Medical
After enduring a hundred blood tests, this time when you insert the needle, it’s not blood but a crescent moon that swells in the syringe. The stream that has silently flowed for so long, you place its slide under the microscope. You fix your gaze on it. Seeds of unyielding desires, their cancer-free cells, within every atom, there are affirmatives and negatives and countless other narratives, empty due to the absence of a mediator; what else do you discern there— stubborn clots, entangled fortitude, the shield of sugar?
• Bilirubin…
• Ah!
Echo
We, who in our childhood wept inexplicably over Tagore’s ‘The Post Office’, now, in our youth, possess nothing but an open window and no other wealth. This fact vexes mother, neighbours. Apart from that, the first decade of this century holds no lingering shame for us. We also have a pet cat. When the manuscript becomes a book, some discarded poems will remain which have been looking at me for so long with a huff. In the imminent glow of the table lamp, it’s the shadow of my hand that falls towards them. I inquire, “What have you given in exchange for your existence? What have you returned?” The response comes, ‘Your Identity.’
Quest
To ponder and to question,
Half a day squandered, now
I wander through history,
Hoping it might one day
Incorporate me into its play.
