DON'T CALL ME. I'LL CALL YOU
By Amrita Nair
I let your calls ring out.
What would we even talk about?
I only ever want to tell you
about the time
that someone
said something that
reminded me of you;
and it hurt so much,
that I left the room.
But that memory is a dead bird.
And I’m a cat who is old enough to know
that offerings like that aren’t welcome,
They make things awkward,
leave everyone confused.
What good would it do
to drag it to a door
that you would only open
to sweep us off the floor?
Amrita V. Nair (she/her) is a poet from Kerala, who currently lives in the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples (Vancouver, Canada). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Okay Donkey, Yuzu Press, Litmora, and elsewhere, and was included in the Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems. Website: www.amritanair.com. Twitter: @amritanairv