Utkarsha Anwekar
Look at your room:
Dust and cobwebs and atomies
Sunlight filtering through flappy curtains
Laundry on the chair and you on your feet
Co-existing with creatures you never
Thought you'd entertain…
For this isn't a house with Mom to nag
At you to clean it all every weekend.
I think missing home is more about
The comfort of knowing comfort exists
Where others want to care for you, clothe
And feed you with their own two hands;
And so you miss mostly the nostalgia
Of dutiful homely comfort.
But some of us—!
Some of us come from homes that strangle
The individuality out of us; wring it out
Upon the pure-white sheets as if
It's blood on the first wedding night as if
We had never felt like a person
With desires, desiring and desirable…!
And so spots of our blood
Make a horrid kaleidoscope on
The bedroom of our childhoods.
Look at your room:
Little gifts of love and life to remind
You that people care, have cared
For the bits and pieces you have strewn
Everywhere; the marks you leave
Will be footprints that nobody could steal
Today, tomorrow, or a hundred moments hence…
Twinkling fairy lights and bass boost speakers
Thumbed down pages and ink blot corners
All the wrappers from chocolates you relished
Whether because they were sweet, or because
The friendly giver was; and
All the other knick-knacks that make this room
Yours
Look at how mundane it all is…
Yet the dust makes new patterns every time
A new wind blows.
So remember:
One day you will look at all of this,
Through a lens today, and a screen after
And you will miss it.
That's when it comes to us all:
Home is a photograph
Picture: you gaining your wings
Recall: all the little things you fought for
Add: it all up to today
Where memory upon memory lies in the cracks
Of your bed against the wall
As you tried to fall asleep, letting your secret thoughts
Seep into the dead of a past night.
Look at your room:
And remember to remember.