- Unknown element
The rain dampens
The empty swing under the tree
And the rejected draft
Of my unfinished book
Which I forgot
By the lonely open window
The ink flows
With a kiss from each drop
The night fades
Word by word
The clouds make mocking faces
While the owl stares at me
Indifferently
- Left behind
On the other side
Of my bungalow lived a beggar
Alone and stoic
With unclean teeth
Messy hair
Unwashed hands
and unwashed whatever
One winter night
He froze to death
His heart refused to beat
But his dog howled
Into the intense dark
When his house was searched
The officials found insurance
Of 30000 rupees
Which covered his life
But nothing after that
- When being natural isn’t good enough
He just walked away
Explanation was boxed in
It wasn’t in the boundaries of his being
I, in the middle of the concoction of burnt emotions
his ego and his new love
Accepted solitude with all heart, just as my mother had
Maybe submission ran in my blood
That night when he swore never to return, I cried
I cried words because my tears failed to express
I cried not pointed words of rage or hatred but round words of lost love
Crying words became laments, mourned inane, sang threnodies through the night
I wish I could coerce him, beg him,
barter everything of what was left
soul or skull for love sake
Instead I withheld the storm inside the strong chest of my heart
Cried soft words
Wiped them away with the edge of my sari and let him go
Just as my mother would have
Maybe letting go also came naturally to me
- You and I
Long back we firmly decided
to continue with our lives on parallels
That very evening I made tiny paper planes
with myriad colours of yellow, pink, blue and red
In those planes I put all our seasonal memories…
The winter eve parakeets lifted them high into the sky,
A ruthless hungry monster that ate our old times out of mere hunger
Today after all these years the sky seems to be foiled,
Lightning thunderous curses
It returns our memories in rains,
In each acidic drop I see your smiling face
That kisses me and ends with the earth
- Peeps
You see, windows are very important
They help you have peeps
Into the hollows of others
And there you connect with the same
Undying egos, disintegrating into myriads of sorrows
Tears slipping into ironic silence
Worries as forever staying void
Intruding spaces in betweens
Togetherness becoming forgotten promise and love
A practicality that is neither enticing nor routine
Sigh! At least when you see somebody else’s window
You are transiently convinced
That your cavity is well concealed.
- Twinkles
The day takes its last melancholic breath
Letting the darkness overshadow its beauty
I lay on the pillow of my solitude
Staring at the ruthless moon.
The stars stare at me with the same hollowness
And I know how it feels
To twinkle magnificently, yet be so lonely…
* * *
Poornima‘s poems and haiku have appeared in several magazines and anthologies. She has authored a small collection of poems with the title Anything But Poetry published by Writers Workshop. She currently lives in Bangalore, India.
