A DOLL IN WATER

 I am a rag doll

made from a different fabric,

who gifted myself 

a knife wrapped in ribbon.

I have daring poems

in crumpled notebooks,

my sorrows neatly pressed 

in an iambic inside.

I tuck them,

the  bad seeds of  

my stubborn insomnia:

under my pillow case, 

hidden from school room rulers.

I eat my own heart everyday, 

a fragile lady Prometheus,

chained and cursed with 

a thousand vultures around.

Sadness is my birth mark,

glowing in luminous red

at three am sharp.

There is a lump

behind my left breast bone

holding the very last drop

of my courage.

A corrupt lungs and 

a fractured hyoid, and 

crushed red petunias

with their root in my veins.

Am a child who want 

a strong hand to hold,

denied her favorite candy

yet can't cry in public.

Hidden in a green shell,

my language is thin,

my words not sharp 

to kill or make you bleed.

A braille of scars

in my skin,

my hands breaking 

the delicate necks of 

tiny wild flowers.

And when I fill my 

pockets with pebbles,

I know what am doing,

may be for the first time.

All deep blues and abyss 

I am a doll

moving in water 

with a voice in my head

the one I heard 

thirty three times a day,

"Poor thing! she was crazy"

and I agree,

seal the words with 

my silence,

as I always did.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 I am yearning for death.  Forever longing for it...achingly..When people around me crave to live, do everything to have a life, I could never understand it. I could never understand the meaning of their desire. I always wanted to die… slowly, painlessly, and alone. Over time, my death instinct  became an inexorable habitual thought. The yearning to merge into an infinite darkness is there, always. The swelling torment I can't put into words. There was nothing, until him, that could dilute my urge to die. I used to think I can hold on a little, until he disappeared. I was obsessed to wither completely.  Look at me now. I think I have died, when he left. What a metaphor, the old cliché, you may think. I can declare this without embarrassment, but I can't express it. It is really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts, and consciousness... Many moons ago, I listened passively to Nee Mattume by T.M. Krishna. And yesterday night, like a little miracle, it ca...
Read more

THE BOOK OF SETHI

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...
Read more

The Unanswered Ring: Returning to Decision to Leave

Some films don’t scream.They breathe. Softly. Like someone lying next to you who doesn’t dare touch you. “Decision to Leave” wasn’t a thriller to me. It was a letter never sent.A wave that crashed but never reached the shore. I watched Seo-rae fold her silences like laundry. Every movement quiet, every word a disguise. And yet—every glance, a plea: “See me. Even if you don’t believe me.” And Hae-jun— he didn’t fall from a mountain.He dissolved, little by little, like a man walking into the sea,telling himself it’s just water. The film didn’t ask me to watch. It asked me to listen. To sighs. To footsteps. To hunger that never became desire.What kind of love is this? One that doesn’t kiss, but watches.Doesn’t hold, but follows from a distance. Doesn’t beg, but leaves quietly, hoping to be remembered...The kind that hides in plain sight. The kind that tells you,“You’re better off without me,” but still checks if you’ve eaten... A Scene I’ll Never Forget: (And perhaps, never forgive) Seo-r...
Read more