INHERITANCE
In the absence of wealth
Our mothers passed down to us
Stifled teardrops and
Gleaming beads of sweats.
We cradled them in our beings
Turning them into crystal balls
To gaze through
At
Our submarined sorrows with.
And found credential there
For all our pains.
STILL LIFE
Had I sprouted wings at the first thaw of innocence
Instead of measly breasts and clumsy hips
I might have learnt the intricacies of flight.
As it is I can only shuffle my feet
Forward.
And now
Not even that,
What with
November still
Breathing half bitten stories
My way.
WANDERLUST
Where I come from
All the girls, they
Know too well
The stilting security of oppression
The cruel confinement of comfort
And a word for it-
Home.
Our mothers taught us
The shade of the sky
From a box of crayons
And went back to the kitchen
Where they had left the darkness
Boiling on the stove.
We were left to trace out the map of the world
On our parched, earthen stretches of skin.
The salt of the sea in the moistening of our eyes
The fresh air of hill stations trapped between our lips.
Cliffs on our torsos, the precarious game of holding on
And the wild forests of desire between our legs
We dare not explore.
They closed the curtains on us
Dressed up ignorance in a veil
Called it protection, called it shame.
But with the sunshine so insistent
How could we emerge unscathed
Or anything but well versed
In the ways of infinity?
-Madhubrata Bhattacharya
Plato's Caves online 