Fuzzle Clears Customs

Pune’s humidity still clings
to his matted fur when O’Hare’s
hazardous hum replaces
Hadapsar’s lullabies.

My sister stitched his name
in disheveled Devanagari
now it dangles, upside-down
like a stalled pendulum.

Security unpacks him:
X-ray eyes probing for seeds,
stories, contraband childhood.
Just stuffing, I lie.

Terminal lights bleach
his Mumbai airport tag
to a ghost of itself.
(We fade at different speeds.)

Somewhere over Greenland,
his button eye catches
a crescent moon,
same one that watched
our balcony in Amanora.

Chicago winter greets us
with concrete breath.
I zip him inside my coat,
pretend the shivering
is just turbulence.

Ayush Dadgale is an Indian-American poet based in Brookfield, Wisconsin. His work is shaped by a childhood spent moving often, finding comfort in the ordinary objects that stayed constant through all the change. His poems explore memory, place, and belonging, and have previously been featured in the Cathexis Northwest Press & the Elm Grove News-Independent.