good afternoon

Anitha scrolled through her social network, seeing her father's post: "good afternoon." Simple. Perfect. He'd learned English late, but poetry lived in his bones—generations of Tamil words singing beneath each surface. The cash-in influencers mocked such posts, chasing algorithms and sponsorships. Yet strangers commented "superb," "miracle," each a small connection across oceans. Her father in Chennai, his childhood village still aching in his chest, reached diaspora kin in Toronto and London. Behind screens, he composed verses in Tamil, untranslatable grace. When she called him weeping about loneliness, he whispered one ancient poem. She understood everything. We remain ourselves through them.