Once, they were ours.
21 boxes
sealed and numbered
now a distant cargo of memory
adrift for months
across waters toward the Bay of Bengal.
In a shipping container they lay
in the solitude of Kolkata port
paused between borders and mountains
while a dark play unfolded across the world.
A mystery unsolved
in the reign of Corona.
We were not reunited
with the pieces of our former home.
In them drifted familiarity:
the scent of blankets and fresh towels
the touch of pages and worn spines
the slouch of decade-old jeans
the whistle of a loyal pressure cooker
adiyogi watching over
a table that held our days
a floor lamp that kept vigil through the night.
All of it vanished
into a nameless shadow.
What remains
is not the thing
but the imprint it leaves
the weight of what one remembers
shaped by touch
seasoned by time.
A treasury of authors, artists, sages
gathered across continents across decades
words meant to be handed down
now absent from our new walls.
Kafka’s inward corridors
Dostoevsky’s tremor
Gibran’s hush
Dahl’s unruly mischief
Seuss’s riotous rhyme
Asterix defiance
Wisdom texts worn thin at the spine
All slipped quietly
through the cracks of our palms.
No longer companions.
And yet, those 21 boxes
still carrying love in their folded layers,
may have found other hands.
The books finding new eyes.
The cookware feeding another kitchen.
Blankets settling over unfamiliar shoulders.
Shoes warming smaller toes.
Let them belong elsewhere
if not to us.
To find another
if not ours.
