That Green Hard Bound Book
The book had a hard bound green cover
It sat in your study
The title read ‘Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories’
I was in middle school
On a lazy autumn afternoon
I found the book or the book found me
Every story hit hard,
Characters and plot lines circling in my mind for days
As I waited for the school bus in the morning and the girls around me giggled about boys,
I began nodding evasively,
My thoughts jerking me back to the stories,
sending me pondering over morality and perception, opinions and ideals, love and expectation
Some days, I wondered if I had read the stories a little prematurely perhaps but
That didn’t hold me back from rereading the book
‘What do you think of the book,’ you asked me one day
There was a lot that I wanted to say, many questions that I wanted to pose but I chose to do the teenage thing—say a disyllabic word
‘Something,’ I said and waved my hand
You arched your brows and let it go
The truth was ‘Something’ implied a lot of things—
the book changed me—
I became aloof and kind
Eager and reluctant
Brave and cautious
Independent and constrained,
The dichotomy at the heart of it is still as bewildering as it was back then
Your green hard bound book comes to stare at me at uncertain times
Thank you for letting me read it,
for inspiring me to seek a different way of being
Summer is a poem
In my mind
It’s always summer
I am wearing a sun dress and
Slurping on lemonade
Sunshine on my face
Sand in my hair
Why must I crave June in January?
Is it a latent wish to
Fast forward to goals,
Conjure euphoria before its time,
Slide prematurely to new realities?
I haven’t an answer
Jacaranda blooms unfold in my head one bud after another
Rippling forth in irresistible symphonies
Swiftly changing hues from
Lilac to lavender to violet
A purple promise circling the air
Summer is a poem after my heart
Belated Thank you
You said I reminded you of women in a particular set of paintings from a particular period in history—long-haired, feminine, imaginative
You meant it to be a compliment
Of course, you did, but conceit had the better of me
I didn’t agree, convinced as I was then that I was one of a kind
Today someone else likened me to the women in the paintings and
Mellowed as I am by time and seasons, I smiled and lapped up the adulation
A bunch of wild pansies winked at me from the sidewalk
I leaned over them and whispered you a belated ‘Thank you’
(Simrita Dhir lectures at the University of California, San Diego, and is the author of acclaimed novels The Rainbow Acres and The Song of Distant Bulbuls.)
