Of Lipstick and Labels
What they do not tell you,
when you finally kiss a girl is,
that it may not feel right the first time,
it may not feel right ever.
sometimes walking out of the closet
is like walking into a new one.
The labels you choose
after years of rummaging,
through leftovers
from past revolutions,
and all the sneers thrown at school,
the labels
might still not fit as perfectly,
as you thought they would,
but you’re allowed to get them wrong again
and again.
When this confusion becomes the most familiar part of my day,
I think
I’ve spent too long in the closet,
for all these ill-fitting sizes,
and too awkward shoulders,
by now,
I should’ve figured what to do with a black eye,
how to stitch torsos to fit like armour,
what do you mean all this lace and satin wasn’t meant for me?
When you kiss a girl,
you will still not know
what to do with your hands,
they’re too wobbly for this business,
the parts of her,
you thought you knew your way around
would still feel alien,
and unfamiliar,
like going back to where you once lived,
where everything is the same, but nothing really is;
but you’ve practised
for this unfamiliarity,
your hands on her stomach,
might make you hate yourself a little less,
for her soft belly, is just soft belly,
not disappointments measured out in tacos,
after all,
you might not crave the sharp edges,
you thought you always needed,
you wouldn’t have to fold yourself so small
to fit in little pockets of love
love is Marine Drive, huge, and salty,
but waiting,
and it doesn’t care what shape you are.
when you kiss a girl,
maybe all the flowers in all the poems will make sense,
maybe you’ll want to melt all the words,
that shuffle through your mind
as her face fits perfectly
between your chin and your shoulder
and melt them with the sweetest of lies,
and pour into the cracked edges of the world,
just so it heals.
what they do not tell you,
about kissing a girl is
even when you like it
is that your eyes will always stay open
on the lookout for fire,
but there might be lipstick
and hers might wear on yours
like a swatch
Make a colour you can’t name,
and when you get home
your mother might say
this shade
this shade makes you glow.
We Swallow the Sun to Keep from Stuttering
coming out
as a person, a gender, an orientation, a heartbeat,
was never a one-time thing,
but we keep longing for it to be,
maybe soon,
it will be our last time around.
You tell me,
what it’s like to dream,
a body for yourself,
heights and hair and hands and parts,
that match your heart,
you want to pick a name,
so much softer than all the things you’ve been through,
maybe one day,
these longings will just be the memoirs and reminder,
which come after new dawns.
You have never longed to be understood,
just acknowledged,
under kinder skies and with undoubtful eyes,
but until then,
I’m here,
and I’m not really a hug person,
but I think we can both use one,
it is hard to carry so much hurt,
in chests that have never quite felt like your own,
in hearts that have learnt to love,
in ways, they weren’t taught,
in hands that still have to prove
their actuality.
friend,
longings are soft,
but it’s the soft things that destroy us in the end,
that turn fights into revolutions,
it always hurts to become,
what you’ve intended to,
no one is looking,
blossoming is still blossoming;
we are, after all,
the truest reporters of ourselves,
no matter how many times we got it wrong before.
the moon does not have to ask,
before it changes,
the moon has never learnt to apologise,
when it shines greater than the sun.
Anureet Watta is a 19 year old poet from Delhi. She writes of queerness, girlhood and the overwhelming anguish of being alive. Performing across open mics in Delhi, she believes spoken word poetry is the perfect amalgamation of poetry and theatre.
