That Green Hard Bound Book
The book had a hard bound green cover
It sat in your study
The title read ‘Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories’
I was in middle school
On a lazy autumn afternoon
I found the book or the book found me
Every story hit hard,
💞Characters and plot lines circling in my mind for days
🌜As I waited for the school bus in the morning and the girls around me giggled about boys,
I began nodding evasively,
My thoughts jerking me back to the stories,
❀sending me pondering over morality and perception, opinions and ideals, love and expectation
🔯Some days, I wondered if I had read the stories a little prematurely perhaps but
That didn’t hold me back from rereading the book
🏅‘What do you think of the book,’ you asked me one day
🍒There was a lot that I wanted to say, many questions that I wanted to pose but I chose to do the teenage thing—say a disyllabic word
‘Something,’ I said and waved my hand
You arched your brows and let it go
🔯The truth was ‘Something’ implied a lot of things—
the book changed me—
I became aloof and kind
Eager and reluctant
Brave and cautious
Independent and constrained,
🎀The dichotomy at the heart of it is still as bewildering as it was back then
♔Your green hard bound book comes to stare at me at uncertain times
Thank you for letting me read it,
for inspiring me to seek a different way of being
Summer is a poem
In my mind
It’s always summer
I am wearing a sun dress and
Slurping on lemonade
Sunshine on my face
Sand in my hair
Why must I crave June in January?
Is it a latent wish to
Fast forward to goals,
Conjure euphoria before its time,
Slide prematurely to new realities?
I haven’t an answer
💙Jacaranda blooms unfold in my head one bud after another
Rippling forth in irresistible symphonies
Swiftly changing hues from
Lilac to lavender to violet
A purple promise circling the air
Summer is a poem after my heart
Belated Thank you
💃You said I reminded you of women in a particular set of paintings from a particular period in history—long-haired, feminine, imaginative
You meant it to be a compliment
🍌Of course, you did, but conceit had the better of me
🎃I didn’t agree, convinced as I was then that I was one of a kind
꧋Today someone else likened me to the women in the paintings and
🎃Mellowed as I am by time and seasons, I smiled and lapped up the adulation
🦋A bunch of wild pansies winked at me from the sidewalk
꧑I leaned over them and whispered you a belated ‘Thank you’
(Simrita Dhir lectures at the University of California, San Diego, and is the author of acclaimed novels The Rainbow Acres and The Song of Distant Bulbuls.)
