[M.A. (English), University of Calcuttam, (College Street Campus)]
Downpour
It’s hard to run in the desert
Your feet sink into the sand.
Every step feels like twenty.
You hate the heat. You hate the sand.
You hate the sun.
You hate because hate is cold.
Rain was a dream you had centuries ago.
You dream of the desert.
You live in the desert.
Concrete sand and electric sun.
Your feet sink into the road.
A car runs over you.
You die. You wake up on a bed.
Rain was a yesterday in a file of tomorrows.
And you sell todays to dead souls
in living bodies.
You are good at selling the moment.
But you can’t sell last night.
You have oceans in your bathroom and
mouthful of sand.
Your skin is dry and cracking. You drown in blood.
Rain is a dead bird on your ventilator.
Your balcony promises height and solutions.
Your alarm clock is snoozed.
You dreamt of nightmares last night.
Your feet are cold.
Your coffee is cold.
Your city is cold.
It rained last night.
It’s harder to run on wet sand.
Petrichor
The window opens, it’s still hard to look outside
I know the mist of rain clings to the windowsill
I wonder if the smell of wet earth is still suffocating enough to be home
Outside, a grey sky is turning into an uncompromised blue
White cotton clouds carefully disinfect my wounds.
I forget the last time I looked into the light and felt anything but terror.
Breathing is hard sometimes, the air too heavy with the need to forget
I like my time under the dark, soundless water.
I miss the rain. Yet I calm down when it stops.
The smell of drenched earth fills an unknown void in me.
My eyes adjust to the light. Time stretches beyond my sight.
In the vast expanse of possibilities,
I lose my worries and my expectations and my memories,
Like torn feathers in an eyeless storm,
Until the void is all I know, all I feel.
Until the smell of rain-soaked soil replaces all that is real,
And only an unadulterated quietness is left.
In that quiet, I learn to live again.