Inheritance

You gave me pictures of things in grayscale tints:
afternoon tea, arrowroot biscuits and jaggery,
slabs of golden, raw cane sugar sold by street wallahs in cellophane jackets,
or eaten straight from the vendors’ scales.

Pictures I poured into myself and accepted,
as time spilled over and over,
and I swallowed
the Lebong Cart Road in Darjeeling,
the monsoon season,
cardamom pods flaking in the heat,
the sweet grass smell of the tea plantations.

I carried these muted forests into the future.
I smuggled you further than you thought you had come,
to walk the sodden, flooded footpaths in Devon,
where the red, red dust burns bitter on my tongue,
and leaves its granular ghost within our window frames.

If I can hold them long enough,
catch them in the wheatfields,
as they dance and shout at the dog,
I can see the staining of your once-drunk joy,
the rain across the hills in Shalimar,
its scent still fresh
between my fingers and the sky.