Poem: The day is all that I have

Chayanika Saikia

Chayanika is a bilingual poet from India & is the recipient of ‘Glass House Poetry Award 2024’. Her work has appeared in ‘Scent of Rain’ (Red River), ‘Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022’ (Hawakal), ‘Muse India’, 'Setu', ‘Petrichor’(Pebbles), ‘PikerPress’, ‘Cafe Dissensus’, ‘Usawa Literary Review’ & others. “Mimosa Land” & “Kor Pora Kho Loi” are her poetry collections. 

-----

it’s one hell of a thing to ride with, to begin

missing you even before we start, car startles

with a qualm just as grief twitches its belly pit,

there goes the                                                        tick-tick,

 

the day is all that I have,

radio plays O Fair New Mexico, we hit US-70E, morning

flush strikes, pipes of the Organ Mountains dazzle

in rust, the day is all that I have San Augustine pass,

 

morning reduces to night,                                      I recede

from your sight,                    White Sands to Cloudcroft,

desert to snow,                      desert to snow,

deliquescing into the dunes of the gypsum sand,

 

I        am               w       i         n        d                  -shaped,

 

leeward to your feet that make them flat, what when

it ends, Alamogordo, give me Sacramento to hold on to,

Cloudcroft, tender things to hold on to, the day is all that

I have,         I fade with snowdrifts

 

in the moonless night                shrinking into a     seed,

another 40 minutes or less - is all that I have,

I gallop towards madness, but                                stay

for the dripping spring sprung in White Sands,       stay

 

for the soaptrees awaiting rain in Tularosa;

desert to snow, lonelier than mountains,

colder than absence, I am          shrinking into a     seed.

You are all that I have.

 

You   are               all                that                       -I have.

---

Setu, July 2024