Poetry & Prose : POETRY: THE LAST WOMAN AND OTHER POEMS

Deepsha Rath

POETRY: THE LAST WOMAN

The curls of storm have settled in her curls

The sun has died a death of fumes.
The night has undressed herself
No more stars and No more moon
 

The sky had perched into tiny squares of dead solitude
When she was sold to bad poetry.
There were days of mustard flowers
And there were lamp-lit nights.
She had her eyes closed
As she was holding on to her breaths
Breaths which were bereft off the illusions
She had sewn on her heart.
Slay me, she said.
 

It had been taught to her:
The big big darkness of the big bang world
The droplets of which created the monsters in the woods.
She prayed with closed eyes and
The darkness whispered psalms with her,
In the first lesson in her mother’s womb,
When she made her first move towards the light—
She and darkness had walked soul-in-soul on that journey.
 

She knew how to live the poetry of a barren field
The prayers which were invoked in futile hours
She could dwell under the shades of the hemlock shrub
She breathes the past and sings the future
Her soul is lost to requiem poetry
She has a dark destiny
As dark as her washed out kohl
Layers of shambles hobble her limbs
The shards of a broken heart were painted
With her smeared smile
The carafe that once sated her thirst
Was full to the brim
But she was no more thirsty.

THIS IS IT

They shared the faults and the flaws

The same imperfect nose with an unusual curve
The same dimples with the darkest mole
They shared the same  bed and the napkin holder
The same limbs and the umbilical cord
The same fury and the lost lullabies
They shared the  same coloured tears
As the doe-dark eyes
Half mermaid and quarter human
They  even  shared the fins.
The only irony was there were two hearts and one love.

NO LONGER

You don’t exist anymore in those lines

which I sketched long back on the canvas of my palm.
Your warmth does not pulsate in the night breeze
And my corridor does not have the fragrance
of your flowering jasmine plants.
You don’t exist anymore in that blue-lit sky and the stars,
Neither the rainless clouds speak of your unspoken words.
You exist no more as a wound on my past
which could make each of my moments
Bleed with your absence.
 

I have stopped seeking your leftover touches
On the folds of my clothes.
I don’t remember those quivering moments of soul
Searching in tenderness of morning glow.
All that is left is that I now dwell in you
And your name is the only god I know

BEING TOGETHER

There is a moment or a touch or whispering story

Of pain, compassion or courage in each fold of the skin.
There is a twig of fragrant cinnamon
Or a ginger candy and faint tear marks
Beneath each of those hand holds
Maybe the wrist watches
Are the sole witnesses to those prayers
They have muttered for each other.
On his late returns from the evening walks
Or her untimely naps on the couch
With a half made sweater in her lap.
Maybe they still quarrel over telephone bills

And newspapers and share the same quilt
And the summer breeze.
Maybe they hug the same dreams
And the nightmares under the starless nights.

How many such days would have passed
with or without waiting for any definite phone calls.
Maybe they have children settled abroad
Or their relationship is the only offspring they have.

The Author: Deepsha Rath (b.1980) holds a Master’s degree in Computers. She is presently working as a freelance writer based in Bhubaneswar. She has contributed poems and stories in several journals and published articles in Newspapers and web magazines.
 
Illustration: Abandoned Sandals, (photography by Ishmael Annobil)