Sana Rose | Featured Poet | May 2016 | Issue XVI
Introduction to the Poet:
THE FOSSIL
There’s a folded, wrinkled paper
in my tattered purse.
A mosaic of white with blue ink blots
and yellowish stains.
Torn from the middle of a notebook,
hastily written over.
A butterfly with two hearts for wings
adorn a corner of the page.
“Amor vincit omnia,” says your
mediocre handwriting.
But I loved the mediocrity –
all that the worn little letter held.
Your voice, my eyes.
Your smile, my tears.
Your words, my hope.
Your touch, my dreams.
Long back, you had time
to convince me
of the possibilities ahead.
Today, I’m there,
we are there,
yet I find myself keeping the note,
slipping back into the intoxication
of beginnings…
From time to time,
twisting time back seems
like a great idea.
I could turn back time until
just before
the first
kiss,
just to feel the trembles
all over again,
just to feel the quiver in my lips,
just to revisit the need in your eyes,
just to hear that voice again,
from another time.
But for now,
I shall make do with
the fossil in my purse…
YOUR SILENCE
Your silence is my undoing –
I take the cue to welcome
the loneliness.
I find refuge in
a green bottle of icy water –
my parched soul
soaks it up
to the edge of survival.
Your silence is my nourishment –
I hoard upon it like
broken timepieces.
I find solace in
the ticks of bygone moments –
my moist skin
irrigates the dryness
to the point of giving up.
Your silence is my veil –
I hide behind it from
my own muteness.
I find invisibility in
the uncouth pleats of the cloth –
my sheer deafness
takes a blind eye
to the brazen touch of needs.
THE SLEEPING VOICE
The silence is laced
by the sparrow’s song.
It could be in my dreams,
in the stardust that adorns
the walls of my soul,
or in a cloud that is
floating away farther.
I love you, I love you
to the point of pain –
but why doesn’t it get across?
Why does the bridge burn down
when the whispers are halfway,
why do the winds drown
the murmurs in their howl?
Why does a word crawl across
the distance between us?
Why does it stall,
despite the open door?
Why do the voices
choose to sleep?
Why do we stay?
FADING MOMENTS
The number was too high that
one was not going to make a difference.
I hibernate my system,
slip into the world I love –
there is too much out there to catch up.
I grope the weak spots
amidst my countless stretchmarks –
there is always a new pit to fall,
new depths to me that
I can never resurface from.
The baby snuggles closer
to catch her train of dreams;
the mother blinks to clear hers,
sniffs at her offspring
for that baby smell
that’s already fading.
Time is on time;
I wait with a clock in my hands,
but the hands that matter
keep turning forward –
I miss the moment every day
and what remains is
a jaded quilt of memories.
SISTERS
The cherry blossoms
are in my reveries;
the ones that are real
were in the wildernesses I lost into,
in my childhood.
The cherries we picked were pink
and some white –
never red like the pictures.
So were we.
The thorns that scraped us
were chided, too –
they were only for so long.
So was our childhood.
We are sisters in time –
in pain, lessons and
dreams.
We are sisters in those
bird-pecked fruits;
in chewed mango leaves,
hidden feathers
in our dusty books.
We are sisters
in everything that was
kept for another lifetime.
Yet, I yearn to go back
for the unpicked cherries;
the petals we forgot to share,
the moments we forgot
to live.
