Poem
What the Embassy Keeps
A poem written alongside a novel about visa bureaucracy, in the voice of the files themselves.
Not the photograph, which lies a little, always,
in the good light of a studio.
Not the bank statement, three months of a life
flattened into a number a stranger will judge.
What the embassy keeps is smaller:
a signature's small tremor,
the exact shade of ink a nervous hand chooses,
the date circled twice, as if twice makes it truer.
Somewhere in a drawer, a file closes on a life
that continues anyway, elsewhere, unstamped,
and somewhere else a different file
opens on a life that was, for once, allowed to.
Note: Drafted in the margins of an actual visa-section duty roster, later typed up properly.
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- The Driver Remembers Differently — Aakash Dev Sharma
- Fourth Floor, No Lift — Priyanka Oberoi