By: Lucy Dhar
You can be a soothsayer in my hometown.
Every single day is like the last and the
coming; the air is just as drowsy as the
people regurgitating it, upchucking a hello
at every eye that meets theirs, nodding.
The sun no longer sets here either. As a
child, I used to wave goodbye to it until
it was fully slumped in its bed, a blanket
over its face — red from the toils of the day,
well past sucking the dew from my young face.
These days, I catch the sun hiding like a scared
schoolboy behind scaffolding; swivel your neck,
and there you see it — cowering and cowardly —
until it’s time to pretend to emerge from the other
end of what I used to think was the endless sky.
I see it now for the straggly shroud it is. My people
tear a little from the edges draped over
burly buildings and bury their slimy faces in it and
thank God for blessing them with cerement to wipe
their tears with. Praise be! Praise be, indeed!
Lucy has been a poet (more or less) since she was 9. What started as simple, slapdash rhymes evolved into more meditated, free verse. Lucy is an ardent enthusiast of poetic movements like Romanticism and Surrealism. She is a crossword and comedy aficionado and a rock music zealot, but most of all, she loves cake.
Behind the Scenes:
"I have had a love-hate relationship with my hometown all my life. As I said in my poem, every single day is truly like the last. Nestled in the northernmost region of India, my city has nothing going for it, not the landscape, nor the climate. With its sweltering summers, and winters that will make your knuckles fall off, my hometown has never been touched by spring, or fall. The stifling air of June led me to jokingly call it "the Devil's belly button". Because this city is too small to be his armpit.
Everything is predictable - life, the people, the friendly hellos, the concerned faces... Barely anything has changed in the past three decades. But it's still home."