Poetry | 'What My Neighbour Left Behind' By Aditya Tiwari And 'The Kettle' By Pallavi Singh

Aditya Tiwari wonders what the absence of someone you know feels like while Pallavi Singh finds her subject within her kitchen.

Aditya Tiwari

Updated on: 24 October 2021 4:41 pm

Pallavi Singh

Updated on: 24 October 2021 4:41 pm

Poetry | 'What My Neighbour Left Behind' By Aditya Tiwari And 'The Kettle' By Pallavi Singh

In this deeply thoughtful poem, Aditya Tiwari wonders what the absence of someone you know feels like. Sometimes it could feel like a song in the rain. At other times each memory they leave behind, could be squeezed, into nothing, is nothing, but dust.

What My Neighbour Left Behind??

The Day That She Died???

The day that she died she left behind??

Four dead flowers in a vase, two fresh newspapers,??

An old television, a refrigerator,??

Pearl necklaces, a box of gold bangles,??

Perfume bottles, a pack of Virginia slims,??

Yesterday’s shadow, her smile,??

The absence, like a song in the rain.? ?

What she left behind was only enough??

to fill - the empty rooms in her??

abandoned house.??

If we were to go back??

to the way we used to be??

If everything we’ve lost??

all our lives were to return??

Our faces would be bright-lit??

across a long river.??

Each day, squeezed??

into a grain, a petal.??

Each memory, into nothing,??

is nothing, but dust.??

But remember, that the mouth??

of the open river without??

the rain - is a blue prayer,??

Breathless, on a stranger’s face.??

While many poets travel around the world to find the right words, to find their inspiration, Pallavi Singh finds her subject within her kitchen. She sees the world within her kettle ‘where ambition and hunger mix/ like coffee beans in water’.??

The Kettle?

In my home?

kitchen is a neglected space?

there are toasters and ovens and kettle?

microwave and steamer and the barbeque?

the slow cooker, the chopping board, the knives?

but it’s the kettle I use every day.?

Fierce, contained,?

primed to a boiling point?

a scalding cauldron where ambition and hunger mix?

like coffee beans in water.?

It makes my coffee the easy way,?

not the way my mother taught me?

because that takes minutes when?

my patience allows seconds.?

For every drop I drink,?

my impatience defines the course —?

strong for the one who gifted me the kettle?

black for those who wanted me pure?

bitter for those who said I must know cooking.?

A million coffees brewed every morning?

in angry, un-abiding, storming kettles?

when the world rushes out to work,?

and I return to the boiler within me.?

(Aditya Tiwari is a poet and gay rights activist. His first book of poems April is Lush (2019) received international acclaim. Learn more about him on Instagram and Twitter at @aprilislush.)

(Pallavi Singh is a bilingual writer, journalist and poet based in the UK, and has been awarded a grant from the Irish Arts Council for her writing. She is currently training as a business historian at a UK university and is part of the core leadership of an ecommerce startup based in London. She tweets @econhistorienne.)?