Because I have been angry at this world since childhood….
I have only been fed platters of fire by my mother.
I have only heard the clacking of her army shoes,
The glimmering brass stars on her shoulder in Shimla’s wintery night.
And it would be my only plane of sight, with foggy words
Failing to touch her and her own fury making new meanings
In my moon puffed head.
She had punctured words of discipline; she always loved to scatter them.
They would creep into me
Like
Insects.
I still have tentacles of obsessive compulsive bug..
Domesticated in me for ages and when my friends would coo
About their mother’s new lipstick shades or pictures of them,
I could only think
Of my mother’s half broken nail and her reckless scurrying in
A congested Army hospital with eyes
Paled with the smell of Dettol and the whirl of this very angry world.
Come inside a smokey room. With a paper and pen. Incense and cigarettes, flowers and water. They all go together, too well.
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