Indian Summer

By Shringarika

@shringarikaa

shall i compare thee to a summer’s day

which is to say Shakespeare never lived through

the summer in Delhi - and the combustive cynic consequence of it.

love poems dying on our tongues,

faster than the cola and orange bars melting in a puddle of disdain for the diabolical afternoon winds.

it’s too hot for your cold hands to seek comfort in someone else’s,

the touch of your palms wouldn't be electric but explosive,

-- the smoke often covers this realm we’ve learned to call home.

our home, like all homes shelters discomfort and in the sky : mercurial changes of color

1. a slight grey, for days you skip breakfast because last night’s pizza barely qualifies as breakfast, especially when it tastes like cardboard. the microwave reminding you of  a volcano, you’d rather go to work hungry.

2. kinda blue, but not really on days you are too busy running towards the metro station, just to be there the same time she does, it's easier burying cynicism when you're deep under the ground already.

3. yellow, orange, and red on days you forget which flowers to buy her, read between the lines of the sunset and kiss her just once, then again on another slightly overcast day.

4. really really blue for when it rains in the middle of june - a reminder how the weather, like the colours is capricious too. you’ll switch to normal coffee from iced coffee, and leave the windows open.

thou art more lovely and more temperate

which is to say Shakespeare did know a hell a lot about love,

and the sound of unbreakable compassion - louder than the traffic in this city.

days stretching past the clouds

you will learn to spend evenings doing nothing,

if it means you’ll be next to her.

you will learn to kiss through melting chocolate

and get used to sweaty palms,

and on days the sky looks stable,

you will wrap up discomfort in caricature clouds,

and let it rise above your chest.

summer remains a conundrum still

-- a romanticized supercut of dreams.