Porch Lessons

By Upama Bhattacharjee

It would be quite a few years down the line,

when my face would be softened by age,

when there'd be creases

at the corners of my wisened, tired eyes,

lines carved by laughter,

and faded scars on my skin,

that I would speak of you once more.

It'd be when she comes to me, on a summer afternoon,

her shoes scuffing against the driveway,

the schoolbag sliding from her shoulder

with a dull thud against the porch.

Her voice would be quiet

as she'd call out to me,

and I’d see her smallness return—

the child who once ran to me with scraped knees,

now running with a scraped heart.

I'd be in the garden I always wanted,

the one with stubborn roses

and mint leaves I'd adore,

sipping tea as the breeze would grow colder.

The clink of porcelain against my teeth,

the rustle of leaves overhead,

and then—her arms, sudden, desperate,

burying her face against my skin,

her hair smelling of chalk and summer sweat.

Her eyes brimming with all the love

he couldn't take, shouldn't,

she'd ask me:

how do you deal with heartbreak?

How do you let him go?

There would be a silence first—

a silence heavy enough to bend time itself,

to bring me back to the girl I was at seventeen,

a silence that tasted like the years I never stopped carrying you,

like grief, like cherries rotten sweet.

I'd tell her that three years after I let you go,

I had caught your scent in the elevator

of a dingy office I had to visit

for a reason now forgotten.

It was nothing extravagant—

just that soap, or cologne,

(I had never been brave enough to ask)

or maybe the faint trace of rain on your linen shirt—

but it had me fractured open like glass.

I had searched the whole building

for the trace of you, desperate,

and it had taken me two hours and seventeen minutes.

Each corridor was a destiny stolen from fate,

each half-lit stairwell a chance

to find you leaning as you used to,

mussed up hair,

shadow of a smile tilting just for me.

By the end, my palms were damp,

my throat raw with a name I didn’t say aloud,

and I don't know how I made it home that day.

Her brown eyes—her father's—would turn wide,

and she'd frown the way she does poring over a particularly tough homework problem,

as she’d try to reconcile me

with the girl I was telling her about.

She wouldn't believe me at first;

her Ma, boring and predictable to death,

desperately running after a boy who didn't love

enough.

I’d tell her that I tried to forget you in pieces—

like leaving my scarf on a train

because it had brushed against your sleeve once,

like how I let you go one winter,

when the cold had seeped into my bones,

and how I burned all the letters I’d never sent

for the warmth.

The smoke had curled against the wispy night,

but the words refused to vanish—

I saw them stay, because you never could.

I'd speak of how I let you go that first autumn,

the day I sold the dress that I had worn at the restaurant you swore by.

I told the woman buying it that it was too small,

but really, it was too full—

too soaked in the memory of your hands brushing mine, always too fragile to be deliberate,

of your laugh cutting through the music,

of the damp cigarette smoke tainting your lips,

as you leaned in for a particularly funny joke,

loving me, loving me, loving.

I let you go in fragments,

but you kept returning whole.

I let you go, again, in fury once—

slamming the kitchen drawer so hard

that spoons rattled like bones,

swearing aloud that I hated you,

that love was a trick, a fever,

and that I would never fall again, the fates be damned.

Or like that spring evening—

rain chasing sunlight to the earth,

and your quiet voice over the telephone wires.

When I laughed, caught mid-breath in letting you go for the first time,

and you did too, because for us,

laughter, too, was a shared memory.

And I thought then that you were forever.

You were an eternity of all the little things.

Four years would pass after I had caught your phantom in that office,

when I would try burying you in laughter

soft enough that it wasn’t yours,

in stronger hands that never rested

as gently on my shoulders.

By then, my friends had stopped telling me how you were doing,

but you stayed still;

in every corner of my town, you still stayed.

But the nights were too quiet, I'd tell her,

and the memories came

because I had nothing more to gain,

and nothing less to lose.

And she’d listen, wide-eyed.

I’d stroke her hair,

press a kiss into the crown of her head,

and let her learn the harder truth:

that heartbreak is a thousand little surrenders,

and they all ache, because love that doesn't stay

doesn't know how to leave, either.

I’d tell her that grief is not a single moment,

that it travels with the air you breathe,

slipping into pockets,

catching in corners of dusty rooms,

in the smell of rain,

in the messy curls of a stranger,

and always in the little girl you'll carry around

in your heart, forever.

As we'd have dinner that night,

loud, boisterous in a way I never was,

(you'd hardly recognize me now)

she'd look at me and smile,

a silent acknowledgement of the memory

that's now hers as much as it had been ours.

I’d sit with her in the garden until evening envelopes our utopia,

the late sun painting the roses gold.

Her eyes would follow the petals,

watching the way the sunlight touches each curve of the flower,

her soft laughter threading through the air.

And then I’d look past her,

to the garden I had grown,

and for a flicker—

I might see your shadow leaning against the gate, 

that familiar silhouette I'd never forget,

your smile, quicksilver, vanishing.

But this time, I’d let it pass.

Under the flocks of birds returning home,

I would let you go to your own.

I'd let the ghost of you

finally return to its sun-warmed grave,

freeing me, freeing me, freeing,

for the very last time.

By Upama Bhattacharjee