Keyboards

By Shragvi Yadav

At home—

Listening to my mother’s voices in the head,

It’s a quiet night,

No winds, no traffic, no shame—

In this moment, 

I am.

It rained earlier today; the sky’s bizarre.

2014, I do—faintly—but I do remember the gentle touch of a Tuesday afternoon,

There were books, the roads were quiet and I didn’t quite know all this grief.

English mimics, healthy hair, stained cotton socks,

I only go there once in a long while and I’ve come back without getting to know—

It is disturbing that we are stuck in a constant present which feels so plastic.

Sugar, music and unfinished sleeps—Oh, we needed none back then.

And, once again after all these years—

All I can say is this.

All I can do is lie in bed in a 2025 that feels like forgotten bliss.

All I can feel is this pain stretching through my long, mature fingers across the screen— with every key I press.

Bliss—so beautiful, often becomes distress.

That home, its tiles, the morning haze, the green lawn—

I’ll wake up to a morning again and it’ll be gone.

By Shragvi Yadav