We're All Just Potholes

Paridhi Poddar, India

The streets are riddled with potholes, the kind that make
you wonder if you could ever count them as you walked home.
I don’t mind potholes, for it is always easier
to drown in them like a tadpole with a penchant for endings.

I look at these potholes every day from the window seat of buses
and in this October heat, right after the cyclone, the water is dirty.
A little rainbow forms in them, glistening like a mirage
in this desert of a city, looking for something to quench

our thirst for tomorrow. This illusion is so light and fading
like the light in the ticket conductor’s eyes that I look away.
If I stare any longer, I will fall in like it is quicksand
and miss my stop. That would not bode well for I just started

this journey and the roads seem friendlier each morning but
grow estranged every night. The street lights flicker and
the mirage goes to sleep, its nose whistles till a pigeon
flies past, dipping its neck, colouring itself pink, green and silver.

The next day the news reads that too many potholes
might lead to accidents , and something should be done.
When I leave for college, the omnipresent potholes look
unsettling as if they know something I don’t.

On the bus, I hear a kid saying that what if
the potholes are just stars, not in the Milky Way
but in this city. When people die, they become potholes.
Maybe, that’s why they form little rainbows to let the others know.

Paridhi Poddar (she/her) is an eighteen-year-old poet and student from Kolkata, India. Her work has previously appeared in Fahmidan Journal, Riverbed Review, celestite poetry and elsewhere. She currently serves as a poetry editor for The Dawn Review.