Separation & Speaking in tongues
by Anindita Sengupta
[ poetry - june 09 ]
Separation
I should not will the months by so quickly.
Living is something that happens elsewhere
while one is chewing pencils or hair,
or staring out of the window,
watching the wall splinter
with cracks in the whitewash.
Half in my skin and half hanging out,
like leaning from a Mumbai local in rush
hour, I jamb doorways with my feet,
continually moving in or out, while
you lie on your back in some suburban sunset
and bite the skin of your fingers wistfully.
These weeks we’ve built between us will go.
Even their most grueling chores - forgetting,
forging, defrauding - will not last. Only
the leaves changing season, only
the keyboard glowing in the night
will remain as we write. Confabulate. Lie.
Speaking in tongues
Five years, you dead -
Nothing’s changed in here.
In here. Outside,
landscapes have churned
like giant cement crushers.
Wars. Bans. Elections.
And malls have blossomed like toadstools
on every major street.
Here, I sit
chewing my lip skin,
chewing my bones,
cleaning things
in a purple, cloying frenzy:
window panes, ovens, venetian blinds.
Scrubbing at grease, dust, dead insects,
the disgust of years.
I want everything to sparkle.
Tomorrow, I will meet ma at Levitate,
buy silver earrings, beady bags,
boho hats I can never wear
anywhere polite.
(You said ‘be dignified’.)
Ma will pretend to approve.
She’s trying to compensate.
She’s been trying to compensate
for 30 years. Your cross
slung across her shoulders
like a workman’s axe.
When I loved a man a lot like you
(genius-sadist who ploughed my heart
until raw), she let me talk about him
for 18 whole months
until I could breathe again
without spilling words like marbles
from my mouth.
But tomorrow, we will not talk of you.
We will shed this obsessive
hating and loving of a dead man.
We will try to find a different
language,
a tongue that could have been ours
if we hadn’t been impaled
by your eyes, always,
somewhere in between
apology and rage.
One that was almost ours.
These days, we no longer exchange
wordless looks across the room.
