History Man
He has freckles where should have been
What my uncle drew before grandmother died.
“Make it clearer. Like my son’s shaven cheeks.”
My father clanked his QWERTY, parrot-learned-poker-banker.
They were busy, dustpanful with hereditary buttons and stitches
While my brother coughed out what constituted him: vow-else.
I never had my fair share of wordplay
Mother pounced upon the alliteration with cat-claws.
I was only given rhyme schemes: abba, cdeedc
Spared between meals of Simple Interest and Dickens.
“Our life had no margins,” the octogenarian used to dictate
From doodles of a once-lived-twice-wished sort of epiphany.
T-he-y will talk only to make nostalgia happen:
As if Nostalgia were a baby, Caesarean enough for anticipation.
“You don’t read history. You live it.”
Father’s father winked posthumously.
The history man turned into a fresh metaphor again with mapping.
©2023 Kaustabh Kashyap.
