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.