Two Poems

by Anonymous

As a Rule, You Promise to Appease this Child

CW: references to blood, physical violence

six hours, and I was born 

a doll. with an amorphous 

heart pieced and stacked on 

the saucer like a beehive, I 

learnt to pull up my socks. A

charcoaling wind caught up with

the monologues and quelled me 

amber pink. Sickly with gaunt 

browbones and pudgy hands. You

said you wish you had known me at 

twelve. Sometimes I do, too, but the

spilt guts of looking glass foaming down

my chin would have splintered you dry. Some

-times the cyclones will assail those in high-rise

Kolkata buildings, too, gushing through the door 

gap of a third-floor verandah and riddled with questions

like paper boats from girlhood. Like an orphan I flung my arms

round your neck that evening, asking and asking and asking. How much 

longer until you clean the blood in my mouth? You split the wooden doll in half 

and the earth swears to paint me once again.

the pericardium as a looking-glass

(i)

lulled, like the only pair of 

eyes you told me about. it is

customary here, to nap in the

afternoon with the carcasses of 

stars. also customary: to keep these

things from daughters. 

(ii)

polished, vigorously, by pitying fire

-hands. all you had left to touch was 

the soft seed of mercury. so, you let 

it char your enamel, and call it mother

-hood. a refrain. the sable heart of carbon,

lost to blinding light. they never asked you. 

(iii)

exasperated— rolled gently in gossamer false

-hood. your dimpled elbows, spinning loss like 

fireflies in a tailorbird’s nest. blink. blink. blink. 

And we have made from water every living thing. 

your dry pulsating eyes, spelling me orphaned. 

wiping the moon with a rag, I remember our 

language. 

This author has opted to remain anonymous.