by Shome Dasgupta

Green and yellow—a sparked field
where we taped four leaf clovers
together, forgetting the meaning
of living at home and pondering
magical ways to steal ice cream
from the pink and purple and blue
truck coming around the turn—
we run with our hands together.
We run with pebbles in our palms,
asking for the cheapest cardboard
cups of vanilla with chocolate syrup.

We were royalty under the sun
—under the sun we were hidden
from shadowed jaws and crumbled
teeth. A melody to bounce in our
heads when the bed covers tore,
full of holes leading to our fears.
How one Sunday, with our faces
covered in swirls of amnesia,
I looked at you when no one else
was looking, knowing that once
upon a time in the future—past
rooster’s crow and beyond wired
knotted fences, cut from our own
skin, we’ll marry the moon’s tongue.

Side by side, that tune hummed
from our breaths—through windows,
a fox darted to the pond to amuse
minnows, where we once fished
for stars after a reckoning, years
ago. Fingers clasped and puzzled:
in the bronzed straw plain, hearing
our childhood tremors sinking,
diminished—to taste sprinkles,
a past echo resting in our mouths.

Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), and most recently, the novels The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books) and Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West), a prose collection, Histories Of Memories (Belle Point Press), a short story collection, Atchafalaya Darling, and a poetry collection, Iron Oxide (Assure Press). His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New Orleans Review, Jabberwock Review, American Book Review, Arkansas Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at shomedome.com and @laughingyeti.