Three Poems by Smita Ray

1. Without You By My Side

This being human is

a liability

a burden

without you by my side

I resolved to chance my luck

and betook myself to Saturnalia

calling out your name

with a maddening hopelessness

Birthing and dying

gazillion times

for a faint sign

Without you

by my side

this being human

equates to a cypher

I fell out of love, I must confess. Love that was proliferating underneath our well-worn facade. I wildly lamented and howled at the crumbling of my shell and it was gnawing at me. Falling out of love was just a part of incessant, infinite fall. Over and over again. I shuddered with an unknown foreboding when you swept aside the damask curtain where I quelled, concealing a dour obsessive longing that rendered me at the mercy of my own desire, stalking every corner of my soul.

That dainty murmur of your hazel eyes debouching into my barren heart frantically bursting every known bank, careening along the sodden and mossy terrain making colossal oak trees keel over one after another. I hopelessly sought solace in my own yearning. I was a GMO who had completely lost the sense of the world. Who wasn’t aware of anything else in the universe. Was it me? Was it you? The presence of the world infringed upon the sovereignty of my soul. I fancied for something that was never mine… or was it all that I had at the moment? A fleeting glance of yours was my unrivalled saving grace decking out my days that turned into weeks, months, and years. As a matter of fact, it was the only moment when I was terribly excited for life. The elegance of your voice, the slow flutter of your lips, the pause between words…I couldn’t but love you. Each minute, every second all I was able to do was loving you. I was lost in a timeless moment with a maddening longing, an eternal famine of you. Dying inch by inch..Was it what being a human truly meant?

 2. Beyond the Realm of Affordability

I have loved you in the itchy moments of bizarre possibilities at the 

same time coming to term with the fact that I will never chance to hear 

“Now I pronounce you man and wife,”. Yet, I heard the tapping of your 

tentative steps shambling up to me in my bittersweet longing for shared 

bliss. Like languorously summering on a sequestered island and thawing 

my soul in the tingling of thousands of butterflies beating their wings 

when your shamrock gaze carpeted the meadows of my heart from a 

far-flung nebula. I have loved you stubbornly and bolshily in a fleeting

 universe of unfeigned warmth and affection with an unreasonable and 

unquenchable passion. Sipping you like my winter cup of Joe I have heard

 you in the feeble squeak of fledgeling and soaking you up in a brief 

hiatus, I amassed you as though I am readying for hibernation. But I 

must confess that my cravings traversed my affordability of you…Still, I

 will never tighten the screw on you. My love is given gratis regardless

 you are affordable or not…

3. Once Again...

I quivered like a dry leaf

at your question

As stretching my credulity you throated

“I cannot abandon her to her fate. You know me..”

Of course, you were helpless…

As though, you always toed the line

Wasn’t it difficult to strike a balance

between your wife

and your love?

Rather a mistress…?

You knew it, didn’t you?

I turned my gaze and peered into the abyss

of your eyes

Once again…

I lapsed into the oblivion

The wild flapping of my hair

And the loud thud

Of books cascading off my hands

And smashing the ground

Went completely unheard

A distant sough of tidal waves surged forward

In a moment aeons flashed before my eyes

How with every footfall of yours I was crumbling away

Falling deeper and deeper into your mellow love

Slipping into the bottomless silky void

How you broke into my dreams

And confiscated my slumber

A wholesome fall, I would call it

Suddenly my voice slurred

Fumbling for words I tripped over the dirt trail

Rutted with the wheels of the cart

Where we lay entwined

Savouring our scrumptious passion

Tastier than the food served in the refectory

Like a gibberish wreck

Gasping for breath, I made a break

For the far end of the horizon

Fuzzing the cusp between dreams

And reality

Where a slice of sky melted into

Your name…