You Are Who I Love: Poems by Prashant Pundir
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘You are who I love, handmaking woolens, handmaking hope, handmaking this life, you who, with your tiny legs, walk to all the medicine stores and dog shelters and government buildings, saying: I REFUSE TO SPEAK A LANGUAGE PIROUETTED IN HATE AND ANGER’
You Are Who I Love
after Aracelis Girmay
You, looking at your mother looking at the sun
You, on the road, picking up crushed flowers
You dancing with children
You, the hushed child sleeping in the morning’s lap
You kissing the Earth You are who I love
listening to patients behind bars, protecting their stories
You, with a tear in your eye fighting the police
You holding their hands in the corridors of the asylum
You moving your hands and stitching things together for them. You placing things on their rough-hewn palms and smiling, which they know it, means I love you. I hope you get out of here and sleep near an ocean blue.
You making coffee in the kitchen, drinking it in the park, on the beach, on the train back home that stops midway to allow strangers to have conversations.
You washing the broccoli, you touching its purplish flower buds
You are who I love, you
reciting Victoria Chang, reading Obit
Teaching your kids how to sing songs, and teaching their parents how to love them while they sing songs
You are who I love, discussing politics, standing in line for food against the voices in your head, buying chocolates, sweetening the faint wind inside the home
You are who I love, handmaking woolens, handmaking hope, handmaking this life, you who, with your tiny legs, walk to all the medicine stores and dog shelters and government buildings, saying: I REFUSE TO SPEAK A LANGUAGE PIROUETTED IN HATE AND ANGER
You are who I love, you struggling to eat
You struggling to scream at flashbacks
You who are so much better than the rest, you with brittle hands and melted bones, covered in a layer of strength, you are who I love, changing schools, running in the rain, your childhood drowning in gone-by possibilities
You are who I love
scampering inside your body like an overgrown puppy or being the overgrown puppy
You, Bob Dylan, enamoured by the tone-deaf voice, singing in the empty hallway the songs of a capitalist-free dream
You drop your friends home
You smile at the mothers on the way to your friend’s home
Sharing your washing machine with the neighbors, sharing your water
You who survive in the seven seas
You who want to swim to the ends of the earth
You who built a liquid life
You who want to speak to jellyfish and sea turtles and sharks and blue whales
You whose love is deepening red and devoured by the angry animals of your head
Yes, I mean to give. You are who I love.
You standing at the edge of all our lives
You watch over us
You whose compassion blows up the borders
You cleaning the land with soldiers
You the soil, the ground, the air, the dog in the corner You my nation
You are who I love,
gathering the pieces, making a body,
setting the wolf free, crying in the snow, finding homes in alien cities, learning to be quiet wherever you are, learning to hum wherever you are, you spill tea, you come in my dreams, you bring your birds along and ask them to flirt with me, ruffle some feathers
You are who I love, in the middle of a stampede, when you are lost, I dream of washing your feet, I wet all the floors of the house in anger despite the house shouting wait wait wait
You are who I love, you who fold the clothes so tenderly so as not to hurt the person who was once in it, you who know anyone who believes in God believes in poetry, you who fight for mere remnants of faith
You are who I love, you who bring dead bodies and living bodies to the Hall of Justice
You are who I love, reciting Mary Oliver to a bug, you with a bug in your eye, unable to see clearly but stumbling into a field of persimmons
You are who I love, with your mouth open in your sleep
You, rubbing the bellies of cows, you running after the cats and the cats running after you, you reading a book, you thinking about a scientist’s loneliness before the discovery
You opening your soft ears to the world
You are who I love, mothering the atoms between you and me
You in the cold and you in the hot, wrapped inside your blanket, with only your eyes peeping out
You carrying buckets of fallen leaves from the forest, and the promise to the trees of coming back
You learning languages, you are who I love,
dreaming of beholding your child’s gaze
You are who I love, trying to cross an empty road or looking down from the bridge
You are who I love, when I am in meetings, when I am on my way back home to cook you food
cleaning the table for your crochet, opening the curtains early morning, you like the light
You are who I love, in my mother tongue, in my anxious voice, in my terrible handwriting, filling pages and pages all alone
You are who I love, behind your back and in front of your eyes, chuckling at the thought of your reaction every time an influencer posts about ways in which you can heal from a chronic illness, which is all the time
You are who I love, the way you move your lips out of habit, never fighting, easily appeased, always looking for an acquired family, which, yes, I really want to be, want to be
Your functioning body is the greatest blessing, whatever you do through your days stand close to whatever I do through my days, trying to build a replica of your grace
How loneliness peels itself to the softest layer of your presence
You are who I love, walking into my life, gift-wrapping my days with a smile on your face
You at the traffic signals, you at the small cafes, you at the museums and scenic goodbye spots, you at every grocery store, you always shouting Hey! and all of us looking back as if you’re the prettiest little errand of our lives, us always looking to fill our homes with you, and by you I also mean: love, whatever is lost in love, whatever is found in love, whatever happens to love when those who love die, and whatever happens to death when those who love choose to live. You are who I love.
*
I Owe You a Poem
after Matt Mason
I am no architecture, love,
can’t decide how the light enters your life,
or how much space your body would need
to break down into smaller parts.
No filmmaker to put you on the big screen.
No musician to sing your name in front of a million crowd.
I have never been to space either, or any other planet,
or anywhere else in the world to bring back something so
precious that it makes you feel more special than you already are.
There are no such things in the world—
my sweetheart, my second skin, my inventory of daydreams.
Though I want to construct a poem from the infancy of my heart,
one that could change its shape & form based on your days,
one with two legs to take you out on long walks,
one that becomes a heating pad when your belly hurts,
one that would blow the candles on your behalf when you’re too tired,
one that would heat you food and feed you with its own hands,
wash your hands and mouth and put you to sleep—
like a mother,
like someone who would love you every day,
long after you’re gone.
***
Prashant Pundir is a queer, outsider artist from a small town in India who likes knocking at the door. They don’t know if they’ll ever get in, but they don’t mind only being outside. To them, poetry is a response to the everydayness of life. They like to write about loss, grief, relationship complexity, mundane things, miscommunications, empty spaces, and so much more. They firmly believe you can be a great poet beyond linguistic traditions and techniques. You can find Prashant on Instagram: @kafkasbluebug and X: @kafkasbluebug.
