Poems by Bharti Bansal

Bharti Bansal is a 24 year old poet from Shimla, India. She loves moon, universe, stars and cats.  She has her work published both online and offline. 

Wishes

Barren home and broken bodies

I dream of a land 

Where I am not a raging river

Or a dying moth

Where the light is not too faraway 

And sun is at the tip of my thumb

Where my lover doesn't hold pillows for comfort but me

Where time doesn't fly

Like a bird in a burning forest

Waiting to escape

Where the dark doesn't scare me

And this lonely world doesn't convince me to find a dream

Big enough to weigh me down

Keep me grounded on earth 

And doesn't let me shoot from the earth at escape velocity 

All I am saying is that I am just trying to stay 

As long as I can 

Without making it sound like a complaint

Because you see, sometimes the best moments should be kept at one hand distance

And best memories are better off without heart 

So all I am trying to do is detach myself

From this world

A rope being cut

A taut thread hanging loose

For there is no way to heal loneliness 

But to believe that we afterall aren't even lonely alone

That somewhere someone feels exactly like us

Tucked in my bed

I am waving everyone off in my dream 

And running to a land

Where nobody knows that I, infact, am so sad

I might break down on being asked simple questions 

And know perfectly the answers I can never admit.

Endings

What do I do with all this sadness?

This space where I exist, I have no way to claim it and call it mine

So I give it your name

And leave behind something to remember 

For I am easily forgettable

Nothing about me is beautiful

But you, my love, will easily bloom long after I am gone

You see we all are flowers

Some weeds

Some simply leaves

Crushed beneath feet.

But here I am 

Stricken by autumn

Looking for someone to turn me into a poem

Romanticise my loneliness

And let me know

How things when short lived

Are better at being remembered 

So here I am slowly ending myself

With the hope that my absence will be turned into something tangible

Like your hands in mine

Your text in my phone

And my final words

Descending slowly upon your ears

A life ready to give up on itself

An urgency at being saved

A helpless cry

And me

Writing this out of sheer desperation 

A dying star

A setting sun

A final goodbye.

Jatinga Bird Mystery 

Every year local and migratory birds fly to Jatinga only to commit suicide. 

They die as the fog descends down the mountains around the valley, like a bride

And they rush towards the giggling light, get hit by long bamboo trees and die."

You see, the first time I looked at you from a distance, I knew you were going to be the death of me.

I, like those silly birds, flew towards the halo of your being and crashed on your body

A deep chasm that echoed the last chirps of dying birds, a sad goodbye

I knew it had to be this way, your name sounded like a symphony of a toddler than a warning bell

Jatinga, a small valley in Assam

Us, a hole dug in the mid of this fabric of world

Together we made a perfect pair for anything that could kill mercilessly 

Those birds, migrating thousands of miles

Across seas and oceans

Leaving their nests like little soldiers 

Only to die in a war that nobody started

Are their dead rotting carcasses, casualties of not looking enough in the direction where the dark births out of the womb of the light

Or is it just another mystery that people forget soon enough, a friend who bids you goodbye, gifts you harsh words you ponder over throughout your life and think if he ever loved you at all?

If we die together, is that even death or a celebration of it?

If we know we have no time, will we slow down and look at the skies above and the land below?

Will we ever know who loved us the most?

Does ground ever complain for mass graves or does it accept its fate?

Are these birds forgetful like me, return back to the same valley/you in the hope that maybe one day you will love as you had promised to?

But who can blame you 

Aren't you blamed enough already?

You have blood of innocent birds on your hand

You have unfulfilled dreams hanging like branches from your bodice, my father's pride, and my mother's laughters, all perched on your shoulders like pigeons that surrendered themselves to land years ago.

Jatinga, a paradise

You, my final resting place

Hand me the gun with no bullets inside

And watch me die still

For there is something so powerful about apocalyptic sky in your hooded eyes

When doom is about to fall

When we split like butchered sheep

When you laugh and I bow down before your feet

Take the knife and run it across my throat 

For you had me flattered on the first day

When a shrink calculated my misplaced emotions as fifty percent depression 

And I had smiled

There is something about finality of the last moments 

Those birds know the difference

I always knew the difference 

Yet we never stopped 

Because regrets are mishaps of love seeking forgiveness 

And we don't forgive easily, do we?

You see there is a reason why crematoriums and rivers run side by side

We all tend to wash away our last sins 

Those birds become the victims 

And I turn into survivor instead

We have the same tattered wings

Same blooded corpses 

A final call for help

And a dying wingless fall to tell our story

"We mattered

We mattered

We mattered"

The poems first appeared in Two Drops of  Ink