Talking Through The Day

It was in the afternoon today,
in my retrograde nostalgia,
that I was listening to
to the chatter, the banter
that once lounged with us
in classrooms that felt full,
that felt alive,
with the
breathing-coughing,
looking-feeling-thinking,
loving-upsetting,
of physical presence,
now sounding
abbreviated,
broken,
new,
since fifty people
were reduced to a group chat,
and their friendships
to WhatsApp.

Sometimes,
I can hear the music,
in these words we type,
like in a language
I don't speak,
it's in their virtual dullness,
in that feeling of detachment,
in the lack of commitment,
absence of tangible warmth,
the tunes of texting
are melancholy,
they take to the air
like birds at twilight,
loud, but escaping to horizons,
when vibrant verditers
and cacophonous crows
all become the vagrant Vs
we drew as children,
unidentifiable.
The warmth of these evenings
only exists
in the bright but brief,
pinks and oranges,
but they are too soft for whole days,
too short, too little,
easy to miss
and even easier to dismiss,
yet they leave me wanting
for just another glimpse
of the silver lining...
It doesn’t return.

I watch the seconds ticking,
afternoon turn to evening
and evening turn to night
as I finally find,
our primal communication,
the same space speech song,
it sings like the night sky
two melodies harmonising
one low, one high,
richer, fuller.
The words
are the stars,
bright, bold, visible, beautiful
shiny, sharp, burning
and the non-words
are the firmament,
vast, abundant, comfortable
filled with sighs and smiles
beating hearts and rolling eyes,
the grunts and groans,
the energy,
it’s both the contrast,
and the grounding.
We sew our words into it
into the gaps,
into the space,
into the time,
creating a bejewelled fabric
holding them together,
dressing our relationships.

Still, new days dawn,
and the world moves on,
we will renew, replace, create,
and perhaps find other ways
to sate, our need for
these common spaces,
but a lifetime taste
of what that sky can mean
has been
both perpetuating,
and subtly devastating,
in these lock-down mornings.

© Utsa Seth, 2020