My Poems

By Sudhalekshmi M

Amma tastes my poems

And complains

There’s so much melancholy

In them these days

Just like how I remarked

There was too much salt

In her curry

The other day.

But,like always, she’s right,

For my poems are

Graveyard of dreams,

Heartbreaks that are romanticized

Or at times,

Suicide notes with names.

My poems are just pain

Dressed up in metaphors and similes.

She sneaks into my journal every lonely night

Like how I check on her every scary night.

So this time, when I return home, she knows I’d have written another poem. She inquires about the boy with sunset eyes and strangely, adds this time that the poem is so beautiful.

“But, this poem doesn’t belong to the poet, mah” I tell.

“Nothing beautiful ever does, honey.”

She tells, with her eyes fixed on the rusted, old gate.

By Sudhalekshmi M