Single Brown Female on Fridays.

Shiny little lights on the ceiling

reflect intermittently what's within

There's no space for our bodies to gasp

and that crude cry's lost in the making.

Shiny skin on my arms

potent with sweat and charms of tonight

we twirl and twist as if in discomfort.

Till the shoe comes off at midnight.

Legs stretch out before me

(encased in chocolate smeared denim)

crossed at the ankle

heels airborne

toes writhing in restlessness

(freshly painted in silver)

make patterns in air

which smell of me

(cigarettes, tea and ... je ne sais quoi)

calves round up on the shin

taut with false tension.

This black book on my lap,

I begin my day.

streetlight

False red light instead

floods the floor where

once you and I had lain

in abstract darkness.

Everynight's street light

streams in

revealing a face

that's not yours;

and even in the throes of

that otherwordly hit,

I am aware of how it

mocks my fragile fidelity

and I shut my eyes tight.

She lay. We’d lain that way for... for not more than 5 minutes. We were probably... no definitely, not thinking of each other. My mind was on a moment that had unfolded within that same physical space with another. I was again lying to the right - My left hand on her head quite similar to how it had tried to entwine in his hair. My right hand firmly around her or in between her breasts on her sternum, whereas it had then been loosely wrapped around his waist. My face was tucked under her arm, just as I had wanted to tuck it under his, but instead I had placed it rather tentatively in the crook of his neck, trying to taste the skin there, while he had resolutely turned his head the other way as if his mind had been made up, while I had struggled and drowned and resurfaced within the crook of his body.

Have you ever felt like you were in the middle of your dinner, what you thought would be a 4-course affair; and just as you were half-way through your soup, the other one, the only other one at that table, spits out the cherry pit, licks the ice-cream spoon clean, scrapes the chair back noisily and leaves the table.

to chase it away

May be its cos we were all beaten up as Young Indian girls. Slapped, pinched, ears boxed, hair pulled, verbally abused as young girls for not listening to them, that we grew up with an even more solid determination to not listen to them -To be as ‘mule-headed’ as we could be. Never listen to them. I force myself to be better at ‘seeing’ than them - Better at being wiser - Better at being their parents and giving them advice than they were. But all that physical and mental abuse did change us - Made us more susceptible to feeling loved at similar pain. “Harder!” we exclaim, making beasts out of our men. May be its cos we were beaten up as young Indian girls that we all ended up being masochists.

Still

Its like I am floating

hooked to the chandelier

Its like I am chained

to an uprooted tether

I might have been sitting

But I didnot really notice

Or I might have been buried alive,

Numbed blue,

Or breathing.

I am in a coffin

still

floating.

I am chained

chained

still swimming.

I am me

me at last,

sometimes I am you still.

Afterwards

Underneath it.
I sit.
Awaiting
a pat
or shove
of familiarity.


Lace overhangs
obscuring my vision.
I wait
blinded.
For table scraps
of leftover love.