Author: ahonarc

Sleeping on the forest floor of a late autumn deathbliss
The orange leaves melt into me like a purring cat
With its belly out
A croissant expecting love, safety, and the golden rules of joy.
There's no guarantee I will not be exhausted by everyone
There's no method to making it out of the pool
Except for an evening bathing my hair with soft sun
I have nothing sweet
To offer.

Months go by
Even years
I don't feel a thing.
Except for a clinical tingling in my fingers
A gnawing tug inside my stomach
Or an invisible bruise or two
Across my fluid torso
I don't feel much.
Tonight the shuffle plays a song
I first heard when I was learning how to be youthful
How to make men mad
Or happy
How to imagine again a world
Centered on myself and my loved ones
I hear the notes and I'm thrown back
To my dark room in a different corner of the country
In a house that is empty now
And belongs to someone I have never seen, and might
Never know.
I keep awaiting a pinch
A kiss or a slap or a punch
I feel nothing
But a faint sense of time scratching its nails on my face.

Perhaps it is finally happening.
A proud riverbed of tears
The making of a woman
Hopeful that my sweat will be worth in gold.
Perhaps it is also a second mirror.
Beyond a career of stable joy
Something a little bigger than friendship may await
For only those who don't give up
And stab themselves with dejection.
I am trying like I always am,
To be happy, to claim my breaths as my own
To finally understand what love and hope can and cannot do.
Perhaps it is like my poetry
Deep and meaningless
Letters to myself and the woman I paint myself to be.
Perhaps it is you who can read it as a gift.

Awkward meetings.
Shifty eyes, large, womanly,
Or small and slant like the con of a businessman
The hours slide away and no one holds my gaze.
The extension of my arm
He takes it as a sign of attack perhaps
Instead of a gentle kiss
Or even a firm shake
He chops off with all his might
And the ones after him follow
Till I have nothing left except for the mole on my cheek
Where you kissed me in our past lives
Ceremoniously and with love.

Where is the list I put away?
The smoke is smothering me
Where is the latent wisdom that can clean the air
Silk my skin and turn me into what I am not sure of
Becoming?

The golden arch of a sunlit smile
May or may not precede a death.
We hope for it anyway
You tell me I should live for it,
Anyway,
My smiles, grudges, laughter, wails,
Superimposed into patterns that are if nothing
Interesting to look at.
Unbelievable how I milk my grief into poetry
Unbelievable that it has almost been a year
The strong urge is never going away, is it?
To show you all the newness in the world
The saaree I got for Pujo
All my selfish ventures you might not even have understood.
I do not speak to you in these poems
These are in English, after all,
I do not know who I speak to, after all,
But I will see a different autumn sky this year
Maybe you will, too.

Instead of inching away from an unfistful of hope
I can decide to do more.
His slick desperation, I can interpret as yearning,
His lack of manners, spontaneous charm.
I can decide to skin my thoughts carefully
So that only the main problems remain
And I can outsource the solutions to engineers, doctors, and consultants
While I make love to the poet at heart.
While running errands I can listen to music that makes me unhappy
Excrete all joy out of the body and soul.
Once the purge is over
You can call me and I promise to giggle
With my enunciated laughter (as my friend often points out)
And throw you a kiss or two.
Instead of writing this poem
I may decide to pet a kitten
Or.

None of what I say is less brittle than snow
Haven't you seen my face?
I laugh too loud
My eyes are shifting
And my palms sweaty with a manufactured dread.
This morning I woke up with a heartache
Maybe I want to be 20 again
To make the mistakes I didn't
Although at the heart of hearts I can tell
The only thing I want is too shameful for me to admit.
Simplicity is no less brittle than snow
And I am trying to be real
Find real
But God, I keep seeing patterns and I despise them.

Every night ends in a puddle of tears, unclaimed
There is a restlessness in this peace
I cannot digest.
Not wholly unworthy but evidently
Some hearts are always on a performative spree
I take the sword lying down on the ground
Reject what's left of my normalcy
Shove it, twist, and the night ends
In another puddle
Unclaimed.

My tall claims are AI ASMR
Sand, clay, and cloud.
Since when does my sadness have teeth?
Lately,
This city roof leaks as much as the one I've left
Nothing has resolved. My eyes are still shut.
The home you leave, untouched,
What happens to it?
My tall claims of fixing it all
Are lying naked.
I impose all my darkness
Onto the one I've just met.