By Komal Aandhiwal
01.03 AM
Yesterday marked nine thousand and sixty-eight times,
‘Of what?’, there's a screeching cacophony,
a sorry excuse of an inner voice,
'Of what? Of what?'
Screaming on a loop, until another fumes in
'nine thousand sixty eight times
of your existence proving
it is an endless disappointment,
and your mother letting out
her routine defeated sigh in agreement'
~
01.59 AM
How many poems does it take to empty a heart of grief?
my ocean of muses and metaphors run dry,
my blood is no longer desirous of staying red,
because red is synonymous with love,
and love is something that left me hanging by the noose,
when I deprived her of words
and forced her to speak in silence.
So I call up the poet inside me,
nine hundred ninety-one times
at two in the morning, but all I hear is
'The person you're trying to call, no longer exists'
a pre-recorded eulogy in a toneless voice
is exactly how a paper heart breaks.
~
03.28 AM
'She loves me'
'She loves me not'
'She leaves me'
'She leaves me not'
pluck. pluck. pluck. pluck.
crush. crush. crush. crush.
I try to let fate and a dead sunflower
decide when grief would leave me.
My insanity mocks, 'at this rate,
you can make sunflowers cry
until they lose all the yellow they carry'
~
04.41 AM
My mother says, 'your eyes have a dandelion heart,
they sway to the tune of the merciless wind, beware'
'The wind was never the desire', I laugh,
'Don't you still see it, mother? all it yearns for is detachment'
She warns, 'dandelion hearts can never become home to lovers'
and I say, 'My eyes were never meant to be a home, they're candle flames,
lovers aren't afraid of them but they should be,
for candle flames can burn down a house if they want to,
and mine are thirsty enough, like a wildfire, to devour on fragile desires they carry'
~
05.09 AM
A mid-dream blackout and I'm awake.
My skin swears it was winter yesterday.
My hands chance upon the spring's yellow petal with a blood-red wound,
only to burn in the summer sun, the next instant.
The seasons here transition faster than bad news travelling around the city,
but in my mind, it's always the fall, a canopy of a beautiful fiery pyre,
and it's killing me, slowly.
A slow death, that likes to make a fool of herself
by naming herself hope.
For how does hope grow in a place, inside a heart full of paper cuts,
For, if there's something that can sprout from a bleeding earth,
it can only be death; it can only be the end itself.
By Komal Aandhiwal
Comments