Two tablespoons analogy and a pinch of salt – Anirban Dam

 

 

two decades and a handful of years later

you realized that even two people

wanting the exact same thing, when placed

in a same room can feel lonely together.

 

my mother always kept the spices on the top shelf

along with the pickles and the jar of salt

(but never sugar or honey.

she’d always keep them on the bottom shelf)

and due to her tall and slender build, it was

always within her grasp.

 

she’d say that everyone should always

have something sweet within their reach

and that no one should have to struggle for it.

but that is how it is with the most of us —

we struggle to seek the things we

need the most, and by the time we acquire it

we no longer possess the struggle to justify what we need.

 

two people in the same room

are struggling to reach the salt.

 

you watch their fingers flutter for a while

before they finally give up and fall still

like dandelions —

 

swaying,

stationery,

slowly disintegrating beneath a motherless roof.

 

this is how grief appears to the naked eye

when within striking distance.

 

Anirban Dam is a twenty-something parasite who thrives on guilt-free sarcasm and gluten-free poetry. His physical form was last spotted in Bombay.

 

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