1. Outside the Hands Tonight
There was wet light on the park bench, like runny sunshine
It was evening and I didn’t know what to do with my hands that night
They had spent the few days before at your place, wishing to stay there awhile.
Beside you, waiting patiently as you picked at dead skin
explaining how you can’t squeeze lemons without the sting.
Grazing, not quite touching, as I reach for your windows.
Furiously grabbing in upsurges when you read something reminiscent of the winter of past years, spent remiss.
Ash-flicked smoke passed between fingers—middle and index
Thumbs summoning whirlpools on skin without meaning, storms at the heart of it.
My hands were yours and mine till they were ours and then again each-others.
I walked off after a while because it started to rain again
and the leaves reminded me that seasons change.
2. Smoke Trails
Every day you wake
a little further from our bed
And I watch you each night
lying on your side
as my ringlets of smoky thoughts
cover the arch of your back
and vanish traceless
unlike the freckles on your back
I stay up all night
counting
and from between my fingers burns up a world
unsaid.
Every day you wake
a little further from our bed
My trapezing tongue holds your musty taste
but the inept artiste that it is
lets the words slip from my mind
and silence sheepishly grins
another day
another day
Every day you wake
a little further away from our bed
This time I sat reading the lines on your face
while you dismissed my quietude
and I let the watery lights
reflected on the window cast
pockmarked shadows on my arms
and waited and waited
for you to walk away
and take my speech with you.
3. Worn-out Weariness
The words on my page are smoking
and they trail me towards a different kind of morning
where the bones in my arm shriek at the thought of writing another line from the miserly stories stored in my memories.
I cry
I laugh
Finally, my world has given up
I see no point in the stopping of lines
The ends are not beginnings and I sigh
Clearly, dew off the cold coffee mug is much more secure in its job than I am.
With my hat full of blessing and a heart that is bellowing like a dragon being whipped eight times a day,
I start to see that I make no sense!
Climbing out my window to sit on the ledge
by the door of the neighbouring house
I see two red boots.
Tiny and soft.
They looked cold, without home.
Could you think how lonely shoes look, without feet in them?
My words are smoking on the paper and I’ve not had any time to think
I put down my sleeves and the dimensions-shift and here I have died in a graveyard of bees.
It is the tornado of slipping time, we sit here in its midst.
4. Summer’s Discord
The peeling walls ascend to the sky
as far as the eye can see
it becomes the freedom blue
stand up for flight
Whose misery wrote/sang/painted,
sadness into eternity?
Too late in the day
the sun has made our bed warm again
our bodies move pasts
to straddle the cold of night-time windows
its benevolence hinged on leaving
You too were special
Once, under a sky that wasn’t a wall
a tree that wasn’t butchered in a glass
warmer than whispers
sweating like a cold flask
When i float past you
Step back to let the rudeness take recourse
We gathered sand to lock in the hours
Tore down words for each lost breath
the kitchen had a light, at 7 in the evening
You would not be home yet
I am not here, flesh blood and bone
do not cook meat in glass houses
They can look in
measure your cruelty using history
call you names for trying to eat
trying to live
I miss you,
you are gone
Whose misery called/called/called,
skipped the dial-tone so steady,
to the miracles of automation telling,
“Let go, you are ready”
Madhumati Chowdhury is a closet writer with a severe disregard for punctuations and traditional forms (ala e.e. cummings). She also enjoys conducting photoshoots of her cat in the sun and listening to hip-hop and jazz.
Image via Pixabay
