☀ Today's Poem: "tonight I feel like my last lover" Adrija Ghosh

I want to touch my forehead against yours and breathe in years,
because time almost always smells like your winter jacket catching snow in
New York
City. Cider, cedar wood and November in libraries.

Beneath the poetry section,
wedged between Mallarmé and the sanitizer dispenser,
you were discussing Cervantes with your friends in Castilian,
and I could make out familiar words—Spanish is phonetic, regional;
Shakira, introductory lessons during third year of college, soap operas.
In a community,
language is signifiers borrowed from each household.
In Calcutta rooftops,
language is just an excuse to dissolve at touch, and mouths which falter on
Saturdays.

You paused twice, I faltered.
Frozen, perceived.
My hands traced the spine of an untranslated Heptameron at Till's,
your eyes, traffic lights;
slow yellow, deadpanning me red.
You look at me. You don't see through,
you don't accidentally brush past:
you hold my gaze.
I look away.

A woman in a tweed coat drank from the bottle at Berwick; a postcard town
owned by a
historian who claims to be a goatherd from Mehrauli,
but owns every possible postcode by the West Bay.
The moon makes an appearance,
I rehearse goodbyes.
Behind the Bass Rock, the moon costs £1.45; one way memorabilia departing
to Germany.
The moon, an attempt to secure Endymion from Artemis.
The moon, a young revolutionary's attempt at poetry who called it a tandoori
baked khamiri.
Do most young romantics die bereft of breath?

For a brief second beneath the poetry section wedged between phonology and
passport jackets,
uninterrupted debates on Quixote,
(the rest simply noise)
the city, the traffic, the language;
we are two strangers trying
not to break eye contact.

Does gaze return gaze?
Is it better to hold you instead?

Tonight I feel like my last lover.
When we almost bartered coffee for skin,
and the claustrophobia of Calcutta kept me distracted,
as we dug into French Toast at Fransizka's.
In the kitchen, maa wants to bake milk into domesticity,
she boils palm sap for dessert.
I want to kiss the past.
I want to hold your mouth in my palms
and drink you for dinner.

This poem was chosen as part of a special feature in issue 43 of POC/BAME writers, guest-
edited by Shehzar Doja and Sean Wai Keung.