Monday, June 28, 2010

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.

Friday, June 18, 2010


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.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

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.

Saturday, June 05, 2010

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.