Poem I Tarun Joshi
Stuck between the puzzled pieces,
two-wheelers and four-wheelers,
and scrawny strange legs,
and throats howling to find order,
hands moving forward and upward,
eyes struck by the longitude of traffic,
minds lost and confused in the distances,
and hearts suspended by the deep potholes,
I find my chaos, crossing the brook of Vijayanagar.
In the silence, and slumbering seats of the rickshaw,
I reach for the hidden pocket, of my college bag,
and pull out, the most expensive possession in my bag:
a square sheet of paper, folded three times, unordered.
With each road tremor, followed by a silent pause of traffic,
I read through the broken sentences, figuring her flat handwriting,
a hair fell on the paper, while I read the last faded sentences,
“Come back soon, I will be waiting for you” (her last words).
Then I looked out, and all the chaos within me made sense,
we had crossed the brook by now, I folded the paper back,
and looked at the broken rickshaw mirror,
and found my reflection in puzzled pieces.