Center Fresh

If you are the beginning, then you must be my Center Fresh.

A bit too sweet, all too pungent for this.

Still, I will carry you in my pockets, not willing to share it with anyone.

I didn’t ask anyone to flail your arms, like yards of brown silk, in my dreams.

Eyes: Weighing like bars of kohl and a sooty word that sits between.

You sway through me like my grandma’s needle- in and out, out and in. We could have

made floral whorls, we made promises near a rusted tank and if this story were to

land in another literature student’s lap,

She will look at this tank as ‘emblematic representation of our psychological

demons’. There could be an essentialist reading too. Blah Blah.

But, would she be completely wrong?

Or,

Question: Was this completely wrong?

Answer: But how does it even matter now?

Alarms rang like blood hooters but I still didn’t put you away.

How many people got drunk with you, danced on my terrace and walked half the city,

strolling through tea stalls at night and rasping, talking, stretching tongues like

birds on adrenaline?

Or watched soapy love stories and saw your tear up like a chocolate doll?

Or smelled your skin, freshly bathed, sizzling with lemon and talcum?

Forget the ones who are already with their Center Freshes, I am talking about skanks,

who aren’t really, but are waiting to be understood. (Me.) They will also cup their

faces and listen to my story.


So will Sita, and tell me about the first time she fell out of love.