AMANITA SEN

 

Abandonment

 

In this stranger of a room,

my feet shuffles hesitatingly.

 

Unfamiliarity strikes hard,

like I am the princess inside

 

a moss-ridden, dark palace

making my way through cobwebs.

 

The dusty settee faintly reminds

of two bodies that lay here often.

 

The writing desk looks the grimmest,

struggling to forget crumpled letters.

 

Words have a deeper imprint, no one

 knows it better than the wooden desk.

 

As if spelled to sleep, this room

feels neck deep in desolation.

 

 As I stagger out of the room

dizzy with dust that time has gathered,

 

a known smell of perfume hits my senses

like it has known no wearing out,

living out here a charmed existence.

 

Demonetisation

 

Stepping out of Flury’s

a warm winter night,

a lady stops a little

pondering if she might

give to this bony boy

what he's begging for-

a few of her coins;

the hunger-beating toy.

 

"Modi's taken my money,

can I pay you by my card?"

To her own witty quip

she is laughing hard.

 

He watches her thin out.

Is there hurt in his glare?

I feel a sudden chill

in the laughter-ridden air.

 

The Old Lady

 

Towards the end of the night

it feels cold like the bones wish

 

they had warmth to snuggle with.

The doorbell rings feebly and I

stagger to find an old lady there.

 

Her eyes are hollow like they

have not known love ever, or

have lost the memory of it.

 

I open the doors wide to let her in.

She shares with me whatever

little lights my room has. Its heat too.

 

Much is left of the cold night.

Do I now read a glimmer in her eyes?

For my own bones- will they stop the clatter?

 

Mourning Grandmother

 

Bereavements have a strange sameness

in the tears that follow, or in the absence of it.

 The ensuing numbness, shock,

 the fear of an unforeseen absence

not featuring in the same order every time

make a pattern of grieving,

you learn with time.

 

Yet each loss, like a new painting emerges 

with shades that look similar to some colour

you have seen before, but their mix is novel.

 

Like when I mourned the grandmother.

The tears felt colder than her

Boroline-softened hands,

not dry from the kitchen chores.

 

As cool as her skin in her ripe old age,

when her blood and blood-ties grew colder,

the tears were a relief on a brutally hot summer day.

Typically grandmotherly, to make it relieving

for me even in her death.

 

AMANITA SEN

 

AMNITA SEN: Author of two volumes of poetry, “Candle in my dreams “and “What I don’t tell you”, Amanita Sen’s poems have been published in many journals in India and abroad. She practices mental health and lives in Kolkata.