It’s 2005
and we are almost glamorous,
the five of us—

the chairs are cane,
my shirt batik,
the sunshine Goa
and Heineken.

We’re past the clumsy brutality
of eighteen—

we’ve deleted
makeshift faces,
borrowed persuasions,
stances without journeys.

We’ve forgiven the treacheries
of student seminars,
wrong addresses
at different ends of the city,
digressions of faith.

No edge
to our voices anymore
when we say Zen
or Gramsci.

We’re wearing
the dumb happy
of holiday
and wearing it well—

and there’s always so much sun.

Against limewashed churches
and cashew plantations of melted green
we’re laughing hard,
beer-glazed, sand-drizzled, stoned
on Sgt. Pepper and Kishore Kumar.

And there’s the other picture, look,
where arms entwined,
we are bathed in fierce siesta light
and seem to know this moment
is teetering
on the verge
of never again.

It isn’t difficult, of course,
to skip the nostalgia,

to fast-forward
the embarrassment
of memory,

to speak,
as others do,
of calcium
rather than satori.

So, the morning I heard
it wasn’t difficult to turn efficient,

to delete
pictures of hummingbirds
and cardamom tea

and the air ticket you emailed me
never knowing it would be
the one to your funeral.

It gets easier, friend,
with age,
to delete, plan breakfast,
turn the page.

It would have been easier still
if you hadn’t deleted the sun.

poetry-magazineDeleting the Picture

Deleting the Picture