

the air will beg, tell the world how much you want me,

and I will breathe, and breathe, and breathe till the last

love it allows.

Self Portrait as Everything that Remains

after I am gone: burrow fossil-shaped heart-shells

into the soil for me, that same emptiness that grew

into shelter for us, that same crystal-stricken pavement

we taught to love. For so many lives I have been writing

only for you. I want to leave the city aching, too, I want

to bend the earth for us, I want to crown its shadows

some exquisite thing. Some small, growing, golden, glistening

thing, some old fear fashioned into a throne. I want

to dig the past up and pass you the shovel and watch

you watch me as I walk away. I want the end of this story

to sprout a new friend, a surprise guest at a dinner party,

a collapsing oceantide curling to say hello, the edges

of a world I left un-wanted, un-known, un-beloved, like

the skin falling off of the soles of my feet and planting

frozen futures into nothing for me. I am quivering in purples

for the imagined grace of a thing of stone, I am weakened

wanting to forge something godlike out of this dirt, to put

this endless glory somewhere safe and call it real, to look

into the dust and find a mirror waiting.

Umang Kalra is an Indian poet. She is a Best of the Net Anthology Finalist and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Queen Mob's Teahouse, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Cotton Xenomorph, Vagabond City, and others. She tweets at @earthflwrs and writes at theanatomyletter.tumblr.com. Her author website is umangkalra.tumblr.com.