Dressed as death, cradling the mind into a tease
Rogue, like the sea on a starless night
Ecstatic from holding all the vain possibilities
A snitch, a cartographer of my memories–
Mapping the thoughts to stumble into you.
I dream of homes built from sticks and stones
I carry songs of sunny days, seedlings, and my favorite goat
I run home from school, uncaring about my verbs and nouns
I have a home to build that stands steady on slippery ground
While I walk, I dream of walks that never end
Sitting atop my father, he never paused even on a bend
There was the blinding Indian sun and one long shiny road
Now when I'm asleep, my earth still moves and flows
In a dream I hear the roar of the voracious river
When it swallowed my old home, I get a shiver
At school I climb higher and higher on faraway trees
To see my new home and sway in the reassuring breeze
-Pranietha Mudliar, a poem for the thrice-displaced Bhil tribe
Neil Gaiman nestles into a hobbit cave
On a hilltop house
To weave the muscle of fragile things
Jhumpa Lahiri galloped to Cape God
7 crisp winter months
Retreating in solitude
Curating her magic word-chiselers
Virgina had a room of her own
And minted Money from an aunt's heritage
Anuja Chauhan is enveloped by jacaranda trees
And boho basements with a Pepsi Visicooler
Could their trajectory be also mine
Like an ornate writing treehouse of own
Knead fluffy catharsis doughs
Words slithering from the edges of my tongue
Fueling my parched ball pen
Am I too anchored into my ruggedness
Or my dreams too removed from reality
//उष्टा//
There are many things I’m incapable of,
Driving,
Cooking without making it look like a crime scene,
Folding clothes into seamless squares.
I also do not know how to say hook, button, banner.
Or words like snow globe and soft linen, in Marathi.
I have sharpened my tongue so much with the language that is not mine, now my own refuses to accept my voice.
I dream it eventually will,
Maybe, if I share my plate with it and eat it’s defiled morsels, patiently waiting for its fondness.
Remind me again, what word describes that in Marathi?
-Sayali, The concept of 'ushta' or ‘jootha’ (in Hindi) food and hands. After one begins eating from one's plate, his plate and fingers become 'ushta'.
In my dream
love's in a package
delivered at my
doorstep while I
am out of town
looking for it.
I receive a message
saying ‘delivered’.
I mistake it for the
lip balm I had
ordered
and put my phone in
the sling bag while
on my way to a library,
hoping to find it.
I return home,
alone as usual
and pick the parcel
kept on the doormat.
'I didn’t order this’.
I ask them to take it away
and refund the money
to the sender’s account.
cold sweat, two second turnovers
squirming and reeling in leftovers
the shadows keep growing bigger
tree branches are crooked fingers
knocking, scratching, gashing
at my window pane
I've stumbled into your alley again
you were my laughter, now you're my scream
you were my sound sleep, now
you're just my fever dream.
it takes strength to dream,
to doodle with care
about stringing the loose ends,
left behind by forces
you can't see.
to draw out and extend
your present
into the untold possibilities of tomorrow.
of deadlines
dissolving into sulphorous blue,
of your love withstanding
the distance of time,
of having the faith to see things through
even when experts have no sight,
of creating warmth in a hotspot,
space in a hotspot,
a space where timidity can close the doors
and dance quietly to itself.
to dream of the possibility,
that whatever sense of normality
you find yourself returning to,
will still have plenty of
reasons to sing.
it takes strength to dream.