To the one called home

By Oindrila Ghosal

You surely do not have a label,
Sticking to your neck
Or a bunch of directions
Leading to where you may be found.
You do not stand in the way of sun rays
Or come rushing across the wild grasses,
No song of wind blows through your hair,
No broken fetters 'round your wrists.
Often, I had seen you make wreaths of dead butterflies,
Upon the rocks by the dried-up lake,
That you lay to rest in the little graves-
On the soft earth.
I never crossed your eyes,
Saying a little prayer
Under my breath.
And quite unlikely when on a fine afternoon,
You walked up to me while I was thawing the reeds,
"Hey, let's build a home together!"-
We cleared a patch,
Dug many bamboos and cane
And strung up a thatch above.
Even then when I recited my little prayer,
Your face underneath the stubble,
Shone grey, cold and distant.
That night when you laid your hands on me,
And I had my share of what it felt to touch a man like,
My head ran across the currents of the river,
Counting on my fingertips the reeds I needed
To secure the walls in place,
To keep the wind out,
While the warm lash of your hastened breath,
Melted the icicle on my nose.
There was a home in me building up,
Only a crackle of my soul knew the whereabouts of.
And by the time it was spring,
There were no more butterflies in the backyard.
Before the torment of the summer began,
Skeletons of fishes crossed my capillaries.
His monstrous hands kept the house going-
From reknitting the walls to stacking water underground.
I served him my peppered tears and he slept like a hog,
Waking up only at the crack of dawn,
To rub his fingers on the crevices of my broken skin.
Next winter when I set the house on fire,
The home within me was throbbing.
My scarves, my silk, my treasured gold,
I knew, had cradled him to death.
For days afterwards I kept sitting on the ground,
Waiting for the wind
To blow away the ashes.
And now on another afternoon in spring,
With my feet sunk deep in the murky grey waters,
Beneath the reeds,
A slithering touch of narrow fingers,
Soft skin,
Flirtatious nails,
Makes me feel home.
My eyes too shy to lift up,
Know the curve of her lips,
The glow on her cheeks,
The fragrance of her naked skin.
And, she brings her mouth closer to whisper,
“Let’s build a home together."

Presently a doctoral student at Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education of Cancer, Navi Mumbai, the author finds her muse in words (from crystalline matter of fact tone of the research articles to the free-flowing narrative of fiction) to weave her own tangle of jargons to fall back to and for anyone who resonates with the same. The formative years in Sikkim have seeded the hyperactive imagination entwining the bibliophilia. The early adulthood in Kolkata and Hyderabad as an undergraduate and postgraduate student of Zoology and Animal Biology and Biotechnology, respectively has kindled in her to be impressed by and appreciate historical and speculative fictions even more. So far, Kitaab has published three of her short proses – “The Harlot’s Veena” (15.08.22), “The Asylum” (31.10.22) and “The Jungle within Me” (12.03.23).