An Anatomy of a Star-crossed Lover's Heart

It lives. Observe,
                        then,
the first faulty
                        scales of justice
fist-sized,
                        rusting away
in cobwebbed corners
of knowledge made flesh. No ledgers
tally here: yearning
is always mired in red –

observe, now, the deep vivid warm red
in this antechamber
                       of churning dreams, flushed
                       with furious lust,
fire raging in its belly
as it scampers up the trunk
of the tree of life

seeking out
every last leaf, every farthest
branch, every lurking bract

mapped on this body
mapped on this fragile, fierce body

quivering with a hunger
willing to shatter
all known laws of the universe

merely to meet another deep vivid warm red
if only at the fingertips.

What the first faulty scales of justice
doesn’t know
is that even faulty scales tip over

and sometimes
a thirsting aching dreaming yearning
body

is a weight the universe cannot bear,
will not bear, for fear
of learning
its laws to be empty words.

The universe writes new laws then:
to dream is to love disaster, to yearn is
to court aching, to ache is to ache more.

Now see how your red falters. See how
it retreats from cheek and lips
and loins and breasts, see
its fire and joy and promise
ring
hollow

veined with the blues
of a world
built on stardust and dream-ash
from charred bodies
of lovers
who dared defy stars and planets
and names
engraved upon once newly-clean
foreheads

ready to bear out new destinies
treading the same old trajectories:

tell me, what’s
in a name but the entire universe
sitting in judgment

seeking a blood price
for scripture and stricture
wounded?

And so life-blood pounds, lifeless, against
bloodless walls, seeking life –
wandering
from right atrium to ventricle to lungs
torn asunder in two

where blood meets breath meets hope

new futures pulsing and flaring
across
well-worn paths buried beneath scar
and skin

and it is written, and it is so:
lub dub lub dub lub dub
vivere, vivo, vivus
Tapping out, in non-code, against
remorseless rib cage
the song of bone and blood, muscle
and sinew:

I live. I live. I live.

---

Written for IIT Madras' inter-hostel creative writing (solo) contest, based on the prompt "It was like a vivisection."

Family Portrait

Cream pooling
on her now-cold tea, mother
holds her ceramic tea mug

gingerly,
wary

of the hairline fracture
along its handle, and

quite used to sister's sunsign
tattooed along its curve:

a rather fat fish, forever
orange, grinning
a slightly loopy grin

and forever apart from its twin

on my sister's mug. Pristine,
fractureless, fewer tea stains,

lagging

behind

twenty eight years' worth
tea-drinking —

almost doppelgangers, just like
their owners.

Father drinks tea by the gallons,
and his tea-cup grips
could fill a dictionary I might write.

Someday.

For now, there's a careful grasping
of steel rims
of steaming hot tumblers, thumb

                                        half a world apart

                          from his forefinger

there's a palm
folding into an umbrella
over railway station paper cups

there's four fingers curling around
a handle, thumb
sticking up sorely

there's also that casual
tipping
       of his tea – as varied

       as his mudra-like grips –
                   into the eager hug

                   of a neighbouring glass

the fall easing the fever.

I look at his hands

wondering
if he could ever have been
a dancer, this man who lumbers
along and mocks my gait
for being too much like a boy's, and
laughs at my love

or lack thereof

for tea. Former heretic
coffee-drinker, I have now

returned

to the fold of people who swear
by tea for everything: hysterics

or hernia or even heartbreak. But

prodigal daughters, I think, don't
con themselves

into believing
things could be the same

as before: so here I am, odd
one out, black sheep,

drinking black tea

and dreaming of brewing that perfect
cup of lemon tea

and taking it
in a coffee cup.

Citation

And therefore

this poem attempts to

critically analyze the various

modalities of alienation -

Hold up.

Right there.

Have I told you how,

in my nightmares, words

swallow me up?

The ocean used to sing

in my veins once: now it scorches

the seams of my lungs, first

a slow

slick

oily

trickling in,

and then a flood —

I float and drown, drown

and float.

And as I always do,

I wash up ashore

on this strange land where

names become adjectives,

tales narratives,

and words clump on themselves to become

New Words

choking on their self-importance.

I wash up on the shore

of a strange land with New Words

and stranger rituals, in a land

of ivory towers

built on the decaying bones

of footsoldiers

who dreamt of a seat at the table

only to find

the table didn't want them.

It is a strange land, this,

with a strange alchemy that brews poison

from lifeblood.

Have I told you how, in my

nightmares,

I live a poisoned death, my lungs

bursting from the weight of words?

Are those my nightmares?

Are those yours?

I can't tell.

It is a strange land, and its alchemy

turns gold into lead. You, me -

it doesn't matter

much. We'll all be asked

for proof. For a source.

And when you're asked

for a source,

recall the razor-sharp

edges

of all the words swallowed,

swirling

in your intestines, blunt now, reeking

of rage and regret,

and journal them in the annals

of your memory

enclose your whole (paltry) life in

parentheses

later, enlist yourself in the

graveyard

of fixed, frozen dreams

in the following fashion:

reduce your name - mangled

by time and strange tongues and familiar

faces alike - to a mere initial

remember this moment

right here

now - and put down the year

alone

"Forget Me Not: A Witty, Even Flamboyant,

Title

Makes You Look Cool(er)"

and as your hands begin to shake,

as even your storytelling

heart

spins

and spins and spins

into free fall

at the sheer artifice of it all

Stop.

Breathe.

Remember.

Your memory is not a  

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edifice

built on loud noise

and louder silences

Your memory

is a cacophony of ancient voices

strung like beads on a great chain

of being

and becoming,

threaded into your skin and vein

and vocal cords

until you can't tell where

they end

and you begin.

And in that brittle

battle-hardened voice of your

mothers and grandmothers

and great-grandmothers, in that quiet

voice that quivers with a lineage

of mistakes and misdeeds

and howling misery

but also of laughter

and hope

and fire in our bellies, in that lonely

voice, my love, shout:

Cite me.