31/1

Soon you will be gone
really, completely gone.
Soon there will be others feigning to fill up your fields,
like the music of a sinking stone or a
toy store xylophone
filling up the blindfold spaces of an afternoon apartment.
Soon.
But for what it's worth, you
are here
now.
Just the way I remember you.
And all your pretty wrappers.
All of them.
That sky-wool sweater Dida knit for my second birthday.
That dwarfy Christmas tree with shiny purple balls and the
wax santa with a broken nose.
The Hit-Me and the Rocking-horse that I insisted were, like me,
females.
The Tri-cycle I used to ride around the roof,
wiggling through Thammi's Patabahar and Noyontara 'woods'.
The smell of orange peels upon my Chamber of Secrets, pg 103.
The scent of a brown face in a half-boiled sun and a
hard-bound Feluda,
and oh, the scent of birthdays :)
Then there was that Rudolph costume from my junior school recital,
those horribly golden pompoms from the sports drill,
that Tagore House Prefect-badge too.
Also, the bunny pencil-bag my bucktoothed best friendS picked up
for me on our way back from school -
now ink splattered, now out of school,
now mine as ever :)
Then the one
face I missed from across the hurtling
b-boying banner-strung
hall. Then
the scarf.
The shoe-lace.
The googly-eyed seal.
I said all your pretty wrappers,
I said 
all of them.
Soon you'll be gone.
Really, Letter-lessly
gone. And soon
there will be the others.
But oi
December,
you were my
first. I think I'll
always love you
some little.