Things the monsoon keeps

Some poems want to be read slowly. This is one of them.

The monsoon keeps what we forget to carry — a slipper by the pond, the smell of wet clay on a mother's hands, the paper boat my brother swore would make it all the way to the Kamla. It keeps the afternoons the power went out and the whole house became one room, one lantern, one long story that nobody ever finished. I come back every July the way you return to a letter you never posted — not to send it, just to know the words are still there.