The afternoon crescendo danced
on motherboard, sisterboard, un-networked.
Dumps on the hard drive.
Photos of parties, lovers, somersaulters.
Now gone, gone now.
If I had to recover my mind
from the days of sunsets past
Quick glimpses, dead plants,
burnt eggs, love letters, I would dream up a foreign computer.
A foreign computer laced with my mind.
In the dream, my past computer
played the 90s album Appalachia waltz.
The bass and cello play in my head
Nowhere does this tune play today
except in the dream of my foreign computer.
Appalachia Waltz.
The album by Meyers, O’Connor, Yo-yo Ma.
But they play different notes today.
In the same name.

They had made a promise to bring back that snowed afternoon.
I look it up a thousand times
Everywhere, over and over. Inside algorithms.
Gone now, now gone.

…

Atreyee Majumder is an anthropologist and writer based in Bangalore.