Love looked at me like Van Gogh looked at the sky
With hope, with grief, with attention
With expectations and magic in eyes
With no space for condescension or pretension
With a sense of belonging that is too far to reach
And a little bit of longing that hums in a silent screech
A bird flew far
from a tree to my window
a withered tree,
a lifeless tree
It struggled to fly
with one of its wings clipped
How? How?
How did it
manage to fly?
It kept pecking
at my window
Every morning I
would wake up to the noise
I looked at it
from my bed
struggling to
get up
I would look at
it as it stopped pecking
We locked eyes,
quite a few times
each time I
would look away with an urgency
Fear, there was
an inexplicable fear
there were
unspoken stories
radiating
through the window
I dared not open
the window
Scared, if I
open it,
the bird,
it’ll vanish
or ask me to
unclip its wing
it might ask me
to pet it
to trust it
to let it in
it might even ask
me to get up from the bed, when it’s hard to do so
only to not be
there the next day to do the same
What if it asks
me to look it in the eyes and not look away?
and just when I
get used to it,
it asks me to
let it go…
I got tired,
tired of the
questions
I opened the
window, looked it in the eyes
unclipped its
wing, took it in my hands
Silence,
deafening Silence
complete
surrender on both parts
I asked it to
fly away
it wouldn’t
it circled back
in my hands
then sat again
near the window, unbothered
An open blue sky
a bird free to
fly
but rests near
my window instead
when I touched
its unclipped wing
it turned back
looked me
straight in the eye
then flew away, still
struggling
as if it forgot
how to fly without one of its wings clipped
Up it went in
the sky, slowly, fearfully
I woke up again the
next morning
at the pecking
noise
a bird with one
of its wings clipped
a different bird
this time
each time
every morning
it’s like a
ritual now,
letting these
birds fly
Until one day
they all come back,
rest near my
window and ask
What will you do
with us now?
What do we do
with this freedom?
How do we make
sense of a world without struggle?
How do we fly fearlessly
without anything holding us back?
Rustling trees
and an open sky
Reminds me of
my home,
a home that
doesn’t exist
here or there,
that only
exists in nostalgia,
in the soft
pain inside my chest, that erupts every now and then
A home that is
as alive as my childhood
Breathing
gently into the corner of my youth, holding on to my growth
Loving the
parts that are yet to heal, making space inside me to embody foreverness...
I am the rustling
trees and an open sky
I am my
nostalgia, I am (my) home
When the lights
went out,
I could hear
them shout
Struggling to
stop my mind and body from a deafening fight
I looked in the
mirror
to get relief
from the agony of the horror
Standing and
basking in my own light
I recognized
myself,
“There I am!
A lovingly
crafted body, a beautifully crafted mind”
Shivering bones beneath my numb skin
A warm fuzzy scarf embracing my shoulders
Eyes drunk in mist and snowflakes
While humming in the silence of the snowfall
and
leaving my footprints on the heaped-up ice
along the walkway
I look back at my life and smile back at my
survival
my soft voice murmured with a crackling voice
“I have a story to write, a journey to recall”!
Picture: Footprints on snow, taken by Piu Chowdhury
A sunny afternoon
my notebook on top of the box on top of my bed
while noting down my thoughts about history and home
I was humming along with Lewis Capaldi
“I just wanna be somebody to someone”
I don’t know if it was the sun
my right-on-track notes
the track playing on my headphones
or the words that Capaldi sang so beautifully
I was swaying so much in sheer happiness
that my handwriting seemed like it just came back
from chasing a butterfly that had no sense of direction
but soon after my playlist decided to move on to the next song
I stopped swaying
not because Capaldi’s song stopped
but because the song started something inside me
I realized that I was humming the wrong lyrics all along
Or was it really wrong?
I just wanna be somebody for someone
That, that was what I was humming
I just wanna be somebody for someone
not
I wasn’t singing along
I was singing my own song
I wasn’t only swaying to Capaldi’s beautiful words
but aligning with my own desires
I want to be somebody for someone
a (comforting) space probably
a (peaceful) time
a (happy) memory
a moment (to cherish)
(loving) eyes
(embracing) arms
(selfless) love
(safe) place
I want to be all those things and more if possible
to those who think they don’t deserve love
to those who just need a hand to come out of darkness
to those who just need someone to listen to them
to those who have never tasted freedom
and only need "a someone" to believe they can fight for it
wait, did I just find what I was looking for?
did I just realize what I want to do with my life?
did I just unveil why I am alive?
what meaning my life has?
guess what?
just when I was in a daze
drunk in drips of this moment of epiphany
I witnessed a surreal happening
the universe professed its love for me
a cloud shaped like a heart
my very own blue and white heart
the universe has its own way of giving back, doesn’t it?
that too when it's least expected
this led me to write a letter, a note maybe…
to writer Atticus
Dear Atticus,
May I borrow your lines for my epitaph? And while requesting, may I also have the audacity to request to modify it a lil bit?
“I hope to arrive at my death
Late,
In love,
And a little drunk”
BEAUTIFUL WORDS Mr. Atticus. Here's what my epitaph would say instead:
I arrived at my death
Late,
In love
And quite drunk.
I hope you won't mind Mr. Atticus.
Sincerely,
A poet in love
Picture: An open sky, taken by Piu Chowdhury
A sweet sugarcoated
yet zesty lemon
Tastes sour and bitter when
gone too deep
You can either taste it
or throw it.
There’s no other way to deal with it.
You can keep it
But its rotten smell
will never let you breathe.
Picture: Trees, taken by Piu Chowdhury
