‘My days are palm leaves, varied, swaying’: Two poems by Mallika Bhaumik
Photo: Karan Madhok
‘The vagueness of love runs down / the steps of a baoli, / we could have been born sometime in future, / time yet to be born to us,’.
Palm Leaves
My days are palm leaves,
~ varied, swaying,
their ridged shadows drawing patterns of heartaches
their green touching a loss or two,
from milk teeth in childhood to the blue green marbles, scented erasers, brown notebook made of handmade paper,
later... lovers who left, parents and
grandparents who look back from frames,
a favourite aunt, a childhood friend,
the list is endless.
My mind becomes a pea pod,
keeping them safely enclosed in a row,
with years they harden,
grow old in me.
I too grow a palm leaf's stiff midriff,
create a sad window of acceptance,
put them on the back burner,
stuff myself in several tinfoil packs to be carried and savoured by folks I know and fail to notice
how these losses are all over me like a lover's caress
till one day; over coffee and conversation I look at the western sky and see
love looking like the flight of homeward bound birds - my skin breathes in the scent of leaving.
The frail palm fronds sketch the gloom of twilight on the verandah wall.
*
summer days
My memory of summer
is the resting of the sun-scorched Purani Dilli on a charpoy
the open mouth of night
breathing out the loo whipped air
as bubbles of dreams.
The lazed eyelids
thinking of what would have been
had we been lovers,
a fancied intimacy
often envying the cooing sound from pigeonholes during noons,
slowness wrapped.
The vagueness of love runs down
the steps of a baoli,
we could have been born sometime in future,
time yet to be born to us,
then the red of gulmohors
the wafting smell of ripe mangoes
the chirping of sparrows
would be gift wraps we gently open,
first time wonders,
our touch too; spiralling in time
sliding down the landscape of bodies,
as sleeping buds bloom,
the imagined memory of which
I carefully preserve
in lid closed pickle jars.
***
Mallika Bhaumik has a Master's Degree in English literature from the University of Calcutta. Her works have been featured in Mad Swirl, Cafe Dissensus, Oddball Magazine, Shot Glass Journal, Kitaab, In Parentheses, Stag Hill Journal, Harbringer Asylum, Madras Courier, The Alipore Post, and more. She is the author of two poetry books: her first, Echoes, won the Reuel International award for the best debut book (2018); her second, How Not To Remember was published in 2019. She is also a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry. She lives and writes from Kolkata. You can follow her on Instagram: @bhaumikmallika.
