with the sore throats unique to monsoons

we are waiting in the ATM line when a

toothpicking woman fades across an empty

ice cream parlor in a leafy vegetable saree

carrying a giant bottle of fanta like a mother

carries her child / like a priestess holds an obelisk

diminished by time // she stops in middle of

the road / unseals & raises it to her lips like

an apocalyptic conchshell / crows flirt the eyes

of the storm / lightning a blonde strand of hair

in the waters of her tongue & thunder the gulping

throat // fanta rains / & the fizzing flood

swamps everything in sight // we watch her drink

entire moments until the universe becomes a plate

of galactic jalebis in the next yuga / devas & asuras

churn the fantasagara / find fossils of an orange

dictatorship / & a line of people eternally stranded

before a paper vending machine // when she stops

drinking the djinns fall back to their spiral plastic

lamps // soon as it rains we stick out our tongues

to the tangless taste of the drizzle while the ATM

queue inches three steps ahead as one man departs

~ Ajay
21/6/2020