Poet’s Statement:

“THE ALMOST-PERSON” explores a relationship that exists just outside the categories available to it: more intimate than ordinary friendship, but never formally named as love, family, partnership, or home. The poem uses repetition and linked phrasing to create a feeling of circling the same unclaimed space, where affection is real but recognition never fully arrives.

I am interested in the emotional lives that happen in unnamed structures: the cups left in sinks, the rooms one knows but cannot claim, the body that still turns at a name even after the relationship has no official language. This poem is about almost-belonging, and the particular grief of being close enough to know the tea, the gossip, the stories but not close enough to be given a place at the table.

• Listing ID: 39420
• Poetry Author's Name: Sushanth Shyamsundar
• Poem: THE ALMOST-PERSON
  
  I was your almost-person,
  which is to say,
  your door was never shut.
  
  Your door was never shut,
  but no room inside was mine.
  
  No room inside was mine,
  though I knew where you kept the tea.
  
  I knew where you kept the tea,
  the fear, the joke, the old blue shirt.
  
  The joke, the fear, the old blue shirt—
  I carried them like relics.
  
  I carried them like relics,
  though no altar knew my name.
  
  No altar knew my name;
  friendship had no priest for this.
  
  Friendship had no priest for this,
  no divorce, no inheritance.
  
  No inheritance, only
  the cup I used, still in your sink.
  
  The cup I used, still in your sink,
  became a monument after I left.
  
  A monument after I left,
  but not one I could claim.
  
  Not one I could claim,
  though my body still turned at your name.
  
  My body still turned at your name,
  like a dog, like a fool.
  
  I was your almost-person,
  which is to say,
  
  I was almost home.
• Poet's Bio: Sushanth Shyamsundar is an Indian writer and poet based in Chennai. He performs spoken word as Rakshasan and writes across poetry, fiction, horror, comedy, queerness, family, memory, and the strange machinery of everyday life. His work often explores bodies, masks, refusal, tenderness, absurdity, survival, and the private rituals people build to keep going. He is the author of one poetry collection, with two more manuscripts in progress.

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