A Human Like You

By Bishnupriya Mukherjee

The ripples of Yesterday trembled in fear

of a cosmic fortune teller. He, who rode ships to deliver canned men, shaped at birth

frothing dead through lips that were torn open one day. Tins of humans scattered over a ship

hands crawling out of their mouth

motion to write in a language unheard of

One created by a sense of disbelief, disgust. Desperation

of tins of humans scattered over a ship

grow legs through condensed rain

run they run like tomorrow is a myth and it is today, Today they will create history carved over

monuments, carved over timelines of a naked body

swimming under the blues of an endless sea, a deep dive into a trap, Oblivion with Certainty. Oh how beautiful is a dark world, a silent world with no words, no noise

Nothing holding you back, nothing tethered to your heels

The scratches and cries and shouts, the words that I crave clenched in my throat for I cannot

give them away

Oh how beautiful is a world without eyes

they never know what light is, that

Which flies through a thick air of tonight, that which rolls into the river and talks to the sun

what if Today became intangible to me, would I be able to run through the sand dunes, my

tongue parched with no answers anymore

my footprints burning over the last pages of a memoir i never wrote

will tonight end again as you rise over me beckoning the tides to fall down over a life lived so

little. There is no escape. A ship not broken cannot be mended

How long do I stay in my mould?

Am I a human like you?

The hours shone like broken trinkets of my mother's bangles

that which the sky adorned, jewelry scattered all over a bed and I, watched on

As the sea rushed past into a horizon, will it be too late to destroy my creation.

By Bishnupriya Mukherjee