The Tailor

I knew a tailor
beneath a peepul tree

(flanked by a dog
that was always asleep).

He walked twenty miles
to reach his tree,

never looked up
from his Singer sewing machine,

never took holidays
even when the roads flooded and the skies blazed,

and when the buses stopped
and then the trains,

when shutters came down
and doors slammed

and the plague raged,
he sewed masks, except

that one day his heart decided
to lock down,

and then a denim sky was rent apart—
buttons bursting, hemlines snagging,
zippers flying, elastic snapping.

He left behind an unspooling sky,
a sleeping dog,

a whirring machine,
that knew all about songs
outliving their singers,

and he left behind a planet
unraveling,

unraveling
all the time
into a more perforated,
ready-to-wear
original,

closer to what another man,
under a peepul tree
seemed to know
two thousand five hundred years ago.

All because he’d been
survivor enough
to darn his share of black holes,

seamster enough
to know
that an awakening
is often an unseaming.

Indian enough
to have seen the world end
many times over.

2025 New Year Issuecreativityliteraturepoemtailor