By Sreya Chatterjee (Mumbia, India) Featured in Little Love Stories Volume 4 Theme: Crazy In Love
Summer is a canvas of aromas – of fresh harvests, of ripe fruits, of scorching afternoons, of sudden siestas, of pickles, of melting asphalt, of long silent afternoons, of nocturnal flowers.
Summer is a sonnet as well, composed of scavenging crows, of buzzing sparrows and napping cats, always successful to find the most comfortable spot for uninterrupted naps.
Summer is hot, silent and evocative.
Due to its geographical position, the summer in my hometown is also of thunderstorms, every other evening, along with occasional hailstorms.
As a child, I would be at the adjacent park during evenings for martial arts lessons and would be stuck there during spells of thunderstorms. I would stand under an asbestos shade, drenched in yellow halogen, gaping at the backlit torrential drops, mesmerized by the clanking melody of hails tattering the shade and witnessing huge trees dancing freestyle to gushing winds.
The wind would howl and rumble. At times their passion play would be so intense that it would uproot a few trees. Those lovestruck trunks would mark raging affairs, for hours to come, with haltered traffic.
The evening city would be a doused, mellow, moist canvas – where the easel is unevenly swollen, its colors still alive – rebelling and mingling with each other intimately. Summer is a song of drowning wetness – even today.
Today, my summer floats, along with the leaves, which were shed like drops of sweat during intense lovemaking.
Their colors warm – they smell of sweet uprootedness.
My summer floats, her skin gleams, light rays refract from her radiant body – supple and provocative.
My summer floats, in a slumber, with perfect eyebrows crowning her intoxicating eyes –
A single blink of her lashes can change cycles of season.
My summer floats, sublime and tactile – an enigma – with furlongs of mysteries to uncover.
And I am miles away, frozen by the embrace of winter.
Transfixed and cold.
Icicles, immobilizing my existence.
The only sense of warmth is coveted in my heart, which still beats in the recollections of summer.
That rain-soaked, moist summer.
The blizzard blowing across my valley of passion,
Hums linger and call out to my summer,
Hoping that the faint calling
Might gently dislodge her slumber.
And
Her kiss would unfreeze my winter
And wash me over
With an unending deluge of passion…
My soul murmurs, pulsates,
Hoping for the charm of her drowning summer.
