Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Architecture and motherhood

You feel like a design problem
I am working on, 
whose submission date 
is not yet fixed, 
by indecisive studio professors 
who want us students 
to work, just a tad bit more.

On nights before a pre-final,
like a tracing full of ideas
yet to be finalised, 
you have the power 
of lingering in my subconscious,
making me jump out 
of intermittent sleep
Each night, to engage with you.

No paper to draw on,
you draw from me what is yours now.

No name plate either;
for your loved ones 
use sounds and words
borrowed from seven languages
whose alphabets cannot be lettered.

I wipe your eye secretions, 
tears and milk stains after a feed,
and your face becomes
a completed cartridge sheet;
smudge free with a few guide lines.

Your few hair strands I comb 
so they settle paralelly
like meticulous 
brick and stone hatches 
drafted within walls.

Every once in a while 
I stick my ear to the floor 
to watch an exactly angled ray 
of sunlight works its magic 
on a sleeping you.

A roughly 1:3 scaled model 
of who you may be 
in 20 years, 
stares back at me;
your myriad expressions 
changing by the millisecond.

Surprised, I have 
an obscenely satisfying thought 
that crosses my mind;

did I just happen to create you?


**Sleeplessness invokes poetry. Written for Chundo :)



Published in The Punch Magazine, the Byword on 14/12/2019
https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/poetry/her-marred-maang-and-other-poems

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