deliverance

i’m home and everything is terrible.
this is a lie–yesterday, i sliced mushrooms
for an hour straight, sectioned them off
in three tidy groups: soup, stir fry, kurma.
everything is terrible except my cat,
who is touch-starved and nudges my hand
impatiently as i am reading this book of delights.
believe me, i am hyper aware
of how sadness moves in my body,
the living room of my heart,
blue-walled veins traveling only back
to themselves. but what’s not so terrible
is this list i’ve started keeping in my head
of daily delights. today: a mouthful of coconut milk
on accident, which i thought was yogurt.
the arrest–the surprise!
maybe the first time in weeks, years,
i’ve let myself surrender to something.
another delight: a box of spilled blueberries
all over the kroger checkout floor.
more so, the way at least five strangers
(myself included) gathered round to pluck them up,
collect the dripping beads in our hands
and deliver them to their rightful place.
the thank you, no problem, good night, you too
of the whole thing! a delight:
this act of communion, unprompted,
and then how we part ways afterwards, scatter
off to our own deadlines, dinners, whatever,
until some hand of something
pulls us right back together,
back where we belong.

Teja Sudhakar is a writer originally from Chennai, India, but now residing in Lexington, Kentucky. They are currently drafting a docupoetry collection surrounding the experiences of first-generation immigrant women in the South. They love their friends, their cat, and incredibly specific Spotify playlists.