[Leaf One, curled like a question mark]
We used to hum in the wind, remember?
Back when green meant anything.
[Leaf Two, torn at the edges]
I remember the sun more than the wind.
Always touching us like a god with no promises.
[Leaf One]
Now we lie here,
wrinkled into lowercase regrets.
[Leaf Two]
I envy the ones who fell first
less time to witness the slow betrayal.
[Leaf One]
Do you think the branch mourned us?
[Leaf Two]
No.
Branches are like old lovers
they move on, pretending you were gravity’s idea.
[Leaf One]
We were so full of chlorophyll dreams.
Now we crumble when children run past.
[Leaf Two]
I heard a bootstep today.
Almost thought it was time again.
But it was just another rush toward nowhere.
[Leaf One]
Do you think decay is a kind of rebirth?
[Leaf Two]
Only if worms are poets.
Only if rot writes elegies.
[Leaf One]
Still,
we had sky once.
[Leaf Two]
Yes
and weren’t we beautiful
in the wind’s unfinished sentence?
Anju Devadas R D currently works as a guest faculty in the Department of English at Pondicherry University. A budding poet, her work has appeared in The Madras Courier, The Chakkar, The Wise Owl, Soul Poetry, Prose and Arts Magazine, LittCrit, Feminism In India, and other journals and magazines. Her creative and critical writing moves between the personal and the cultural, drawing on confessional and feminist traditions.