Can you hear me? : Deyasini Roy

"Can you hear me?"

Can you hear me, Priyo?

My teardrops steam in

the pressure cooker

That slumbering crimson 

red pot where I chose to

trap them when you were

gone. The rice and dal has

a different simmer, I do not

know~ a brown bud bursting

on a wintry morn. It cooks

faster on summer afternoons 

as pressure rise releasing

a gush of steam inside as

the eyes blur—a glinting lagoon—

blue. The orange light plays 

under the leather-brown arms

of your chair that sits brooding

at our verandah waiting for you—

the smoke, just the colour of your

fluttering body, dusky as the breathing

night, full of glistening raindrops

lines on my flickering dark-kohl eyes.

Your beryl green touch rolls on to my

aanchal in wet alpanas of cherry

blossom. The aanchal drops and 

flows over our asphalt lawn like

the waves of my hair in rings of

sunflower gold~ The length of my love

running to find the rippling muscles

of your forgotten fingers and the 

waterfall glee struggling through

dark letters of my hair. My sari

flutters, a feathery-sugar white in 

the half-sung chorus of our laughter,

in goosebump beads of rain, standing

and flax-gold as I feel your breath, 

a flame, a bonfire red, ripple on 

the contours of my vaseline belly~

skin-tingling caramel soft. The lunch

table still smells of the wintry baked 

apple aroma as teardrops steam 

in the pressure cooker, the flavours

deep and ever more steaming in

the lemon smell of my lost amber.