A Poem on the Meaning of My Name by Mandrita Bose

Mandrita 

*A soft and sweet note/harmony/tune*

My name means that if I pluck a megastorm from Saturn

And slip it on a deserted island on Earth, 

That's what my Do Re Mi would roar like.

It means that when you tie puppet strings to my tongue, and wiretap my vocal cords, trying to choke-control me,

I swing drumbeats on 100 pages with mutinying words that glide like calypso on a piano.

It means that when you betrayed me, 

you gave me a heart attack, but my pulse was a hammering throb, it seemed it could uproot from my body and become heartbeats of a dead star, bringing it back to life. 

It means that when you attacked me at my most vulnerable, dipped my storm voice in a washbasin of tsunami waves, and tried to wring out its power, 

I still scooped out a breeze and murmured a guitar solo into it, like a protective charm.

It means every time you tossed a coin between my teeth like my destiny rested on a piece of metal, I collected every circle of fortune until their clinking was so thundering loud, like the dead howling from Valhalla, 

that you had to leave.

It means that when you secretly hoped to see me cry, pitch-perfect, measuring my blood in goblets,  like a lingering wish of yours came true,

I wrapped your mind in a blanket of flute notes, and placed it in an ambulance, 

But it reached the jail instead of the hospital because the driver was your friend and wished your downfall too.

It means that when my Dad uttered in his last stifled breaths, "don't let people take advantage of you",

I followed his instructions like a prayer song, 

I made barbed-wired boundaries for my country of circumstances, that the world wouldn't dare to de-throne.

It means that when I am so tired that I'm looking for a graveyard to bury my heart, 

I still put on my crown of fire and beckon the seas, like my hands are the magnetic lunar cycles of the moonlight sonata,

And when all the waters of the Atlantic flows to me, I walk into it gracefully,

pleased to know that now, 

my soul will transform into

music.