By Anukriti Yadav

The neighbour with their offerings

    from a tiny vegetable patch

 joyful harvest, of food and love.

Two small, four-legged visitors 

    unexpected, happily sneaking

through the narrow metal grate out front,

stealthy as time creeping up on you

    quiet as the morning that 

carries stories of grief and stasis.

Ten times that I yelled at someone

    but the one time I did not

and instead chose to belatedly listen

to their quiet hurting heart, I learned

    what I did not know because

I had already decided I did not want to. 

The child who recognized me 

    on the street before I did them

the one who decided long after I had 

forgotten the good in the world, the tender

    no-exchanges, no-returns love

that lives between the mundane

everyday, between days that I like

    to sometimes quietly cry

at my own recurring inability to see it.

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Anukriti Yadav (she/her) is an undergraduate STEM student from Delhi NCR. She enjoys poetry, book-hoarding, all kinds of tea, Grant Snider comics, taking pictures of commonplace objects, and speed-walking while listening to hyphenated genres of rock and acoustic music. She ardently believes in mint chocolate and mental health rights, and can be reached on both Instagram and Twitter. Her work is forthcoming in Ice Lolly Review and Pop The Cultural Pill.