I opened the bathroom door And in the dim and damning septic light Of the months old lightbulb My face, blurred and bludgeoned, By night’s nihilistic apparatus Smiled back through the broken mirror Hanging above the dripping, dead sink And I think, that is how it feels To wake up, in the middle of the night Hours after having a fight
I cupped the cold water Felt my fingers sting where the ring Has cut in my flesh Had I punched too hard at the bouquet? Were the petals bruised and bloodied? As if freshly plucked on a dewy morning By a miner’s hand Oh the anger in my throat Blue Eve around my Red Adam’s apple I knew if I let loose the bile of my belly And roar the bull’s breeding call My landlord will knock And the door would open A sliver, then a centimetre Till I am naked in the flooding light Of the gallery Absolutely awake And utterly ashamed To mutter an excuse And retire in solace
I cannot shave without tasting something of the foam It’s bitter This taste on my lips Like a thirst long not satiated Lips, last kissed Perhaps a decade ago In an alley behind an alley Where a beautiful nymph in rotten rags Had found my face handsome than those walls Closing in around us “You look much better than the bricks” She said I smiled, hiding the mortar in my molars As the rain pattered down like tar Peeling away rust from the pipes Drenching us Head to toes Like a wet painting
It has been three hours But my beard still showed Dancing around my face like a Rorschach’s blot I felt my fingers feel my skin Smooth it was Like warm pages of a new novel A novel about this modern day Don Quixote Who spent hours shaving the black spot left on the mirror My blade had blood on it And the sink sprouted red roots I watched as they dissolved And slipped down the drain It was only when the last drop was gone That I did felt the pain
I stood still till the sunlight streamed in From the half open window Like an intruder Creeping along the floor Till the corner of the door Illumined And left me cold Years old So I turned, back to my bed Where nightmares awaited Under the blanket In a dark sequin gown For dark was my friend For dark is the end And beyond that I feel nothing And nothing I comprehend
The privilege, and the only one, I would say, I lost as a reader of yours after our fates got stitched together as one is that I refrain from praising your work on this platform. Everything unsaid gets told effortlessly between us, so my words now just sit in a corner, and I am saved from the exhaustion. “Exhaustion” because I always fall short of words when it comes to completely relay my love and appreciation for your art. Though honest, yet never completely translated from my mind to the keyboard.
But this gem of a masterpiece right here warrants more than the silent understanding that we share. I cannot let this get buried under the burden of it.
Five stanzas and it feels like you made us journey with you through your mind, time and space. The pull was swift – almost like a sharp and silenced painful faint in the fabric of our own existence, effortless. The opening stanza itself opens the door to it. I read the first line and I was there. Not as the narrator but as a shadow of his. Thereafter, each and every movement, every little detail, every little fear and observation and agony and taste and texture and memory of his become mine. I felt the cold water in my palms as I witnessed my face in the mirror, trapped in its four edges as the washed light of that bulb shone in my face, mockingly. Only that it was your face, not of the reader, who is aware of this yet cannot detach himself from the pull and has to go on to experience “You” as he further reads. I believe, and firmly too, this is the most a human being can experience about another human being ; this is the closest two unknown souls thousands of miles and years apart can get entangled together. This might just be the quantum of unexplored human existence in the world of souls where we are all one but, I am certain this is the peak intimacy a writer and a reader can ever feel with one another through this art. Nothing would ever transcend what I felt after reading this verse of yours. I was there, even in the smallest setting, in the smallest of the thoughts and memories and, I witnessed it all as though I am the one controlling the narrative, being fully aware that it was you all along.
Thank you for the revelation that nobody is truly alone…yet we are, but we aren’t mostly…though we are, but no…but we are, or are we not?…
…till you write another verse, till you take us to that world again.
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