Errata

In the fading light of memory,
I want to reinscribe all that’s been erased.
The shade of sunlight on the bathroom floor.
The idle towels lazily sulking.
I want to catalog all the coffee rings
swimming around each other
on my father’s oak table
while dust rehearses its descent
through an open window no one remembered
to close. The world survives this way.
As I enter this new chapter of life,
I cannot let the old ones become illegible.
Words missed in the transcript of my thoughts
perhaps just mispronounced.
The stories we believe until they become true.
And then of course there was you.
Somewhere a cadence, like a refrain
from a song I can only hum.
The way those afternoons were always
sepia toned, photographed in soft focus.
The naps with books folded over our arms.
We told ourselves forever
was a synonym for our together.
We mistook repetition for permanence.
The lists scribbled in two separate handwritings.
The calendar still insisting it’s yesterday.

Brian Chander Wiora is a queer, Indian-American poet who lives in Los Angeles, California. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The American Literary Review, The Boiler and other places. His debut manuscript was a finalist for 2026 Jack McCarthy Book Prize through Write Bloody Press, The Jake Adam York Prize through Milkweed Editions, The St. Lawrence Book Award through Black Lawrence Press, and the Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize through Conduit Books. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, where he won the Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship.