{ Arundhathi Subramaniam: Return. }

[delga]

Return
by Arundhathi Subramaniam

After so long you will be here again
and I will have to relearn how it works -

this dreaming playhouse of possibilities
choreographed by another accent
of weight and limb,

clusters of clothes and paper morphed
into new jigsaws of habitation

and those startled collisions of memory
and reality at the sounds

of a running tap, a muffled yawn,
the clink and stumble of presence
in another room.

And then the nights
when, turning over on the side,
the arm reaches out

and finds,
with some ancient riverine instinct,
a familiar lost tributary
of self.