National Poetry Writing Month, Day 18: Tales From Another Place 

In a little village, where there is no cable,
little children write their own tales
on patches of earth with their fingers.
in a little village, where the electricity comes and goes,
a grandma is trying to knit, a maroon sweater
for her daughter, who moved to the city.
in a little village, where the temple bells
ring sharp at six every evening,
the fishermen come home,
sometimes ecstatic, sometimes troubled.
in a little village, where the sound of rains,
are a signal for the paper boats to leave their dock,
an old man, sitting under a yellow bulb, watches.
he watches as the rain wipes away the stories the children wove.
he watches as the sound of rain
cannot seem to drown out the fact,
that the wearer of the maroon sweater
hasn’t seen it’s maker in over a decade.
he watches as the fisherman, goes to sleep
on an empty stomach, because his child
can never know the sound of a growling stomach.
and as the rain subsides, the old man closes his eyes,
and wraps himself in a shroud of oblivion,
amidst rainbows and petrichor.

Written by Pujan Parikh

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