Not the film reel clutched in the branches of my past,
But a scarred chitter of the robin at the break of dawn,
Gliding across the silhouette of a day and a night- both forgotten species of the stars-
And ambushing the velvet jars of moonbeams gasping for air; a speckle of a feather frightfully flown!
I breathe on a Monday morning, steady as a fish in a fishbowl;
Morph a little into the poignant chairs on the dining table in the living room.
Was a mundane Saturday just a preface to this jittery novel?
The sycamores treading on the plight of the innocent soul,
Smile selfishly at the grating sunlight on the abrasive mirrors in this hotel room-
Just a tapestry of plaintive syllables; an insipid ensemble,
Boorishly feigning the class of a gauche carousel and an opulent debacle.
I am alight in the furnace of pavements trodden in this dreamscape;
The buds of gardenia in the withering garden- exult by the flames of blood.
Swerving past the auto-correct of the larks in the digital letter, I plunge into the translucent drapes;
Written on this slate of empty wishes is a pitfall of charred, handsome mud.
When the flagon of glory slips into the silence of unbridled glass,
The colours slumber past midnight across the dreary three hundred and sixty-five;
But the sturdy one wakes up and stumbles and hunts for the film strips in the grass.
I pluck the petals off the pink magnolia on the crosswalk- he loves me still, he loves me not.
Just a sacred string of rusted metal between the crumpled pages where the butterflies scrive,
Bled in the memories of a smouldering cigarette in an ashtray of brass;
The promises that gaze the subdued trickles of tears on the window-panes of cars in the parking lot,
Soon vanquished with a giggle at the joke on the filter of this story that is better lost than caught.
Not a dreary adage of the old textbooks in this bitter stack of pills on a glazed table;
Just a company along the way of this rickety, undulating hindsight over this blocked mind.
With an incandescent euphemism in the paintings of this auction of wisdom,
Clothed in the ribbons of entropic diamonds in the curveting rubble-
Indecisive on my feet: just a glimpse of the crevice on what to lose and what to find.
The tiles of these days were brittle for a nosedive into the lonesome chasm,
To realize a three hundred and sixty-five was nothing but a half-written poem.
~ Riddhi Chakraborty
Notes: a yearly ritual: an ode to those bleak 365 days that went by in a trice- 2023, you were… weird. ❤
Swan's Labyrinth 