Scene in the bathroom
My bathroom sink
an ocean drained
till only sand remains.
I don’t touch the water
that tumbles from the tap,
it gurgles like someone drowning.
The tap’s topography twisted
like the twisted angles
of a tangled corpse.
I wish to be the toothbrush
leaning on the sink oblivious
of its owner’s absence.
There, my face in the mirror
in it my hair a rope they
could have flung him in
the depths of the Arabian sea.
But none comes from the
boat-like arch of my brow.
My lips a coarse reflection
dry as the land that
I wish he was on.
My pallor a white shroud
fit for a widow, my ears deaf
from hearing his death cries.
The stench from my body
like dead fish caught from the sea:
a week since I touched water.
A week since it happened,
afraid of the liquid force
that engulfed him to nothingness.
My own body that I
no longer own steps
scared into the shower.
I make for the madness to cease.
I must challenge the water
or let it drown me too.
I swim cross-current
till I turn the tap till
it gushes down like a rapid.
The cold empowers my gasping body,
the water on it washes away
my fear like dirt.
Writer’s Block
As orderly as her mother
preparing for dinner,
she arranges her journal
at the dining table.
The paper glaring, staring
she waits for the words to come.
She hungers for words
her mind her teenage sister
forgoing food for her figure.
Unmindful of the chatter, she’s alone.
Her mind a room of her own.
And the words don’t come.
Her mind a raging bull,
a country going to war,
but the words don’t come.
Her mind a double bind
like her grandmother’s grief for her dead soldier
husband and her guilty freedom after.
But no images, no metaphors
as the words don’t come.
Tonight, she had planned
to write on female family history.
But her mother scolds, her dinner’s cold.
And so the words don’t come
Illustration : Reshmi Paul