The Art of Sabotage
I suffer at the hands of second hand disguises.
Someone is always trying to be
who I am trying to be,
which reminds me
of your ghost dancing in my dining hall
and how the sound of your bare feet on the wooden floor
thumps a beat in my mind.
But it is only a memory.
After all, someone is always trying to be
who you are trying to be,
which reminds me
of the withering traces of touch.
I remember being kissed in the cold
but summer glares over our heads now.
I have also forgotten how to unpack
all my luggage without tripping over,
it’s a wonder how I fit it in
in the first place, maybe tucking
sorrow under blind spots is a ritual in self restraint.
I have separate pockets
sewn out of myself,
to hide my apologies in,
although I guess it would be easier
to just let them float in the ocean
like a call for help in an empty bottle.
Which reminds me,
I once whispered in a stranger’s ears
how all the parts of me I hate
are what my loose pockets are stitched from :
three of my toes are missing
and my stomach has a hole in it
and the hands I suffer from are my own.
What Is It to Remember?
Is it to wake up
to a lukewarm love
and ask it what came first,
my flailing hands
or my stumbling feet.
Or maybe to recall
an old unsolved riddle :
You have a boat,
with me and my sadness and my happiness,
and you can only take one across the shore
at a time.
How will you manage ferrying us all,
without the two that remain behind
trying to drown each other.
Or to map the chronology of my loneliness
to infinite concentric circles.
It’s a chair
until someone sits on it,
then it’s just a pedestal
I put them on.
Or to play a memory
in reverse
so it ends with us never having crossed paths.
We both wonder
if our palms would have been softer
that way,
but we dare not confess.
And to wish
I could forgive my hands for
picking at scabs
until they bleed again,
but skin breaks so easy
my wounds never heal.
Harsh Anand is an aspiring poet currently residing in New Delhi. All of his work comes from his own personal experiences and the world around him. A huge poetry buff, his favourite poets are William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound.