A Lot About Sunflowers
S turned into boxes. White and green.
The people at the post said, “starch-white only”
Like satin, like the smell of my widowed grandmother –
Who had an indeterminate friend or two.
S turned into boxes. Fair and square.
Her worn-out flippers, her sold out lamp –
Repurposing, repeating in oblivion. The way
One keeps a saucer, tastes the drifting tongue.
S turned into boxes. Large and small.
She never made plans with me; only
The green moss on the hostel-wall knew how to –
Leave trace, occupy and forbid.
S turned into boxes. Alive and dead.
The warden assumed on her behalf –
Struggling sunflowers, at utmost ease. As easily –
Was it a case of love or woe?
Fluid Tenses from the Past
Eurydice turned into roots,
Faltering in the wake of the sun;
Like this scalpel-print, like red,
Like wounds, like the season of rain.
As briefly as photos succeed,
And all images wait until, the night
Was such. The five-inch thick wall
On which the spiraling bottle-gourd hung in
Your home, you had read a series of Greek myths
Subsiding fast as the days passed.
We had just-enough space to dance
In the middle of the dingy corridor
Heading daintily to your father’s.
I tried too. Free from the burden of proofs
Over a field where I was never present
But you were, in the smell of pine-corns and the water-flow.
In the harrowed allies of a riot-clad rail station –
I tried. But they killed us in sleep.
The graveyards are beautiful in snow.
Jigisha Bhattacharya is an aspiring author-thinker based out of New Delhi, India, currently teaching literature in the OP Jindal Global University. She has previously studied in Presidency University, JNU, and enjoyed working on her research in Tübingen and Berlin, Germany. When not dabbling in the arts of dissecting literary and cultural works on and off the classroom, she continues to struggle with non-fiction and poetry. Some of her publications can be found in the following links at The Indian Express, FirstPost, The National Herald, Critical Collective, Hakara Journal, Akar Prakar, Sahapedia and others.
