Manufactured Seasons
Prithiva Sharma
I’ve slept in your heat,
You’ve woken up in my ice,
And our sleep cycles have been reduced to seasons
Where spring never comes;
It’s either the scorching sun or an icestorm
I wonder why they name cyclones after just one person—
It is never just one somebody who erases a community
It is always an entire community which ensnares that which it fears,
Which it rejects
Our identity is like that (or as you say, our iden-titty is like that)—
It is a community full of wilderness that needs to be civilized,
It is a religion full of Satans that needs to be christened
It is a house full of both of us with our weird couch (named Dorian),
And our discolored walls, and us
One day we will wake up together, in different sides of the same bed,
Our feet curled around each other because we
Want to not have cold feet at least at night—
We will walk out of the house at the same time, with our hands intertwined
And no one will look at us, except for the barista at Starbucks
Who will tell us that we’re the cutest couple she has seen this morning,
And so she will give us a discount of 2 bucks
One day, we will, but today?
Today we wake up together, in different sides of the same bed,
Our feel curled around each other because
We want to not have cold feet (even though it is the middle of summer,
And the air conditioner barely works)
And we walk out of the same house as two different people at two different times
So no one would know that at night, we are the same body
Heating up even in the hum of the air conditioner
And when I say I love autumn, you’ll change the bedsheets to a rotting red and
Mustard yellow; when you say you miss the cool, I’ll finally get that
Air conditioner repaired
And in the middle of a Sunday work marathon when we both
Exclaim how we long for spring,
We will go and buy enough flowers to weave a quilt with.
Because if seasons don’t come to us, we’ll bring them.
Because if man can make love, then we can make seasons too.
Prithiva Sharma