We don’t write letters anymore
and we don’t get them either. We have gone too far
from each other or else, come closer enough to write
a personal letter. We text petite texts and receive long,
boring work mails.
We are happy with that because we can talk and make
video calls.
But we are becoming secretly quiet. Like a conch
shell with a restless silence. Words entwine our
eyes and fingers when we earnestly try
to stitch
them together and they fall off from the pages, our eyes
and hands. Blank sheets
flutter everywhere like white propositions in some
manoeuvring conference as we embark
on a journey to a silent place where all mute things
reside.
Like loss. Like private letters.
Only a graduate opaqueness
waits at last,
only a ripe attitude remains; the gist
of things that we essentially tried together as a mode
of private communication before we
accept with perfect grace and equal clumsiness
that we failed
to yield enough common words. But it seems
quite natural to feel
the footsteps of a bevy of retired postmen, like any other
retired poet or meteorologist,
roaming the towns and the streets,
carrying lost letters with good news. They search you
in your old home
where you don’t live anymore.
(Sekhar Banerjee is a Pushcart Award and Best of the Net Award nominated poet. He has been published in Stand Magazine, Indian Literature, Arkana, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Madras Courier, Outlook, The Wire, The Bangalore Review, Kitaab and elsewhere. He is a former Press Secretary to the Governor, West Bengal. He lives in Kolkata, India.)
