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