Literary Yard

Search for meaning

By: Amrita Valan

The mind is a repository, a church,
A museum, a junk yard
An attic, a trunk,
Stashed away with treasures, puzzles
Gems, obsolete ciphers.

I have been seeing
The tiny corner table
From early childhood today
With the cumbrous
Black telephone atop.

Recalling calls received and made
Forty years old small talk …
Still afloat in mind’s ether,
Wandering within still waters
Splash goes my thoughts on the rock.

Mommy talking to
Dad’s colleague’s wife,
Such a jolly roly-poly lady
Aptly named Jolly.

My first call from a school friend
My serious fusillade of questions
“Is it raining at your place,
Around the bend, of our street?
It’s raining here, at my end!”

Silver and diamond silence
In between two eight year olds
Trying to keep their naive conversation
Standing on its own two legs.

“What are you doing
Making toast buttering them
They will burn, bye now!”

I wonder where you are now
My first best friend

Somali
Forever taped to my mind’s
Notice board
Busily buttering away
Toasts,
Burning just a few of them.

First invite to a birthday party
Decked out in flouncy party frocks
Ginormous Flurys cake in a
Big beige box.

I see Avanti forever
Darling birthday girl in bows and ribbons
Silver and navy belted frock
She’s probably a wife a mother now,
A manager, or perhaps a doc?

These are two of my earliest friends.
I have never met them since school days.
Never searched for them
On social media.
Some things are best
Remembered fondly
Not revisited
Ever again.

###

Amrita Valan is a writer from India and a mother of two boys. She writes everyday and lives life through poems. 

Tagged:

2 COMMENTS

Leave a Reply

Related Posts