How do I Survive So Much Love?
Practised fall, and so happens when trained in wrist thrusts
In wrangles and in stroking foreheads – finesse of a feather dance.
Nevertheless, now my palm just white meat,
Pinned on the kitchen slab, remains there curled up
Conditioned to eat up air and rest into nothingness.
My hand was seized by a knife before.
Did it not know the difference between
Human skin and onion skin?
Perhaps it wanted the reddening
As it peeled off layers.
Was it looking for more?
As happens in the spoils of love.
There is so much redness it desires
Like a little girl on a lipstick counter.
Or it was possibly gossiping away with the gas lighter
The gas lighter picking things up from the pipeline.
There is after all potential in these kitchen walls.
And then it chose its victim well.
For it surely does aspire after human skin
Over bird skin and bird skin over onion skin.
Tired of getting shoved against dead things
It wanted a taste of life, a gin of gushing blood.
It saw me in the eye and said it harboured death for so long,
Who wants an exchange?
How must it feel against the pulse so schooled in grace
As it chafes it with kisses, then eats it alive.
For it is a seductress with its slick figure
And sharp motion, it has to be one.
But like every quick lover, it too leaves things undone
A rash assassin leaving fingernails on sand, not a job well done.
Stupid little slut, bury your thirst, put the girdle back on!
See what you’ve done, both of us now in wired vans.
Labyrinthine
There you are motioning back and forth from a heavy cart
emptying totes of jars
into your car
Setting them off to our homes
fool’s errand and one day
You’d be complaining of low appetite the doctor sent us back with less thinking
to do
and some clonazepam before bed
There you are sleeping at my feet,
dreamt your way through like a clock’s hand
Reaching for answers at dawn, you’d say
then complain if I hand them out
I’m advised to watch you forget things and misjudge weathers
Weathers are there to be predicted poorly
fool’s errand and one day
We’d be eating out of a day’s old skillet
found from the box in the dashboard,
meant to be sent to an aunt
The car has been more than a home now
I sit with my legs crossed and rest my head as the horns go free
There you are coming out of a low and making plans
of never going back home
and taking it up north
You’d like it if I drove you to the Residency
Or down to the Charminar maybe
You could only drive till Gorky Sadan instead and made me speak some broken Russian
It was a centennial something of Dostoevsky
you disagreed with his endings so
you thought it was a good idea for us
We quit before the speaker could quit, I thought I should tell you in the hallway
Fool’s errand and one day
I had realised geometry problems remind me of Karenina’s death Perhaps this
whole idea of a journey is a joke
I had looked out of the window the whole time, should you reach out
But you didn’t and sent me back home with a bunch of sweaters your flat owed me
And there you were again calling my mother
she had forgotten all about you, and I had to repeat
you and her exchanged the recipe of galouti kebab
you and her once drove to the hospital during the visiting hours
you and her agreed over the need for
a Jagjit
Singh’s ghazal daily
I had no interest to explain her your case, nor mine ever
neither about the way we had known each other
Then you would like to talk about family and she about you
I quite found contentment in your skinning a duck on a weekend,
looking up after reaching the end of a list
I’d like to stay here during the holidays Do one thing, bring back the sweaters
This was a good judgement on your part, I had dry forearms
And you said it is winter already
which it was not.
You’d stopped making a bed and preferred the couch these days
or so you said
It’s a side effect really, you’d think I need stronger medication but now you’re back
There you are perfecting your German I never knew you ever knew German
Schatz lass uns nicht über gerstern reden
I had to catch up on a lot of you
fool’s errand and one day
Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle
Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle
Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle
they were done with the firecrackers and I was about to close my eyes finally
The English translation kills the spirit
You are the knife
Yes I figured, I had always wondered who do I resemble
more Kafka or Milena
and who well you’ve kept yourself busy I see don’t make
me learn German
There you are still waking up at dawn
but I had brought four volumes of Richardson’s Clarissa from the library
And then you fall back on me in almost no time
You drove me to Faizabad, we on the front steps of whatever’s left of Begum Akhtar’s early home
We skipped the Residency, you’d taken me to her grave in Pasand Bagh
I thought you’d like to visit her sooner
There I was till my eyes wore me out and I fell to you
as she was on her way up
the crescendo of Mere Humnafas
We are still sleeping in the car
I’m advised not to rush lest I’m run over
There are times I still look long out the window over the lopsided highway
but fool’s errand
and one day
You’re gutting a turkey for the two of us
you think it’s a mature decision
I chew all my nails till you make a mess of the kitchen and only ask me to ready the oven
I had a revelation in the morning before you entered the door
Of bloodying your
kitchen?
That you should drive me to Yasnaya Polyana.
Aritrika Chowdhury is a student at Jadavpur University pursuing a Masters Degree in Economics. At 21, she is struggling to come to terms with adulthood. To her poetry is a refuge. Apart from overthinking everything, she believes that the utility of buying novels is greater than the utility of buying clothes and hence forgets the calculations of money in a bookstore. She resides in the city of Kolkata, India.