An adamant fly that's me
"Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm's length...It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you."
She patted me on my knuckles,
(just as Ms. Lee did, eons ago
sans a ruler),
told it's time to leave,
felt like a breeze,
subtle, yet not absent,
knocking, not knocking, yet.
I found her on the mirror next,
an eagle-shaped scar on her yellow forehead,
whispering mishmash in a tone, resembling
nightingale's soul music.
She didn't have any blemishes then
and her skin shone through
like her conscience, clear
as running water.
A glistening cloud of doubt lingered
as I breathed out, vapors of shrouded despair
gathered, mist.
She patted me, firmly this time,
insisting it was time to leave.
I told her I wasn't finished
being a woman. I still have clear fingernails
and I've the leisure to chew on 'em.
No debate raging in chimneys of higher echelons,
carcinogenic effects still unknown.
Despicable, audacious, preoccupations, they declare.
Let me chew on, I mumble!
My grandmothers didn't. My mothers dreamed.
I've fire in my eyes and long to be a poet,
the mystical, mythological, ordinary one
with words that bleed
a heart that engraves, strawberry blood.
The rhythm lurks,
I exist, a feather in a sheep's haystack.
I've to find it.
It'll take time. Please bear
and give me some breather, I hushed.
She nodded again, calling me
an adamant fly.
Divya Rajan's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apparatus, Gloom Cupboard, Danse Macabre, Read This, The Times of India and Asian Cha, among others. She has been a recipient of All-Bombay Intercollegiate Creative Nonfiction Writing Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and recently, one of her poems won the Chicago Poetry Cram contest. Originally from Bombay, she now lives in Chicago area, where she co- edits the poetry pages of The Furnace Review. The above poem is from a manuscript she's currently working on, titled Chanting Silhouettes.
"Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm's length...It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you."
-Carlos Castaneda
She patted me on my knuckles,
(just as Ms. Lee did, eons ago
sans a ruler),
told it's time to leave,
felt like a breeze,
subtle, yet not absent,
knocking, not knocking, yet.
I found her on the mirror next,
an eagle-shaped scar on her yellow forehead,
whispering mishmash in a tone, resembling
nightingale's soul music.
She didn't have any blemishes then
and her skin shone through
like her conscience, clear
as running water.
A glistening cloud of doubt lingered
as I breathed out, vapors of shrouded despair
gathered, mist.
She patted me, firmly this time,
insisting it was time to leave.
I told her I wasn't finished
being a woman. I still have clear fingernails
and I've the leisure to chew on 'em.
No debate raging in chimneys of higher echelons,
carcinogenic effects still unknown.
Despicable, audacious, preoccupations, they declare.
Let me chew on, I mumble!
My grandmothers didn't. My mothers dreamed.
I've fire in my eyes and long to be a poet,
the mystical, mythological, ordinary one
with words that bleed
a heart that engraves, strawberry blood.
The rhythm lurks,
I exist, a feather in a sheep's haystack.
I've to find it.
It'll take time. Please bear
and give me some breather, I hushed.
She nodded again, calling me
an adamant fly.
Divya Rajan's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apparatus, Gloom Cupboard, Danse Macabre, Read This, The Times of India and Asian Cha, among others. She has been a recipient of All-Bombay Intercollegiate Creative Nonfiction Writing Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and recently, one of her poems won the Chicago Poetry Cram contest. Originally from Bombay, she now lives in Chicago area, where she co- edits the poetry pages of The Furnace Review. The above poem is from a manuscript she's currently working on, titled Chanting Silhouettes.
