The village summer had its own specific cool—
the well water that was never warm,
the afternoon that slept through the worst of it,
the mango tree that held us through the storm.

The elders on the charpai in the evening—
the hookah and the story and the stars—
the village had no entertainment deficit:
the evening gave itself without the bars.

I return to it the way I return to sleep—
the body knowing what the mind forgets—
the cool well, the charpai, the story circle:
the summer the city cannot replicate yet.
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