Old Love
It’s okay!
Let the lips of habit continue to suckle
the barren, cold breasts,
Let the honey of togetherness
paint the house with bittersweet stickiness,
Or whatever remains, be preserved in
outdated metaphors on the drawing room walls!
I long for your dutiful cuddles
and dispassionate kisses ...
It’s comforting that, you are capable
of such odd acts of kindness
even when desire has left us without a trace,
like the lost hair of youth.
And I wonder why I do not resolve to
redeem it someday,
through its superstitious sea crossings:
in seven days, seven months or seven years!
In this slithery grind of indifference
we bleed, wounded by our own
courteous, considerate words,
and the familiarity of breaths.
In the guerilla forests of our bed,
Our bodies rebel in poisoned embraces
and fire point blank kisses, whose souls,
we know are hollow.
Like murderers,
we grab each other by the throat,
and pour a gulp of sorrow, despair,
sometimes unbearable hope.
When the ambush is over,
We gather the missile ends,
untouched land mines
and other little toys.
And carry our wounded bodies to the loo,
or to the kitchen fridge, like
kidnapped fugitives, suffocating
for the land they would never return.
Yet
something beckons us, again and again.
Like the bath at home, where you come back
after all those detours and adventures;
to wash dirt from the open wounds,
to lick and heal the excitements,
to drown in the arms of familiarity.
Perhaps, it is longing,
Perhaps, it is love.
Trial Room
Yes,
The trial room gives you eyes,
Like you have never seen before.
The straight one, the profile,
The back, your messy bun,
Even the anterior fontanella view,
in which, you always miss your mom.
In the lie of your wholesomeness,
It offers thousand scatters of you,
All unbroken and functional,
Staring with the voyeuristic courage,
you never managed to own.
In this virtual belongingness,
You can hug the nearest you,
And feel the whole world
hugging you back!
And that you are safe and loved;
Quite a therapy!
You can fondle your breasts
like no lover ever has,
Through multiple angles,
Until you discover the brown mole
below your left breast,
marking the position of your heart.
I wish I could take you too
to the optics of the trial room
So that we can hunt for the
unknown pains of our bodies,
which make you moan
even after satisfactory sex,
with the aid of expert reflections,
set at critical angles.
But you stand outside,
Bundled with all the dresses for trial
and knock at the door,
waiting to assess my fit.
Through the scrutiny of your eyes,
I clutch upon that real me,
And the real dress that I fit into.
And the trial is over.
Sanitha Sathyan is a medical doctor by profession and a poet by passion. She has been writing for the past twenty years in Malayalam and English, though not published extensively.