On a normal winter day
It is another cold evening in a small town Probably a village where stars are visible clearly People have reached their homes Office hours are over because my mother has returned from work And I am lying on my bed as if future is a dreary dream I have no vocabulary to translate how I feel into poetry I am a refugee in my own body But that doesn't make a good diaspora story There is too much me in every word I write It makes me want to skin the very identity that has brought me here in the first place All my days are filled with confusing revelations But most of them are rejection mails from editors I am not a right fit for an audience that has severe liking for grieving poets I have nothing to contribute to this hungry world All I know is there are too many bodies burning all at once And we are breathing their ashes This winter evening is filled with it I can smell it The skin and hair burning I can hear their regrets And goodbye is a mere consolation I do not meet the needs of editors They wish me good luck But where do I place this body If not in their hands And ask them to mend it however they like They say migration stories are good muses And I tell them about my blood Never steady I show them wounds that travelled from my body to my heart and stayed there Forgetting the places where they took birth They say some voices are bigger and louder Mine is but a whisper Fading into the crevices of freezing night How do I tell them a body is a country And these wounds are nothing but borders Overlapping right where my heart begins That it is still migration if one forgets about his existence They laugh, say only a dead poet is a good poet I fold my body like wheels of an aircraft taking off And go into hiding You see nothing hurts like a citizen being told how he looks foreigner in his own land
About the poet:
Bharti is a 24 year old poet from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Her works have appeared in magazines like Aaduna, two drops of ink, oc87recoverydiaries.org, Live Wire India, harness magazine and others. She loves cats and poetry. She can be reached at her Instagram @bharti_b42
About the artist:
Tuhin Bar is am a self-taught , freelance artist with an engineering degree , from Kolkata . @Smart.chrome is his small Instagram room where he exhibits and sells his artworks .