Somewhere warmer

 

​Glinting metal, across your shoulder.

A click that tickles the ear.

People still forget their seat belts.

 

A hill directly above us, the Oita coastline on the horizon,

and yet the first time we kissed was in the parking lot.

 

Your hands are never warm. Inside

your pockets, between my hands, buried

 

beneath blankets, they stay cold.

In the winter, you said we were too cold

 

to warm each other. I made

soup every evening until you were convinced

 

to stay a day extra. Days passed.

Then weeks. Then months. You left

 

things over at my place

dirty laundry, cinnamon sticks, empty

 

​bags for your belongings that never emptied.

We keep all our promises

 

​in transition; board games we don't finish,

poems we read halfway, places

 

we don't visit until we can't. Your bags

still have dresses I put in months ago

 

but it is winter and we are too cold

to warm each other. You

 

have maybe found somewhere warmer.

I still fiddle with the seat belt.

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By Avash Byanjankar

 

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Avash Byanjankar is a Newari poet from Patan, Nepal currently based in Beppu, Japan. He is in the process of completing a PhD in Asia Pacific Studies, and when he has time away from academia, he likes tending to his two houseplants, arguing with locals about what makes a mountain different from a hill, and ranking croissants from every bakery in town.

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He also has poetry published by the Tiger Moth Review.